Furthermore, where is the black man to acquire the skill to carry on his own enterprises, to build cotton gins and oil mills, to stock stores, to found banks, if he is to be separated from the white man? Where is he to buy his goods? Here the whole system breaks down; the drummer is no respecter of persons, and not only is willing to sell to a solvent Negro, but is likely to insist that the negro merchant shall not give all his orders to a colored wholesaler. Then what is to be done with the hundreds of thousands of landowners, tenants, croppers, and wage hands, who depend on advances from the Whites? There is no such thing as commercial segregation; as in other directions, when any remedy is proposed which means the cutting off of negro labor, or of the profits derived from negro custom, the South invariably draws back. On the other hand, race separation would give greater opportunities to the Negroes and reduce the contact with the lower class of the Whites, out of which comes most of the race violence in the South. It is substantially the method applied in Northern cities, though nowhere to any such degree as in the South. It is a method which, with all its hardship to Negroes of the higher class, comes nearest being a _modus vivendi_ between the races. As for white communities without Negroes, there are many such in the mountain regions, and an unsuccessful effort was made in the town of Fitzgerald, Ga., by Northern immigrants to keep the Negroes out of it, but in such places who will do the odd jobs and perform the necessary rough labor? How shall houses be built, drays be driven and dirt shoveled, if there are no Negroes? Try which way you may, there seems no method consonant with the interests of the South and the principles of humanity by which Negroes can be set apart from the white people. It was not the choice of their ancestors to change their horizon; nor were the Africans now in the United States consulted as to their neighbors; but they were born on American soil; they have shared in the toil of conquering the continent; they have their homes, their interests, and their traditions; they have never known any life except in dependence on and close relations with the Whites. However happier the South and the whole country might be were there no race question, there seems no possibility of avoiding it by taking away all race contact.