Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/865

 REVIEWS 851

The wholesale charges against the women of the race are on the face of them false, as everyone who has had wide contact with negroes must know. (See article "Negro Problem," AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, March, 1901; also editorial, Independent, March 14, 1901, on "Negro Women," p. 633.)

The charge that every negro preacher is a plagiarist is another statement due to his ignorance of facts. Had he read Careers of College-Bred Negroes, Atlanta University Conference, 1900, his whole- sale charges against the educated negro would have been less cc nfi- dently made. As to the literary creations of negroes, he says there have been none, when only December i, 1900, the literary editor of the Outlook (perhaps a better judge than Mr. Thomas) pronounced Charles Chestnut's The House behind the Cedars one of the best books of the year 1900. Mr. Chestnut is a negro. And William Dean Howells said that Paul Lawrence Dunbar's Lyrics of Lowly Life was a distinct contribution to American literature. (See preface, Lyrics of Lowly Life.}

The discussion is also "practical," *'. <?., he is to tell "what the negro may become," and, we must presume, some plan for betterment. But he has no definite ideal or plan. He does not seem to know of any plans for amelioration that have been tried, though there have been many. (See "Atlanta University Conference Studies," No. 3, Efforts for Betterment, and No. 4, Negro in Business.} He does, however, say in a few lines that the methods of literary instruction and industrial training are "senseless fads" (p. 276), but he does not show wherein they are senseless.

His general theory for betterment is "supervision." The govern- ment ought to supervise education, and grant land to negroes. In religion and morals the negro denominations should disintegrate and come under the united supervision of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and North. The negro family should be supervised by the best white women of the South and North.

All of these schemes are very imaginative, some ridiculous (see pp. 73, 80-87, 216-35, ^68, 169). They are chiefly notable in that they deprive the negro of any share whatever in his own uplift. His ignorance of methods and ends is again clearly shown in his plan for dealing with prisoners. For rape he does "not object to killing" (p. 224). Ten pages farther on he proposes an "heroic method" of emasculation, which he describes in horrible details. For men who have sentences, not for life, but over five years, he gives this suggestion: " They should be set to work on public highways, and it is conceivable that an elaborate system of road-making might be undertaken that