The terrible thing about all the suggestions of violence and hatred as a remedy is that they react upon the white race, which has most to lose in property and in character. "There are certain things," said Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, in a public proclamation, "that must be done for the control of the negro which need not be done for the government of the white man. In spite of the provisions of the federal constitution the men who are called upon to deal with this great problem must do that which is necessary to be done, even though it may have the appearance at times of going somewhat without the law.... If the people of the respective communities of this state will only come together and resolve to convert every negro into a laborer and self-supporter, even though it be necessary to make him a laborer upon the county's or the state's property, they will serve their communities and their state well." No idea is more futile than that you can drive people with whips into the Kingdom of Heaven; that you can teach an inferior race to observe laws by yourself breaking them; that you can put one half the community outside the law, while claiming American liberty for the other half. Though the negro race has little to urge in public, it feels the degradation and the hurt. Violence solves no problems; it does not even postpone the evil day. The race problem must be solved by applying to Negroes the same kind of law and justice that the experience of the Anglo-Saxon has found necessary for its own protection. CHAPTER XXVI MATERIAL AND POLITICAL REMEDIES The methods of dealing with the race question discussed in the last chapter all go back to the idea that the Negro can be improved only by some process distasteful to him. Race separation he dislikes, expatriation he shudders at, and violence brings on him more evils than it removes, to say nothing of the effect on the Whites. The world has tried many experiments of civilizing people by the police, and they are all failures, from the Russian Empire to the West Side of New York, especially since both the Cossacks and the metropolitan police have faults of their own. In the South and in Russia alike there is doubtless a feeling that the people at the bottom of the scale are things below the common standard, that force is necessary because they will not listen to reason. None of the forcible remedies meets the most obvious difficulty in the South--that the present condition of the lower race is not a foundation for great wealth and high prosperity. If the Negro has reached his pitch, if he is to remain at his present average of morals and industry and productivity, the South may well be in despair, for it is far below that of the low Southern White, and farther below that of the Northwestern farmer. The condition of the black is a menace to society--if it must stay at the present level.