In slavery times, of course, the white man supervised labour absolutely and took _all_ the profits. In some cases to-day, by a system of peonage, he still controls the labourer and takes all the profits. But as the Negro has grown in education and property he not only wishes to supervise his own labour, but demands a larger share in the returns of labour. He is no longer willing to be an abject "hewer of wood and a drawer of water" as he was in slavery times; he has an ambition to own his own farm, do his own business, employ his own professional men, and so on. He will not "keep his place" as a servant. And that is the basis of all the trouble. Many of the utterances of white political leaders resolve themselves into a statement of this position. At the American Bankers' Association last fall Governor Swanson of Virginia said: "At last the offices, the business houses, and the financial institutions are all in the hands of intelligent Anglo-Saxons, and with God's help and our own good right hand we will hold him (the Negro) where he is." In other words, the white man will by force hold all political, business and financial positions; he will be boss, and the Negro must do the menial work; he must be a servant. Hoke Smith says in his speech (the italics are mine): "Those Negroes who are contented to occupy the natural status of their race, the position of inferiority, _all competition being eliminated between the whites and the blacks_, will be treated with greater kindness." In other words, if the Negro will be contented to keep himself inferior and not compete with the white man, everything will be all right. And thus, curiously enough, while Hoke Smith in his campaign was thundering against railroad corporations for destroying competition, while he was glorifying the principle of "free and unrestricted trade," he was advocating the formation of a monopoly of all white men by the elimination of the competition of all coloured men. Indeed, we find sporadic attempts to pass laws to compel the Negro to engage only in certain sorts of menial work. In Texas not long ago a bill was introduced in the legislature "to confine coloured labour to the farm whenever it was found in city and town communities to be competing with white labour." In the last session of the Arkansas legislature Senator McKnight introduced a bill providing that Negroes be forbidden "from waiting on white persons in hotels, restaurants, or becoming barbers, or porters on trains, and to prevent any white man from working for any Negro." In a number of towns respectable, educated, and prosperous Negro doctors, grocers, and others have been forcibly driven out. I visited Monroe, La., where two Negro doctors had been forced to leave town because they were taking the practice of white physicians. In the same town a Negro grocer was burned out, because he was encroaching on the trade of white grocers.