Meantime, the Negro has retrograded as a workman until he has not only lost the field in which he once had no rival, but is in danger of losing even the ability to compete for its recovery. The superiority of the older farmhands to the younger generation is so universally asserted throughout the South that it must be given some of the validity of general reputation. And whereas, as has been shown, a generation ago all the mechanical work of the South was in the hands of the Negroes, only a small proportion of it is done by them to-day. Fifteen years ago one of the suburbs of Richmond was largely built up by a contractor whose foreman was a Negro. There was no question raised about it. The foreman knew his business; had been raised among the whites; knew how to get along with white men, and was respected and esteemed by them. This was at that time not uncommon. What is the situation now? The races are more widely divided than ever before. White mechanics and Negro mechanics no longer work together, generally, as of old. No contractor could do now what the man who built “Barton Heights” did fifteen years ago. The number of Negro carpenters and mechanics is greatly reduced; and the writer is informed by intelligent Negroes that such work as they do is mainly among their own people. The causes are not far to seek. It is partly due to a failure of ability in the Negro to hold his place in the struggle of competition, and partly to the changed relations between him and the white. The old feeling of friendliness and amity has waned, and in its room has come a cold indifference, if not actual hostility. The new Negro has been taught that he is the equal of the white, and he is always asserting it and trying to prove it by any way but the right way—the equality of his work. Washington City has ever since the time of emancipation appeared a sort of Mecca to many of the Negro race. There, numbers of that race have had opportunities which have been wanting to them in the South, and there to-day may be found, perhaps, the best educated element of the race to be found anywhere. Within the last year the Negro organization known as the True Reformers built in that city a handsome and expensive structure for the use of their race, and built it wholly with Negro labor. When, however, the workmen competent to do such work were sought, it was found necessary to go to the South for them. Yet even in the South the Negro artisan sufficiently trained to compete now with his white rival is comparatively rare. “The slave-disciplined mechanic has no successor in the ranks of the freedmen....”[36] So far, then, as statistics would indicate, the improvement that exists among the Negroes is not shown by the race at large as is usually alleged, but is shown, in the main, by the upper fraction.