That evening, Clem had a few other bombs:

If the whites in such portions of the South as have seventy or eighty per cent. of colored population are disturbed by being so outnumbered, there is one thing they might do besides rig all law and government in order to keep control. They might take the same privilege they have often and generously granted to discontented Negroes, and move away.

With mechanical cotton-pickers and rice-cultivators, four or five million Negro farmhands will probably move to the North in the next fifteen years, and the righteous citizens of the North will have a chance to see whether they constitute a White Problem.

Whenever Negroes break loose and viciously start fighting white merchants and policemen, their viciousness is in exact ratio to the viciousness with which they have been treated. This is an ancient rule from the biology of revolutions.

Prejudice is the most precious birthright of the ignorant, and if the seven wisest men in the world, in person and sober, were for seven straight hours to argue that a Negro like Ash Davis is as admirable a voter and dinner-companion as the average white bootlegger, any properly reared Southerner, particularly if a woman, would at the end only smile politely and answer, “You boys don’t understand the Nigras like I do, and how would you like to have Nigras marry your seven daughters?”

So Clem laughed jovially.

* * * * *

Neil had to leave at midnight, which is merely tuning-up time in a race-discussion. When he came out of the Woolcapes’ little house, he found Wilbur Feathering strolling by, unabashed.

Wilbur said genially, “How are you, Kingsblood? Have a good time tonight? I see you’re like me; you enjoy coming down here and studying the downtrodden blacks.”

It was from Feathering, then, that Rod Aldwick had his information about the “agitators”?

Neil grunted, and left him.

Next morning, in the bank, he saw Mr. Feathering talking to S. Ashiel Denver. Afterward, Mr. Denver summoned him.

“Neil, I want you to do your best to please Mr. Prutt. He’s a very fine man, and the most correct moral code. He told me how, when he was a boy in Maine, he once had no penny to put in the Sunday-school collection, and as soon as he got one, by raking a lawn, he tramped five miles to give it to the Sunday-school superintendent, a shoe-dealer, who was so moved by the little fellow’s piety that he gave him a pair of rubber boots, only slightly shopworn! And of course Mr. Prutt’s fidelity to those of us who are his fellow-servants in the bank is unimpeachable.”

“What’s the trouble, S.A.?”

“Well, there have been complaints from certain of our substantial depositors about our employing a non-Caucasian. But you know us, Neil. Mr. Prutt and I will do our best for you. But.”