THE NEGRO ARTISAN.
The Negro Artisan : a Social Study. (Atlanta University Press, Georgia.)—This pamphlet of some hundred and ninety pages substantially gives the proceedings of the seventh Atlanta Con-, ference, the statistics which assisted its deliberations, and the general conclusions drawn. The questions raised affect in the first place the American people; but they are deeply interesting to all students of sociology. The most critical of them concerns the attitude of white to coloured labour. It seems that, on the whole, the tendency to exclude is growing in strength. The more the negro artisan advances in fitness, the more determined the resolution, in some directions at least, to shut him out from a free career. Labour Unions which began with the broadest state- ments of equal rights now permit trade societies which put restrictions on colour to be affiliated to them. The figures given of the numbers of the various Unions are highly significant. These figures are given for three classes. There are Unions with "a considerable negro membership." But what does "consider- able " mean ? Not, it would appear, very much. In 1900 there were 22,569 negro members ; this was a great increase on the 3,523 of 1890, but it was a very small percentage of the whole 407,343. Unions with "few negro members" show, perhaps, 1,000 out of 191,481; and then there are 249,152 members of Unions which " have no coloured members." The whole works out at about one in thirty-six.
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