§ 721]

AND "RACE INTEGRITY"

599

clause," expressly declaring that the restrictions shall not exclude any one who could vote prior to January 1, 1861, or who is the son or grandson of such voter. An extreme provision of this sort in Oklahoma has just been declared unconstitutional by the Federal Courts (March, 1916).

721. On the side of civil equality, as we have noted, the Fourteenth Amendment is even more a dead letter. Just at the close of Reconstruction (in 1875), Congress made a final attempt to secure for Negroes the same accommodations as for Whites in hotels, railways, and theaters. In 1883, however, the Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional when in conflict with State authority (§ 710). Accordingly, the two races in the South live without social mingling.

The special cry of the South is "race integrity." Intermarriage, it is insisted, shall not be permitted. Therefore there must be no social intercourse on terms of equality. Many leaders of the Negro race, too, like the late Booker Washington of Tuskegee and his successor, Charles Moten, desire social segregation for the present, but with a difference. To the White, Negro segregation means Negro inferiority. To these Negro leaders separate cars and separate schools for their people mean a better chance for the Negro to "find himself"; but they insist that the "Jim Crow car" shall be cared for and equipped as well as the car for Whites who pay the same rates, and that Negro schools shall receive their proportion of State funds and attention. As yet, this goal remains far distant.

Southern States authorize cities to shut out Negro homes from residential districts which they choose to reserve for Whites. The Supreme Court has just declared these laws void (November, 1917) - but on the ground that the (White) owner must not be deprived by the State of his right to sell his property in such districts in any way he thinks most profitable. It does not yet appear that the decision seriously threatens "Jim-Crowism.”

PART XII

A BUSINESS AGE: 1876-1916

722. The forty years between Reconstruction and the World War belong to "contemporary history." Leading actors are still living; and causes and motives in many cases are not

yet surely known.

The two great phases are (1) an enormous economic and industrial growth, and (2) the rising struggle between the people on the one side, and great wealth, fortified by special privilege, on the other.

§ 723]

ADMINISTRATIONS, 1877-1917

601

Wealth is supported by vast numbers of a middle class who feel dependent upon it. The labor unions, small as their enrollment is in comparison with the total number of workers, hold the first trench on the other side, because of their admirable organization. Both sides, on the whole, are honest; but each believes the other dishonest and unpatriotic. Neither can get the other's viewpoint; and each has been guilty of blunders and of sins. Privilege believes that the welfare of the country rests on business prosperity, and that the government ought to be an adjunct of business. Labor regards this attitude as due merely to personal greed, and, on its side, wishes government to concern itself directly with promoting the welfare of men and The student of history may hope that this class war is only a necessary stage in progress toward a broader social unity.

women.

CHAPTER LXI

NATIONAL GROWTH

724. BETWEEN 1860 and 1880, population rose from 31 millions to 50 millions one fourth the gain coming from immigration and wealth multiplied two and a half times. Since 1880, wealth has grown even more rapidly, but population more slowly. In 1890 the United States had 63 millions of people, and in 1920, 106 millions (not counting the eight millions in the new possessions acquired from Spain). Recently, the Middle West, so long the scene of most rapid increase, has become nearly stationary; while the manufacturing East and the far West have had the greatest growth.

In 1860 cities contained one sixth the population; in 1880, one fourth; in 1910, 46.3 per cent; in 1920, 51.8 per cent.1 Less than one third the people now live on farms, and the proportion decreases steadily.

725. Immigration was checked by the Civil War. In 1883, however, it brought us more than 700,000 people, and in 1905, more than a million. Until 1890, immigration remained mainly like that before the Civil War — with some increase in the Scandinavian settlers in the Northwest. Since that year, more and more, the immigrants have come from Southern and Eastern Europe, - Italians, Russian-Jews, Bohemians, Poles, Hungarians. A large part of these Southern European immigrants are illiterate and unskilled, with a "standard of liv ing" lower than that of American workingmen. In 1880 they made only one twentieth of the immigrants; in 1900 they made one fourth; and the proportion is constantly increasing. "urban,"

1 But the census of 1910 began to class places of 2500 people as instead of requiring 6000 for that class as before.