A conference on the negro and the South opened at Montgomery May 8, 1900. Many able and fair-minded men participated, representing various attitudes, parties, and sections of the country. Limitation of the colored franchise, the proper sort of education for negroes, the evils of "social equality" agitation, and the causes and frequency of lynching were the main subjects discussed. The consensus of opinion seemed to be that for "the negro, on account of his inherent mental and emotional instability," acquirement of the franchise should be less easy than for whites. It was maintained that the industrially trained colored men became leaders among their people, commanding the respect of both races and acquiring much property, yet that ex-slaves, rather than the younger, educated set, formed the bulk of colored property-holders. Figures revealed among the colored population a frightful increase of illegitimacy and of flagrant crimes. It seemed that crimes against women, almost unknown before the war but now increasing at an alarming rate, proceeded not from ex-slaves, but from the smart new generation. Lynching for these offences was by some excused in that negroes would not assist in bringing colored perpetrators to justice, and in that a spectacular mode of punishment affected negroes more deeply than the slow process of law, even when this issued in conviction. The severer utterances at this conference may have been more or less biased; still, if, allowing for this, one considered the data available for forming a judgment, one was forced to feel that calm Southerners had apprehended the case better than Northern enthusiasts. Colored people as a class lacked devotion to principle, also initiative and endurance, whether mental or physical. Colored deputies, of whom there were many in various parts of the South, so long as they acted under white chiefs, were, like most colored soldiers, marvels of bravery, defying revolvers, bowie knives, and wounds, and fighting to the last gasp with no sign of flinching; but the black men who could be trusted as sheriffs-in-chief were extremely rare.