same offense than will be given a white offender. That is why I have
been so frequently compelled to cut down the sentence of Negroes." The
entire history of the chain-gang system corroborates these
statements--a system that helps to increase the reported number of
criminals; and although race riots, lynchings and massacres may seem
to indicate the opposite to the uninitiated, the Negro is not a
lawless element of society. In the United States a natural
restlessness has possessed him since emancipation, and it requires
time to work out and adjust conditions under which he can develop
normally from the standpoint of morality as well as from other points
of view. Meanwhile, the prime necessity to raise the moral status is
the development and upbuilding of that which in its highest
embodiment, was denied him in the days of bondage--the home. We need
homes, homes, homes, where intelligence and morality rule. And what
was accomplished in this line in the nineteenth century? From owning
comparatively few homes forty years ago, the Negro advanced before the
close of the century to the position of occupying one million five
hundred thousand farms and homes; and of owning two hundred and
seventy-five thousand of these; many of them, as shown by views,
forming a part of the exhibit at the Paris Exposition and elsewhere,
compare favorably with the homes of any people.

As to the intelligence and morality that constitute the environment of
the great mass of these homes owned by Negroes, the statistics of
education and of crime show that Negro criminals do not, as a rule,
come from the refined and educated classes, but from the most
illiterate, the stupid, and the besotted element; from the class that
has not been reached by the moral side of education, if at all. Says
the compiler of the eleventh census: "Of juvenile criminals the
smallest ratio is found among Negroes." This speaks well for the