“There are more than 270,000,000, acres of unused and unoccupied land in the South and West. In fact one-half of the land of the South and two thirds of the land of the West is still unused. Now is the time for us to become the owners and users of our share of the land, before it is too late.”[303] Had Washington directed one-half of the phenomenal energy he exhibited in the eighteen years of his prominence in endeavoring to keep the Negroes in the South, towards assisting them in obtaining their share of the land in the West, what progress might they not have made? Eighteen years ago, before the great world problem of color had arisen, there was nothing to chill the zeal of the British Negrophilist; but in South Africa the British Negrophobe is increasing in numbers and his influence is also being felt in Canada. Still there are opportunities for the Negro yet, if the leaders of the race will only awaken to the necessities of diffusion. But time and tide wait for no man. As has been attempted to be shown, the idea, not unreasonably entertained soon after the war between the States, that there was apt to be with time, a greater and greater increase of Negro population in the five Southern States, considered as the Black Belt, is no longer tenable. Immediately after the war the Negroes were in a majority of 19,808 in this belt of contiguous States, which the processes and excesses of Reconstruction did raise to 168,965, discernable four years after its overthrow. But by 1890 this Negro majority had been reduced to 150,661 and by 1900 to 92,610. In the following decade this black majority through white immigration and black emigration, was replaced by a white majority in the so called Black Belt of 423,717; which now has risen to over a million and a quarter. The increase of whites has been greatest in the two States in the center of the belt. In the State of Alabama from the conclusion of the war, the increase of the white majority has been steady and continuous, rising from 45,874 in 1870 to 320,566 in 1910 and to 546,980 in 1920. The increase of the white majority in Georgia was less rapid. Reconstruction had cut down the white majority of 93,884 to 81,773 by 1870, but from the overthrow of Reconstruction it rose to 254,849 in 1910, and has now reached 482,749. Louisiana’s Negro majority of 2,114 in 1870, Reconstruction had raised to 28,701 by 1880, but in the forty years which have followed, it has now become 396,354 whites in excess of blacks. In the other two States progress has been slower.