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CHAPTER II.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS.

OST of these six millions of Africans are very poor. Fifteen years ago they had nothing but their trained muscle and their hope. Of multitudes of them this ought to be added—their faith in God.

During these fifteen years, which many of them have spent in trying to find their reckoning on a wide and unknown sea, most of them have had a sharp struggle for existence. A very few have shown good capacity for business and have accumulated handsome properties. A larger number have built themselves humble houses that are their own, and a few have got some foot-hold in the land, and are the owners of small farms. Most of them depend for subsistence solely on their labor. A very great majority of the whole number are in the rural districts at work as hired laborers, or as tenants, upon contracts renewable at the beginning of each year.

The fact that the great body of them are on the plantations and farms gives them one marked advantage over certain laboring classes of some States and countries—they are not subject to "lock-outs,"

nor are they liable to be thrown out of emplo ment by "suspensions" or by "panics;" for ag culture does not suspend. They are beginning appear upon the tax books as land owners. Thu in Georgia, according to the "Report of the Com troller-general" for 1880, the colored people own "improved lands," 586,664 acres. The white pe ple own 29,823,581 acres of "improved lands That is, of the farming lands in Georgia the negro own a little less than one acre in every fifty. A things considered, this is a very creditable showin for them. It may be doubted whether the averag is quite so high in other Southern States.

With few exceptions the best lands are owne by the white people. It is easy to explain thi First, the whites have, as a rule, been reluctant t sell their lands to anybody. They cling to th land; it is an instinct. They have been doubly re luctant to sell lands to negroes; not because they have felt unkindly to them, but chiefly because they have been afraid that negro land owners would frighten immigrants from the South. Whether this fear is well grounded may be doubted. . Some, it may be, have not wished to see the negroes land owners, from a vague prejudice, or a vaguer fear. This, I think, is clear; the negroes who own land in Georgia are more satisfactory as citizens and neighbors than those who do not. This is undoubtedly true of my negro neighbors.

They are not Few of them

As a class the negroes in the South are not systematic in their plans and labors. thrifty, or frugal, or economical. know how to "lay by for a rainy day." When they were slaves they never thought of such things; when sick, or old, or worn out, they were taken care of better than any class of superannuated laborers in the world. The exceptions to this statement were few. No railroad, or mining company, or great manufactory, can match the care the "old masters took of their disabled or worn-out servants. And thousands of the old servants still look to their former masters for help, and receive it. The old customs made it unnecessary for the negro to provide for sickness or old age. Very naturally, therefore, the habit of forecasting has not been largely acquired among them. They spend their money freely while it lasts, much as children do. Instance, a colored man, who lives near me and who has no income but his wages as a common laborer, recently gave seven dollars for a flashily bound family Bible, being overcome by the arrangement at the back of it for receiving the family photographs.

Their weaknesses are perhaps partly in their blood; they may well be more in their antecedents. (Some of these "antecedents," it may be remarked, antedate their coming to America.) But, poor as they all are, and thriftless as most of them are, they are improving in their condition. The tax books show