75] LANDOWNERSHIP AMONG THE NEGROES 75 



could only be through the operation of some fortuitous 

 combination of circumstances that such a people should 

 come into the possession of land. The average negro isP 1 

 not so psychologically organized as to defer a present 

 gratification for the sake of a permanent future income. 1 / 

 This lack of economic foresight, which is character- 

 istic of the average negro, is the psychological product 

 both of heredity and of training. So far as information 

 is obtainable, there is no evidence to show that the 

 ancestors of the American negro in the original habitat 

 were accustomed to act under the influence of highly 

 wrought economic motives. There is, however, an 

 abundance of evidence to the contrary. 8 Now slavery, 

 while improving in many ways the economic condition 

 of the negro, did not possess the virtue of subjecting 

 him to a training in providence. It was not incumbent 

 upon him under the system to consider at all the matter 

 of providing for his own economic welfare in respect to 

 even such primary wants as food, clothing and shelter. 

 In view of these antecedents in blood and training, and 

 in view of the further fact that the other half of the pop- 

 ulation, originally in possession of all the land, is com- 

 posed of descendants of a race distinguished for its indi- 

 vidual enterprise and economic foresight, it is therefore 

 not surprising to find that the negroes, while numbering 



1 A personal letter from Georgia, dated November 1, 1904, contains 

 the following passage pertinent to the subject in hand: "This is cer- 

 tainly a prosperous year for the southern negroes. They have paid their 

 accounts and have money to burn. ^Numbers of them have already re- 

 ceived over $100.00 and they are spending it as fast as they get it." 

 This has all the more force since it was not written in answer to an in- 

 quiry on that particular subject. 



*Cf. Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America (1902), Publica- 

 tions of American Economic Association. Also Kelsey, The Negro 

 Farmer (1903), pp. 22, 23. 



