"Think of the large sums that the South has spent and is spending on the education of the Negro. The Negro does not begin to pay for his education in taxes." Neither do the swarming Slavs, Italians, and Poles in our Northern cities. They pay little in taxes and yet enormous sums are expended in their improvement. For their benefit? Of course, but chiefly for ours. It is better to educate men in school than to let them so educate themselves as to become a menace to society. The present _kind_ of education in the South may possibly be wrong; but for the protection of society it is as necessary to train every Negro as it is every white man. When I saw the crowds of young Negroes being made criminal--through lack of proper training--I could not help thinking how pitilessly ignorance finally revenges itself upon that society which neglects or exploits it. CHAPTER IV IN THE BLACK BELT: THE NEGRO FARMER The cotton picking season was drawing to its close when I left for the black belt of Georgia. So many friends in Atlanta had said: "The city Negro isn't the real Negro. You must go out on the cotton plantations in the country; there you'll see the genuine black African in all his primitive glory." It is quite true that the typical Negro is a farmer. The great mass of the race in the South dwells in the country. According to the last census, out of 8,000,000 Negroes in the Southern states 6,558,173, or 83 per cent., lived on the farms or in rural villages. The crowded city life which I have already described represents not the common condition of the masses of the Negro race but the newer development which accompanies the growth of industrial and urban life. In the city the races are forced more violently together, socially and economically, than in the country, producing acute crises, but it is in the old agricultural regions where the Negro is in such masses, where ideas change slowly, and old institutions persist, that the problem really presents the greatest difficulties. There is no better time of year to see the South than November; for then it wears the smile of abundance. The country I went through--rolling red hills, or black bottoms, pine-clad in places, with pleasant farm openings dotted with cabins, often dilapidated but picturesque, and the busy little towns--wore somehow an air of brisk comfort. The fields were lively with Negro cotton pickers; I saw bursting loads of the new lint drawn by mules or oxen, trailing along the country roads; all the gins were puffing busily; at each station platform cotton bales by scores or hundreds stood ready for shipment and the towns were cheerful with farmers white and black, who now had money to spend. The heat of the summer had gone, the air bore the tang of a brisk autumn coolness. It was a good time of the year--and everybody seemed to feel it. Many Negroes got on or off at every station with laughter and snouted good-byes. _What Is the Black Belt?_ [Illustration: THE BLACK BELT