“No, perhaps not so much. He has fighting blood, that’s what it is. His ancestors fought for thousands of years.” I remarked that the red Indians fought also, but they were poor boxers. He put that down to slight physique. “I got tired of watching boxing matches in the army,” said I. “The bulkier and more brutal types always seemed to get the better of those who were merely skillful. I expect that is why we don’t like watching a Negro and a white man boxing, it is too much a triumph of body over mind.” “There’s no finer sight than to watch two Negroes well matched,” said the trainer, with a smile. I thought good boxing showed more the animal side of a man, and I recalled a reported saying of Jack Johnson—“I’se ready to fight mos’ any man that they is, an’ if ye cahn find any man, why, just send me down a great big black Russian bear....” “It jarred the white folk terrible bad that Jack Johnson was the real champion of the world,” said the trainer. “When the news came through of Jack Johnson beating Jeffries so far away as Denver, Colorado, the white folk began pulling the Negroes off the street cars in Norfolk, Virginia, and beating them, just to vent their rage, they were so sore.” I thought that rather amusing, but the trainer took a gloomy view. However, in we went to the shipbuilding yard and looked at many great vessels in dry dock. Out came a motley crowd of men, blacker than their nature through the dirt of their work. The ship painters were splashed from head to foot with the characteristic red paint of ships, and looked like some new tribe; the blue-shirted rivetters and chippers were all frayed and ragged from contact with sharp edges and iron. These Negro workers were very happy and jolly. They seemed nearly all to be on piecework and earned in most cases ten dollars a day, and in some exceptional cases and upon occasion twenty or twenty-five dollars. The rivetters, according to the scale of pay, seemed to be capable of earning huge wages, and many of them were comparatively well off, possessing their homes, and giving their children a good education. The trainer pointed out to me his athletic pets. He was employed by the company to organize competitions and races and baseball teams and the like. The strongest Negroes seemed among the gentlest. The heavyweight champion was a large and beautiful child. He never lost his temper in the ring, because, as I was told, he never needed to. His ears were not turned to “cauliflower” and his nose was not flattened out—as yet.