This, however, is only one side of the shield. There is another side, nowhere better illustrated, perhaps, than in the neglected negro gardens of the South. Near every negro hut is a garden patch large enough to supply the family with vegetables for the entire year, but it usually is neglected. "If they have any garden at all," says a negro critic from Tuskegee, "it is apt to be choked with weeds and other noxious growths. With every advantage of soil and climate and with a steady market if they live near any city or large town, few of the colored farmers get any benefit from this, one of the most profitable of all industries." In marked contrast to these wild and unkempt patches are the gardens of the Italians who have recently invaded portions of the South and whose garden patches are almost miraculously productive. And this invasion brings a real threat to the future of the negro. His happy-go-lucky ways, his easy philosophy of life, the remarkable ease with which he severs home ties and shifts from place to place, his indifference to property obligations--these negative defects in his character may easily lead to his economic doom if the vigorous peasantry of Italy and other lands are brought into competition with him. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 7: _History of the United States_, vol. I, p. 116.] [Footnote 8: _Captain Canot: or Twenty Years in a Slaver_, by Brantz Mayer. p. 94 ff.] [Footnote 9: _The Negro in Africa and America_, p. 113.] [Footnote 10: Coman, _Industrial History of the United States_, p. 238. Bogart gives the figures as 1,976,000 bales in 1840, and 4,675,000 bales in 1860. _Economic History of the United States_, p. 256.] [Footnote 11: See _The Anti-Slavery Crusade_, by Jesse Macy (in _The Chronicles of America_), Chapter VIII.] [Footnote 12: See _The Sequel of Appomattox_, by Walter L. Fleming (in _The Chronicles of America_), Chapter IV.] [Footnote 13: See _The New South_ by Holland Thompson (in _The Chronicles of America_), Chapters IV and VII.] [Footnote 14: _Negroes in the United States_, Census Bulletin No. 129, p. 37.] CHAPTER IV UTOPIAS IN AMERICA