The Negro has a great advantage over the Italian or other European peasant in that the white man prefers him as a helper. He is patient, docile and proud of his work. He is wanted by the native whites, and if the reader doubts this let him go to any Southern community and attempt to bring about any great exodus of the Negroes and he will be surprised to find how soon he is requested to move on. This interest on the part of the whites is a factor which must be considered. It would be a happy day for the Negro if the white woman of the South took her old personal interest in his welfare. This friendly sentiment will not increase with time and each succeeding generation will emphasize, more and more, industrial efficiency, and the Negro will not be preferred. Corresponding to this is the fact that the Negro respects and willingly follows the white man, more willingly and more trustingly than he does another Negro. He is personally loyal, as the care received by the soldiers during war time illustrated. But slavery is gone and the feudalism which followed it is slowly yielding to commercialism, which gives the palm to the more efficient. Hitherto the Negro has tilled much of the best land of the South. Meantime the great prairies have been settled and about all the good cheap land of the northwest taken. A tide of immigration is setting in towards the Southern states. Already the rice industry of Louisiana has been revolutionized by white immigrants. What may this mean for the Negro if these incoming whites defy race prejudice and seek the rich bottom lands of the Mississippi or elsewhere? Will the Negro be in a position of independence or will he only assist the white? Will he till in the future the best lands or will he be forced to the less fertile? With the knowledge of the present regarding yellow fever, malaria and typhoid the dread of the lowlands is disappearing. If the indications point, as many believe, towards the South as the seat of the next great agricultural development these questions become of vital importance to the Negro. Can he become economically secure before he is made to meet a competition which he has never yet faced? Or does the warmer climate give him an advantage, which the whites can not overcome? I must confess that I doubt it. In "The Cotton Plant" (page 242), Mr. Harry Hammond states that in 39 counties of the Black Prairie Region of Texas, in which the whites predominate, the average value of the land is $12.19 per acre, as against $6.40 for similar soil in twelve counties of the Black Prairie of Alabama, in which the Negroes are in the majority. He says further: "The number and variety of implements recently introduced in cotton culture here, especially in the prairies of Texas, is very much greater than elsewhere in the cotton belt." This would indicate that heat alone is no insurmountable obstacle. If these things be true, then as the late Mr. J. L. M. Curry said: