the future of the man farthest down

upon my arrival in london i found myself, at the end of my journey, once more at my point of departure. a few days later, october 9th, to be precise, i sailed from liverpool for new york. i had been less than seven weeks in europe, but it seemed to me that i had been away for a year. my head was full of strange and confused impressions and i was reminded of the words of the traveller who, after he had crossed europe from london to naples, and had visited faithfully all the museums and neglected none of the regular "sights," wrote to friends he had visited in europe a letter full of appreciation, concluding with the remark: "well, i have seen a great deal and learned a great deal, and i thank god it is all over."

it occurs to me that the readers who have followed me thus far in my narrative may find themselves at the conclusion of this book in somewhat the same situation as myself at the end of my journey. in that case it will,

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perhaps, not be out of place to take advantage of this concluding chapter to do for them as well as i am able what i tried to do for myself during my hours of leisure on the voyage home—namely, make a little clearer the relation of all that i had seen and learned to the problem of the negro and the man farthest down.

i have touched, in the course of these chapters, upon many phases of life. i have had something to say, for example, in regard to the poverty, education, socialism, and the race problems of europe, since all these different matters are connected in one way or another with the subject and purpose of my journey and this book.

in attempting to add the moral to my story, however, and state in general terms the upshot of it all, i find myself at a disadvantage. i can, perhaps, best explain what i mean by recalling the fact that i was born a slave and since i became free have been so busy with the task immediately in front of me that i have never had time to think out my experiences and formulate my ideas in general terms. in fact, almost all that i know about the problems of other races and other peoples i have learned in seeking a solution and a way out for my own people. for that reason i should have done better perhaps to leave to some one with more learning and more

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leisure than i happen to possess the task of writing about the underman in europe. in fact i would have done so if i had not believed that in making this journey i should gain some insight and, perhaps, be able to throw some new light upon the situation of my own people in america. indeed, i confess that i should never have taken the time—brief as it was—to make this long journey if i had not believed it was going to have some direct relation to the work which i have been trying to do for the people of my race in america.

in this, let me add, i was not disappointed. as a matter of fact, if there was one thing more than another, in all my european experiences, which was impressed upon my mind, it was the fact that the position of the negro in america, both in slavery and in freedom, has not been so exceptional as it has frequently seemed. while there are wide differences between the situation of the people in the lower levels of life in europe and the negro in america, there are still many points of resemblance, and the truth is that the man farthest down in europe has much in common with the man at the bottom in america.

for example, the people at the bottom in europe have been, in most cases, for the greater part of their history at least, like the negroes in america, a subject people, not slaves, but

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bondmen or serfs, at any rate a disadvantaged people.

in most cases the different under-classes in europe only gained their freedom in the course of the last century. since that time they have been engaged in an almost ceaseless struggle to obtain for themselves the political privileges that formerly belonged to the upper classes alone.

even in those places where the man at the bottom has gained political privileges resembling in most respects those of the classes at the top he finds, as the negro in america has found, that he has only made a beginning, and the real work of emancipation remains to be done. the english labourer, for example, has had political freedom for a longer period of time than is true of any other representative of this class in europe. notwithstanding this fact, as things are, he can only in rare instances buy and own the land on which he lives. the labouring people of england live, for the most part, herded together with millions of others of their class in the slums of great cities, where air and water are luxuries. they are dependent upon some other nation for their food supplies, for butter, bread, and meat. and then, as a further consequence of the way they are compelled to live, the masses of the people find themselves part of an economic arrangement or system

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which is so vast and complicated that they can neither comprehend nor control it.

the result is that the english labourer, of whose independence the world has heard so much, is, in many respects, more dependent than any other labouring class in europe. this is due not to the fact that the english labourer lacks political rights, but to the fact that he lacks economic opportunities—opportunities to buy land and opportunities to labour; to own his own home, to keep a garden and raise his own food.

the socialists have discovered that the independence of the labouring classes has been undermined as a result of the growth of factories and city life, and believe they have found a remedy.

what the socialists would actually do in england or elsewhere, provided they should manage to get into power, is difficult to say, because, as my experience in europe has taught me, there are almost as many kinds of socialists as there are kinds of people. the real old-fashioned socialists, those who still look forward to some great social catastrophe which will put an end to the present régime, believe it will then be possible to use the political power of the masses to reorganize society in a way to give every individual an economic opportunity equal to that of every other.

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taking human beings as we find them, i have never been able to see how this was going to be brought about in precisely the way outlined in the socialist programme. some individuals will be good for one thing, some for another, and there will always be, i suppose, a certain number who will not be good for anything. as they have different capacities, so they will have different opportunities. some will want to do one thing and some another, and some individuals and some people, like the jews for example, will know how to make their disadvantages their opportunities and so get the best of the rest of the world, no matter how things are arranged.

i have referred to the socialists and the revolution they propose not because i wish to oppose their doctrines, which i confess i do not wholly understand, but because it seemed to me that, as i went through europe and studied conditions, i could see the evidences of a great, silent revolution already in full progress. and this revolution to which i refer is touching and changing the lives of those who are at the bottom, particularly those in the remote farming communities, from which the lowest class of labourers in the city is constantly recruited.

let me illustrate what i mean: under the

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old system in europe—the feudal system, or whatever else it may at various times have been called—civilization began at the top. there were a few people who were free. they had all the wealth, the power, and the learning in their hands, or at their command. when anything was done it was because they wished it or because they commanded it. in order to give them this freedom and secure to them this power it was necessary that vast numbers of other people should live in ignorance, without any knowledge of, or share in, any but the petty life of the estate or the community to which they belonged. they were not permitted to move from the spot in which they were born, without the permission of their masters. it was, in their case, almost a crime to think. it was the same system, in a very large degree, as that which existed in the southern states before the war, with the exception that the serfs in europe were white, while the slaves in the southern states were black.

in europe to-day the great problem to which statesmen are giving their thought and attention is not how to hold the masses of the people down but how to lift them up; to make them more efficient in their labour and give them a more intelligent share and interest in the life of the community and state of which they are

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a part. everywhere in europe the idea is gaining ground and influence that the work of civilization must begin at the bottom instead of at the top.

the great medium for bringing about these changes is the school. in every part of europe which i visited i was impressed with the multitude of schools of various kinds which are springing up to meet the new demand. the movement began earlier and has gone farther in denmark than it has elsewhere, and the remarkable development of danish country life has been the result. what has been accomplished in denmark, through the medium of the country high schools, and in germany, through the universities and technical training schools, is being industriously imitated elsewhere.

in england i found that people were saying that the reason why german manufactures had been able to compete so successfully with the english products was because germany had the advantage of better schools. in germany i found that the german army, organized in the first instance for the national defence, is now looked upon as a great national school, in which the masses of the people get an education and discipline which, it is claimed, are gradually raising the industrial efficiency of the nation.

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there, as elsewhere, education is seeking to reach and touch every class and every individual of every class in the community. the deaf, the blind, the defectives of every description are now beginning to receive industrial education fitting them for trades in which they will be more useful to the community and more independent than it was possible for them to be when no attempt was made to fit them for any place in the life of the community.

the effect of this movement, or revolution, as i have called it, is not to "tear down and level up" in order to bring about an artificial equality, but to give every individual a chance "to make good," to determine for himself his place and position in the community by the character and quality of the service he is able to perform.

one effect of this change in point of view which i have described is that to-day there is hardly any one thing in which the people of europe are more concerned than in the progress and future of the man farthest down.

in all that i have written in the preceding chapters i have sought to emphasize, in the main, two things: first, that behind all the movements which have affected the masses of the people, socialism or nationalism, emigration, the movements for the reorganization of city

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and country life, there has always been the underman, groping his way upward, struggling to rise; second, that the effect of all that has been done to lift the man at the bottom, or to encourage him to lift himself, has been to raise the level of every man above him.

if it is true, as i have so often said, that one man cannot hold another down in the ditch without staying down in the ditch with him, it is just as true that, in helping the man who is down to rise, the man who is up is freeing himself from a burden that would else drag him down. it is because the world seems to realize this fact more and more that, beyond and above all local and temporary difficulties, the future of the man farthest down looks bright.

and now at the conclusion of my search for the man farthest down in europe let me confess that i did not succeed in finding him. i did not succeed in reaching any place in europe where conditions were so bad that i did not hear of other places, which friends advised me to visit, where conditions were a great deal worse. my own experience was, in fact, very much like that of a certain gentleman who came south some years ago to study the condition of the negro people. he had heard that in many parts of the south the negro was gradually sinking back into something like

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african savagery, and he was particularly desirous of finding a well-defined example of this relapse into barbarism. he started out with high hopes and a very considerable fund of information as to what he might expect to find and as to the places where he might hope to find it. everywhere he went in his search, however, he found that he had arrived a few years too late. he found at every place he visited people who were glad to tell him the worst there was to be known about the coloured people; some were even kind enough to show what they thought was about the worst there was to be found among the negroes in their particular part of the country. still he was disappointed because he never found anything that approached the conditions he was looking for, and usually he was compelled to be contented with the statement, made to him by each one of his guides in turn, which ran something like this: "conditions were not near as bad as they had been. a few years ago, if he had happened to have come that way, he would have been able to see things, and so forth; but now conditions were improving. however, if he wanted to see actual barbarism he should visit"—and then they usually named some distant part of the country with which he had not yet become acquainted.

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in this way this gentleman, who was hunting the worst that was to be seen among the negroes, as i was hunting the worst that was to be seen among the people of europe, travelled all over the southern states, going from one dark corner to another, but never finding things as bad as they were advertised. instead of that, backward as the people were in many of the remote parts of the country, he found, just as i did in europe, that everywhere the people were making progress. in some places they were advancing more slowly than they were in others, but everywhere there was, on the whole, progress rather than decline. the result in his case was the same as it had been in mine, the farther he went and the more he saw of the worst there was to see, the more hopeful he became of the people as a whole.

i saw much that was primitive and much that was positively evil in the conditions in europe, but nowhere did i find things as bad as they were described to me by persons who knew them as they were some years before. and i found almost no part of the country in which substantial progress had not been made; no place, in short, where the masses of the people were without hope.

it will, perhaps, seem curious to many persons

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that, after i had gone to europe for the express purpose of making the acquaintance of the people at the bottom, and of seeing, as far as i was able, the worst in european life, i should have returned with a hopeful rather than a pessimistic view of what i saw.

the fact is, however, that the farther i travelled in europe, and the more i entered into the life of the people at the bottom, the more i found myself looking at things from the point of view of the people who are looking up, rather than from that of the people who are at the top looking down, and, strange as it may seem, it is still true that the world looks, on the whole, more interesting, more hopeful, and more filled with god's providence, when you are at the bottom looking up than when you are at the top looking down.

to the man in the tower the world below him is likely to look very small. men look like ants and all the bustle and stir of their hurrying lives seems pitifully confused and aimless. but the man in the street who is looking and striving upward is in a different situation. however poor his present plight, the thing he aims at and is striving toward stands out clear and distinct above him, inspiring him with hope and ambition in his struggle upward. for the man who is down there is always something to hope for, always something to be

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gained. the man who is down, looking up, may catch a glimpse now and then of heaven, but the man who is so situated that he can only look down is pretty likely to see another and quite different place.