1 The worst tenement abominations of New York do not have above twenty-two persons for every ten rooms.
2 Child-labor is to be found here in some of its worst phases, as fostering ignorance and stunting physical development.
3 It thus happens that in nearly every Southern town and city, both whites and blacks see commonly the worst of each other.
4 Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave's ethical growth.
5 Left by the best elements of the South with little protection or oversight, he has been made in law and custom the victim of the worst and most unscrupulous men in each community.
6 The agents that the Bureau could command varied all the way from unselfish philanthropists to narrow-minded busybodies and thieves; and even though it be true that the average was far better than the worst, it was the occasional fly that helped spoil the ointment.
7 On the other hand, the settled belief of the mass of the Negroes that the Southern white people do not have the black man's best interests at heart has been intensified in later years by this continual daily contact of the better class of blacks with the worst representatives of the white race.
8 But among the black laborers all this is aggravated, first, by a race prejudice which varies from a doubt and distrust among the best element of whites to a frenzied hatred among the worst; and, secondly, it is aggravated, as I have said before, by the wretched economic heritage of the freedmen from slavery.
9 Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation's heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this people, and they have found peace only in the altars of the God of Right.