To say that the Negroes furnish more than their proportion of criminals is no more than to say that the lowest element in the population has the lowest and most criminal members. The excessive criminality of the Negroes, which is marked in all the states of the Union, is of course a mark of their average inferiority, and a measure of the difficulty of bringing them up to a high standard; and the proportion is often exaggerated. In South Carolina where the Negroes are three fifths of the population they furnish only four fifths of the convicts. As for the assertion that the educated Negroes are specially criminal, the statement is contradicted by the records of the large institutions of negro education, and by the experience of thousands of people. Education does not necessarily make virtue, but it is a safeguard. As a matter of fact, white Southerners in general know little of the lives or motives of thousands of the immense noncriminal class of Negroes, with whom they have no personal relations; but are wide awake to the iniquities of the educated men who fall into crime. The experience of two centuries shows that the Negroes are not drawn to crimes requiring previous organization and preparation; no slave insurrection has ever been a success within the boundaries of the United States; and blacks are rarely found in gangs of bandits. The incendiarism of which there is now so much complaint is probably the expression of individual vengeance. The Negroes, according to the testimony of those nearest to them, are inveterate gamblers, and many affrays result from consequent quarrels, so that murders may be most frequent where there is the best employment and largest wages and greatest prosperity among the thrifty. Murder, manslaughter, and attempts to kill make up three quarters of the recorded crimes of the blacks in the Mississippi Delta. Murders of Negroes by Negroes are very common and many of the criminals escape altogether. Negro crime is much fomented by the low drinking-shops in the city and in country, by the lack of home influence on growing boys and girls, by the brutalizing of young people who are sent to prison with hardened criminals, and in general, by close contact with the lowest element of the white race, which leads to crimes on both sides. It is a striking fact that where the Africans are most numerous there is the least complaint of crime. The so-called race riots are usually rows between a few bad Negroes and the officers of the law, or a group of aggrieved Whites. Fights with policemen and sheriffs are frequent, and desperate men not infrequently barricade themselves in houses, and sell their lives as dearly as they can. Quarrels over the settlement of accounts are not uncommon, and the Negro who feels himself cheated sometimes takes his revenge at the end of a gun. As weapons are ordinarily sold without the slightest check, to men of both races and of every age, there is never any lack of the means to kill.