This estimated proportion is confirmed by investigations into taxes paid by Negroes. In 1902 the 2,100,000 Negroes in the four states of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arkansas were assessed for taxes on $54,000,000. At the same proportion throughout the South, their assessment would have been about $170,000,000, which by this time has probably increased to over $200,000,000; and $200,000,000 is a fortieth of the present total assessment. The sum is great, but the proportion to the wealth of the South is small. At best it can be said that the Negroes, who are a third of the population, own a fortieth of the property in the South; and that one fourth of the Negroes own four fifths of all the negro property. The taxes do not tell the whole story, and there are probably rich Northern cities in which the poorest third of the population does not directly pay more than a fortieth of the taxes. If a race is to be held up as worthless because it is not on the tax books, what will become of some of the most lively members of the Boston City Council and New York Board of Aldermen? Everybody knows that in every community the poorest people pay the largest proportionate taxes through their rent, and through the increased cost of living which is pushed down upon them by landlords and storekeepers. If the colored people were all to move out of their tenements and farms and to go on general strike and earn nothing with which to buy their supplies, the taxpayers of record would very quickly find out who paid a part of their taxes for them. Nevertheless, whatever excuses are made for him, it is undeniable that the Negro has no such spirit of acquisition, no such willingness to sacrifice present delight for future good, as the Northern immigrant, or even the Southern Poor White. CHAPTER XII RACE ASSOCIATION In the preceding chapters the effort has been made to analyze and describe the white race and the negro race, each as though it lived by itself, and could work out its own destiny without reference to the other. The white race is faced with the necessity of elevating its lower fourth; the negro race should be equally absorbed in advancing its lower three fourths. In both races there is progress and there is hope; if either one were living by itself it might be predicted that in a generation or two the problems would cease to be specially Southern and would come down to those which besiege all civilized communities. But neither race lives alone, neither can live alone. The commercial prosperity of the Whites largely depends on negro labor; high standards for the negro race depend on white aid and white example; neither race is free, neither race is independent. They are the positive and negative poles of a dynamo, and terrific is the spark that sometimes leaps from one to the other.