A. D. 1900 A. D. 2004 Aggregate Negro Wealth $890,000,000 $2,670,000,000 Aggregate Negro population 8,840,789 21,907,079 Per cent. of illiteracy 45 per cent. 2 per cent. Per cent. of crime 20 per cent. 1 per cent. Ratio of home owners 1 in 100 1 in 30. Ratio of insane 1 in 1000 1 in 500. Death rate 20 per M. 5 per M. Number of lawyers 250 5,282 Number of doctors 800 11,823 Number of pharmacists 150 2,111 Number of teachers 30,000 200,603 Number of preachers 75,000 250,804 Number of mechanics 80,000 240,922 I noticed that Negroes had gained standing in the country as citizens and were no longer objects for such protection as the whites thought a Negro deserved. They stood on the same footing legally as other people. It was a pet phrase in my time for certain communities to say to the Negro that they “would protect him in his rights,” but what the Negro wanted was that he should not have to be protected at all! He wanted public sentiment to protect him just as it did a white man. This proffered help was all very good, since it was the best the times afforded, but it made the Negro’s rights depend upon what his white neighbors said of him,--if these neighbors did not like him his rights were _nil_. His was an ephemeral existence dependent on the whims and caprices of friends or foes. True citizenship must be deeper than that and be measured by the law of the land--not by the opinion of one’s neighbors. But the voice of the politician who wished to contort civil into social equality was now hushed. He no more disgraced the land, and a Negro could have a business talk with a white man on the street of a Southern city without either party becoming subjects of criticism for practicing “social equality.” CHAPTER VI A RIDE WITH IRENE Soon after this talk Miss Davis and I visited prominent places in the city of Phœnix. I had anxiously waited for this opportunity. An uncontrollable desire to fulfill this engagement had grown on me, from the day she informed me that she had planned the outing. We visited McPherson’s monument, and standing with head uncovered in its shadow, I said that I was glad to see that the cause he fought for was recognized as a blessing to the South as well as to the North. She replied that some of her relatives perished in defense of the South, but she had been often told by her father that her ancestors considered slavery a great wrong and liberated their slaves by will.