The responsibility is not always on the Negro's side. There are many disputes over labor contracts, in which the Negro justly believes that the white man has cheated him, and his attempt to audit is stopped by a quarrel in which the black is killed. Even boys under twelve years of age have been known to shoot Negroes over trivial disputes, and a young lady in Washington recently shot and killed a black boy who was stealing fruit. The Negroes complain of harsh treatment by the police. For instance, a good-looking, very black young man is glad to get out of Savannah and among the white people on the Sea Islands. "They like the colored people better; even if they do get drunk and are fierce, they treat them better. In Savannah the other day I saw a man going back to his vessel, and a policeman asked him where he was going. He answered up rough like,--I wouldn't do that, I'd go down on my hands and knees to 'em rather than have any trouble with em,--and the policeman broke his club over his head, arrested him, and they sent him to the chain gang. I don't want to be arrested; I never have been arrested in my life." That the police are often in the wrong is shown by such instances as the recent acquittal of a Negro by direction of an Alabama judge; he had shot a policeman who was arresting him without reason, and the judge who heard the case justified him. Perhaps, comparing city with city, the North is as disorderly as the South, but the rural South is a much more desperate region than the farming lands of the North, as is shown by the statistics of homicide and similar crimes. In Florida in 1899, with a population of 528,000, there were about 40 murders and 200 assaults with attempt to murder. In Alabama in 1895-96 there were about 350 homicides. In one twelvemonth some years ago there were 6 murders in Vermont, 96 in Massachusetts, 461 in Alabama, and over 1,000 in Texas. Judge Thomas, of Montgomery, has shown that the homicides in the United States per million of population are 129 against 10 per million in England; and when the sections are contrasted, New England has about 47 per million, against 223 per million in the South.