The fact that a man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to personify the place, it would be in the likeness of a man I know—a big, powerful fellow with an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition, and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than forty years of age. Like Birmingham, he has built up a large business of his own. And, like Birmingham, he is a little bit naÏve in his pride of success. His life is divided between his office and his home, and it would be difficult to say for which his devotion is the greater. He talks business with his wife at breakfast and dinner, and on their Sunday walks. He brings his papers home at night and goes over them with her, for, though her specialty is bringing up the children, she is deeply interested in his business and often makes suggestions which he follows. This causes him to admire her intensely, which he would not necessarily do were she merely a good wife and mother.

He has no hobbies or pastimes. True, he plays golf, but with him golf is not a diversion. He plays because he finds the exercise increases his efficiency ("efficiency" is perhaps his favorite word), and because many of his commercial associates are golfers, and he can talk business with them on the links.

His house is pleasant and stands upon a good-sized city lot. It is filled with very shiny mahogany furniture and strong-colored portiÈres and sofa cushions. It is rather more of a house than he requires, for his tastes are simple, but he has a feeling that he ought to have a large house, for the same reason that he and his wife ought to dress expensively—that is, out of respect, as it were, to his business.

One of his chief treasures is an automatic piano, upon which he rolls off selections from Wagner's operas. He likes the music of the great German because, as he has often told me, it stirs his imagination, thereby helping him to solve business problems and make business plans.

The thing he most abhors is general conversation, and he is never so amusing—so pathetically and unconsciously amusing—as when trying to take part in general conversation and at the same time to conceal the writhings of his tortured spirit. There is but one thing which will drive him to attempt the feat, and that is the necessity of making himself agreeable to some man, or the wife of some man, from whom he wishes to get business.

The census of 1910 gave Birmingham a population of 132,000, and it is estimated that since that time the population has increased by 50,000. Birmingham not only knows that it is growing, but believes in trying to make ready in advance for future growth. It gives one the impression that it is rather ahead of its housing problems than behind them. Its area, for instance, is about as great as that of Boston or Cleveland, and its hotels may be compared with the hotels of those cities. If it has not so many clubs as Atlanta, it has, at least, all the clubs it needs; and if it has not so many skyscrapers as New York, it has several which would fit nicely into the Wall Street district. Moreover, the tall buildings of Birmingham lose nothing in height by contrast with the older buildings, three or four stories high, which surround them, giving the business district something of that look which hangs about a boy who has outgrown his clothing. Nor are the vehicles and street crowds, altogether in consonance, as yet, with the fine office buildings of the city, for many of the motors standing at the curb have about them that gray, rural look which comes of much mud and infrequent washing, and the idlers who lean against the rich faÇades of granite and marble are entirely out of the picture, for they look precisely like the idlers who lean against the wooden posts of country railroad station platforms.

Such curious contrasts as these may be noted everywhere. For instance, Birmingham has been so busy paving the streets that it seems quite to have forgotten to put up street signs. Also, not far from the majestic Tutwiler Hotel, and the imposing apartment building called the Ridgely, the front of which occupies a full block, is a park so ill kept that it would be a disgrace to the city but for the obvious fact that the city is growing and wide-awake, and will, of course, attend to the park when it can find the time. Here are, I believe, the only public monuments Birmingham contains. One is a Confederate monument in the form of an obelisk, and the other two are statues erected in memory of Mary A. Cahalan, for many years principal of the Powell School, and of William Elias B. Davis, a distinguished surgeon. Workers in these fields are too seldom honored in this way, and the spirit which prompted the erection of these monuments is particularly creditable; sad to say, however, both effigies are wretchedly placed and are in themselves exceedingly poor things. Art is something, indeed, about which Birmingham has much to learn. So far as I could discover, no such thing as an art museum has been contemplated. But here again the critic should remember that, whereas art is old, Birmingham is young. She is as yet in the stage of development at which cities think not of art museums, but of municipal auditoriums; and with the latter subject, at least, she is now concerning herself.

Even in the city's political life contrasts are not wanting, for though the town is Republican in sentiment, it proves itself southern by voting the Democratic ticket, and it is interesting to note further that the commission by which it is governed had as one of its five members, when we were there, a Socialist.

Another curious and individual touch is contributed by the soda-fountain lunch rooms which abound in the city, and which, I judge, arrived with the disappearance of barroom lunch counters. In connection with many of the downtown soda fountains there are cooking arrangements, and business lunches are served.

The roads leading out of the city in various directions have many dangerous grade crossings, and accidents must be of common occurrence. At all events, I have never known a city in which cemeteries and undertaking establishments were so widely advertised. In the street cars, for instance, I observed the cheerful placards of one Wallace Johns, undertaker, who promises "all the attention you would expect from a friend," and I was informed that Mr. Johns possesses business cards (for restricted use only) bearing the gay legend: "I'll get you yet!"

As to schools the city is well off. Dr. J.H. Phillips, superintendent of public schools, has occupied his post probably as long as any school superintendent in the country. He organized the city school system in 1883, beginning with seven teachers, as against 750 now employed. The colored schools are reported to be better than in most southern cities.

Of the general status of the negro in Birmingham I cannot speak with authority. As in Atlanta, negroes are sometimes required to use separate elevators in office buildings, and, as everywhere south of Washington, the Birmingham street cars give one end to whites and the other to negroes. But whereas negroes use the back of the car in Atlanta, they use the front in Birmingham. It was attempted, at one time, to reverse this order, for reasons having to do with draft and ventilation, but the people of Birmingham had become accustomed to the existing arrangement and objected to the change. "After all," one gentleman said to me, in speaking of this matter, "it is not important which end of the car is given to the nigger. The main point is that he must sit where he is told."

The means by which the negro vote is eliminated in various Southern States are generally similar, though Alabama has, perhaps, been more thorough in the matter than some other States. The importance of this issue to the southern white man is very great, for if all negroes were allowed to vote the control of certain States would be in negro hands. To the Southerner such an idea is intolerable, and it is my confident belief that if the State of Alabama were resettled by men from Massachusetts, and the same problems were presented to those men, they would be just as quick as the white Alabamans of to-day to find means to suppress the negro vote. With all my heart I wish that such an exchange of citizens might temporarily be effected, for when the immigrants from Massachusetts moved back to their native New England, after an experience of the black belt, they would take with them an understanding of certain aspects of the negro problem which they have never understood; an understanding which, had they possessed it sixty or seventy years ago, might have brought about the freeing of slaves by government purchase—a course which Lincoln advocated and which would probably have prevented the Civil War, and thereby saved millions upon millions of money, to say nothing of countless lives. Had they even understood the problems of the South at the end of the Civil War, the horrors of Reconstruction might have been avoided, and I cannot too often reiterate that, but for Reconstruction we should not be perplexed, to-day, by the unhappy, soggy mass of political inertia known as the Solid South.

I asked a former State official how the negro vote had been eliminated in Alabama. "At first," he said, "we used to kill them to keep them from voting; when we got sick of doing that we began to steal their ballots; and when stealing their ballots got to troubling our consciences we decided to handle the matter legally, fixing it so they couldn't vote."

I inquired as to details. He explained.

It seems that in 1901 a constitutional convention was held, at which it was enacted that, in order to be eligible for life to vote, citizens must register during the next two years. There were, however, certain qualifications prescribed for registration. A man must be of good character, and must have fought in a war, or be the descendant of a person who had fought. This enactment, known as the "grandfather clause," went far toward the elimination of the negro. As an additional safeguard, however, an educational clause was added, but the educational requirement did not become effective at once, as that would have made illiterate whites ineligible as voters. Not until the latter were safely registered under the "grandfather clause," was the educational clause applied, and as, under this clause, the would-be voter must read and write to the satisfaction of his examiner, the negro's chance to get suffrage was still more reduced.

The United States Supreme Court has, I believe, held that the educational clause does not constitute race discrimination.

As though the above measures were not sufficient, it is further required that, in order to vote at November elections in Alabama, voters must pay a small voluntary poll tax. This tax, however, must be paid each year before February first—that is, about nine months before elections actually take place. The negro has never been distinguished for his foresightedness with a dollar, and, to make matters harder for him, this tax is cumulative from the year 1901, so that a man who wishes to begin to vote this year, and can qualify in other respects, must pay a tax amounting to nearly twenty dollars.

These measures give Alabama, as my informant put it, a "very exclusive electorate." With a population of approximately two millions, the greatest number of votes ever cast by the State was 125,000. Of this number, 531 votes were those of negroes, "representing" a colored population of 840,000!

The gentleman who explained these matters also told me a story illustrative of the old-time Southerner's attitude toward the negro in politics.

During Reconstruction, when Alabama's Legislature was about one-third white and two-thirds negro, a fine old gentleman who had been a slaveholder and was an experienced parliamentarian, was attempting to preside over the Legislature. In this he experienced much difficulty, his greatest bÊte noir being a negro member, full of oratory, who continually interrupted other speakers.

Realizing that this was a part of the new order of things, the presiding officer tried not to allow his irritation to get the better of him, and to silence the objectionable man in parliamentary fashion. "The member will kindly come to order!" he repeated over and over, rapping with his gavel. "The member will kindly come to order!"

After this had gone on for some time without effect, the old gentleman's patience became exhausted. He laid down his gavel, arose to his feet, glared at the irrepressible member, and, shaking his finger savagely, shouted: "Sit down, you blankety-blank black blankety-blank!"

Whereupon the negro dropped instantly to his seat and was no more heard from.