79+ THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



plied the sturdy old doctor, " I don't see the necessity." Now, it 

 is a cold fact in political economy that the killing off of one third 

 of the black population at the South would probably prove a 

 benefit to civilization. It would work like the thinning out of a 

 forest jungle, leaving room for the sun and air to reach the sur- 

 vivors ; but the law has not yet authorized this process of scien- 

 tific weeding out of the unfittest. The question is not, Shall the 

 negro poor live ? but How shall they live ? Pauperism does not 

 stop procreation. The next generation will be called upon to 

 solve our problem several times multiplied. 



Pauperism not only breeds paupers : it kills thrift. Nothing 

 is so extravagant as poverty. It is a universally acknowledged 

 fact among shopkeepers at the South that the black customers 

 are the best customers. None care so little what price is put upon 

 an article, none inquire so little into intrinsic values, and none 

 are so heedless of the adaptation of the purchase to the needs. 

 Some wit has observed, on the difference between men and women 

 as shoppers, that men will pay two dollars for a one-dollar ar- 

 ticle which they want, whereas women will pay one dollar for a 

 two-dollar article which they don't want. The negro combines 

 the weakness of both. Every traveler in the South smiles over 

 the new buggy standing beside the shanty which owns neither 

 stable nor horse ; the gorgeous plush album, guiltless of pictures, 

 but treasured in tissue paper by the poor woman who can scarcely 

 make the rags meet across her breast. There is a humorous side 

 to it, but there is a pathetic side, too, in that unquenchable thirst 

 for beauty which is part of the Oriental nature. The negro really 

 feels what the rest of us say in jest, " Give us the luxuries of life, 

 and we'll do without the necessaries." Lazy, improvident, un- 

 practical, the black man as a worker is brought into competition 

 not only with the Southern whites, but with the Yankees — those 

 Phoenicians of the "Western world who drive bargains as naturally 

 as the negro drives a mule, who haggle over the price of a post- 

 age-stamp, who rise early and go to bed late out of breath from 

 the pursuit of the nimble sixpence. The negro is a Rip Van 

 Winkle who has suddenly waked into a dizzy world of pros- 

 perity and progress. He can not hope at present to compete for 

 the prizes, but is he therefore to be counted out as a factor in the 

 world's work ? " Not so," says General Armstrong, and as a proof 

 of it he points to the achievements of Hampton. 



That school which first rose on his vision that summer night 

 on the Mexican Gulf, now stretches its substantial arms of stone 

 and brick and iron to the water's edge. Its smoking chimneys, 

 its ringing forges, its whirr of wheels, all bespeak the busy life 

 within. In each one of the forty buildings connected with the 

 school some form of education is being carried on. At one angle 



