Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/88

 74 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

newspapers gave wide circulation to this advice, for the planters wanted to keep the negro labor, and soon the exodus was checked. After this. Singleton moderated his activity as an organizer of immigration to the North and West. The scattering of circu- lars was stopped and he now always advised that none come north unless with enough money to last one year.^^

In 1880 we hear Singleton and others complaining that certain funds raised by the relief societies for the needy "exodusters" had been turned over to a negro school. This, they protested, was not right; the money should be divided among those for whom it was raised — the "exodusters" — and not given to a school. Singleton cared little for schools and disliked educated negroes, for, as a matter of fact, the educated blacks then best known to the race had not been good examples of the benefits of education.

Singleton was called before the exodus committee of the U. S. Senate in 1880 and in his testimony explained at length his plans and methods. After describing the "real estate" companies, his Kansas colonies, and his method of advertising, he spoke of the causes of the movement which, in his opinion, were mainly social and economic : the negro was helpless in the South, which was "all out of joint;" the only way "to bring the South to her senses" was for the negroes to leave in large numbers, and thus force a reorganization of industry and a bettering of the condition of the laborers who remained in the South. He scored a point on the Democratic majority of the committee when he pointed out the fact that they had selected their witnesses from a class of negroes who were prosperous and who knew little of the conditions sur- rounding the average black. As to himself, he declared "the blood of a white man runs through my veins" — hence he could understand both races. "I am the father of the exodus .... the whole cause of the Kansas migration," he boasted and looked upon the attempt of the Democrats to place responsibility for the movement upon Kansas Republicans as a scheme to defraud him of due credit.^*

" Scrapbook, p. 17.

"Senate Report No. 693, Pt 3, p. 379, 46th Congress, 2d session.