That was an epoch-making editorial in the Atlanta Negro Manhood Constitution, which closed with the statement : "It pays to help make decent, law-abiding citizens of the Negroes, instead of taking it for granted that the whites must be taxed to treat them as criminals." The occasion of the editorial was the completion of a fund of $600,000 for Y. M. C. A. work in Atlanta to be divided among the various organizations in the city, $40,000 being assigned to the Negroes to raise among themselves. In ten days they raised $57,000 and continued their efforts until the sum reached $67,000. In proportion to population the number of subscriptions received from the two races was three to one in favor of the Negro.

The Constitution thinks that this remarkable achievement should be a lesson to the Southern people. If the Negro will respond in such fashion to influences assuming his good citizenship and his manhood, why would it not be better to always approach him in that way rather than to take it for granted that he lacks initiative and has the impulses of the criminal? Some students of the Negro have emphasized his lack of race consciousness and cohesion, "indictments sweepingly dismissed by the Atlanta Campaign."

The Southern Ruralist, in commenting on this editorial, says: We have repeatedly expressed this same thought in its application to.

Southern farm conditions. We have urged the importance of better practical and technical training for Negro farmers. We have done this not in the special interest of the Negro, but in the interest of the whole South. We have insisted that not only the entire South but the whole country suffers from the ignorance and unthrift of the Negro farmer. We have urged that this great liability of ignorance and waste be changed into an asset of intelligence and productiveness. If it pays to help make decent, law-abiding citizens of the Negroes, why should it not pay to help make better farmers of the Negroes? Why not, indeed?

Seaman A.
Knapp

The death of Dr. Seaman A. Knapp in Washington on April 2 removes one of the great agricultural leaders and teachers of our country. He was primarily a teacher, and his early manhood was spent as an instructor in academic studies in a boarding school on the Hudson River. But he was also a practical farmer. His ability in these two directions fitted him admirably to become a professor of agriculture in the Iowa State Agricultural College.

The demonstration plan of teaching farming, with which his name will always be associated, was first employed by him in Iowa between 1870 and 1880, when he helped the farmers of that state to breed better cattle, and made stock-raising its pre-eminent industry. He used it again in 1886, when, in order to start the growing of rice in Louisiana, he directed the movement of hundreds of farmers from the Northwest to settle a large tract of land in the southwestern part of that state. The natives of Louisiana, being stock-raisers, told the immigrants that rice culture was impossible there; hence demonstration farms were started in every township, and through the adaptation of steam seeders, reapers, threshers, and binders, to rice, that cereal became for the first time in the history of the world a "machine product,” and land values rose in southwestern Louisiana from five to fifty dollars an acre.

Again, in 1904, when the boll-weevil threatened Louisiana and Texas, and farmers were leaving their homes by hundreds, Dr. Knapp started the first co-operative demonstration farm to show the advantage of diversified crops and the possibility of raising more cotton to the acre. So successful was the experiment that for many years the Government has made annual appropriations to the Agricultural Department, to be used under Dr. Knapp's direction, for the purpose of showing the people how to raise more and better cotton, and how to

diversify their crops and so get the better of the boll-weevil. The advantage of Dr. Knapp's method of teaching was so evident that the General Education Board made an appropriation of over $100,000 a year to be used under Dr. Knapp's direction, and the demonstration farm plan was extended throughout the South. Individuals, clubs of business men, towns, counties, and railways have contributed to enlarge the work, so that at the time of his death there were 63,622 demonstration farms in the South and 430 of his agents in the field. The schools have been interested in the movement and the superintendents of public instruction have offered prizes for the best demonstration plots. Boys' corn clubs have been started and now number 45,000 members. More recently, canning clubs for girls have been organized and are rapidly growing in popularity.

Dr. Knapp was a close student of psychology, and he realized that the average farmer cannot be reached by bulletins from Washington or from any other source. He appreciated the value of an object lesson. He realized that the teacher, in order to be effective; must have performed the work which he advises others to do. He under stood that men are most influenced by those engaged in the same kind of work living in their immediate neighborhood. The most successful farm carried on by a man of a different class, or at any considerable distance, has little effect. He showed remarkable judgment in the choice of his agents. They were first of all farmers and frequently men who had been converted from old methods by a demonstration farm.

Dr. Knapp had wonderful power as a speaker. Few visitors at Hampton have held the students as he did. He created among them a sort of agricultural revival. He was a great help to the school, visiting it frequently and always leaving behind him an enthusiasm for rural life.

Results of Industrial Education

An interesting development in the Indian industrial situation is conveyed in the recent report that the management of the Santa Fé Railroad has offered to find places in the various departments of the road for as many Indians as want positions. This is understood to apply not only to day laborers but also to boys from the schools educated in the business courses or in the trades; and the supervisor of the Indian Employment Bureau expects to enroll several hundred young Indians in the employ of this railroad.

This offer, coming as it does after two or three years' experience

with this kind of labor on the part of the railroads, affords the best possible endorsement of the Indian as a worker. It means that the Indians who have been employed heretofore have proved so satisfactory that more help of the same kind is desired, and it corroborates the statement heretofore made that wherever Indian labor has gone it has left behind an open door for more Indian employment. Recent reports on the quality and characteristics of the Indian as a workman show that employers as a whole find his services satisfactory. Indeed, the Indians have been especially commended as railroad employes, being notably calm, steady, and systematic. Last year the offer was made by two large railway systems to provide employment for returned students who had received training in the trades at school.

Through such offers as these it is probable that more and more employment can be found for hundreds of Indian young men at fair wages in the shops of the railroads. At the same time they will have the opportunity to thoroughly finish learning their trades and to become competent skilled workmen. This systematic connecting of the training of the schools with the real work of the world will give a fresh impetus to industrial education, and will serve to bridge over that critical period in a boy's life just after he leaves school. Best of all, perhaps, it will enable the boys to avoid the necessity of going back to the reservations from the schools, and there spending months in idleness under conditions which have heretofore proved so trying to the returned students.

The Negro Organization Society

The Negro Organization Society of Virginia was undertaken in response to an earnest popular demand for closer attention to the needs of the Negro race in the matter of health and education, and also as a means of carrying out in a practical way the aims and purposes of the Hampton Negro Conference. Its object is similar to that of the Virginia Cooperative Education Association among the white people to weld into one unit, for the improvement of morals, health, and education, all the organizations of the race represented in its membership, to unify all the forces for betterment in any given community.

The first meeting of the Negro Organization Society was held in Richmond, when Major Moton, Commandant of Hampton Institute, was made president, Rev. A. A. Graham of Phoebus, treasurer, and Mr. W. T. B. Williams, field agent of the Slater Board, secretary. It has already received the approval of leading white educators of the state and the endorsement of prominent workers of both races, with pledges

of hearty co-operation. A series of meetings, conducted by the president, assisted by the treasurer and secretary, has recently been held in Charlottesville, Roanoke, and Danville, to stimulate public interest in the objects of the Society. These meetings were addressed by many of the leading men of these cities, and by Mr. T. C. Walker. Great interest was shown by the people, and a strong disposition to co-operate for the general improvement of sanitary and educational conditions among the colored citizens of the Commonwealth.

Criminal

An important paper by R. R. Wright, Jr., editor The Negro of the Christian Recorder, appears in the present issue of the SOUTHERN WORKMAN. It is part of a series on tendencies downward in the economic condition of Negroes in the North, and is entitled "Negro Criminal Statistics." It follows an introductory article which appeared in March, 1910, and discussed some fundamental principles of criminal sociology, pointing out that there are serious difficulties in the way of estimating Negro criminality, and especially of making comparison between the amount of crime committed by Negroes and by other elements of the population.

The present paper shows in detail what these difficulties are; namely, scarcity of data in regard to Negro criminals, and lack of uniformity in the keeping of records in different cities. The causes of crime are discussed to some extent, the chief ones being (1) the unfavorable environment of the masses of city Negroes in the North, which is forced upon them in many cases, as Mr. Wright shows, by the economic necessity of finding employment wherever they can and of living near their work; and (2) the low standard of American city politics, bosses and political organizations being only too ready to corrupt the weakest members of the voting district and to protect them in crime as a reward for votes. The causes of juvenile crime seem to be also largely economic-the necessity of taking questionable lodgers to help eke out the rent, and the absence from home of mothers at work, leading to lack of restraint and encouraging loitering on the streets. Mr. Wright will therefore next discuss poverty as a cause of crime and follow that paper with one on the mortality resulting from both.

As a result of this study, made with all the resources at his command, the writer believes that "the Negro criminal is, as a rule, accidental and occasional, and the result more of neglect than of inherent criminal tendencies." He thinks the chief hope of cutting down the amount of crime lies in opening up larger economic opportunity for Negroes in the North. It is a matter for congratulation that