Note 49 — PART II THE PROBLEM FACED

Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, in the third chapter of “The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem,” takes a pessimistic view, arguing that the apparent progress of the coloured population is “confined to the upper fraction of the race,” while “the other nine-tenths, far from advancing in any way, have either stood stagnant, or have retrograded.” His argument leaves me unconvinced; and I think he gives too much weight to the evidence of Mr. William Hannibal Thomas, author of “The American Negro,” whose invectives against his own race are too virulent to be accepted without the utmost caution.