The real climax of labor trouble as of mob violence within the period came in Georgia and in Atlanta, a city that now assumed outstanding importance as a battleground of the problems of the New South.  In April, 1909, it happened that ten white workers on the Georgia Railroad who had been placed on the “extra list” were replaced by Negroes at lower wages.  Against this there was violent protest all along the route.  A little more than a month later the white Firemen’s Union started a strike that was intended to be the beginning of an effort to drive all Negro firemen from Southern roads, and it was soon apparent that the real contest was one occasioned by the progress in the South of organized labor on the one hand and the progress of the Negro in efficiency on the other.  The essential motives that entered into the struggle were in fact the same as those that characterized the trouble in New Orleans in 1895.  Said E.A.  Ball, second vice-president of the Firemen’s Union, in an address to the public:  “It will be up to you to determine whether the white firemen now employed on the Georgia Railroad shall be accorded rights and privileges over the Negro, or whether he shall be placed on the same equality with the Negro.  Also, it will be for you to determine whether or not white firemen, supporting families in and around Atlanta on a pay of $1.75 a day, shall be compelled to vacate their positions in Atlanta joint terminals for Negroes, who are willing to do the same work for $1.25.”  Some papers, like the Augusta Herald, said that it was a mistaken policy to give preference to Negroes when white men would ultimately have to be put in charge of trains and engines; but others, like the Baltimore News, said, “If the Negro can be driven from one skilled employment, he can be driven from another; but a country that tries to do it is flying in the face of every economic law, and must feel the evil effects of its policy if it could be carried out.”  At any rate feeling ran very high; for a whole week about June I there were very few trains between Atlanta and Augusta, and there were some acts of violence; but in the face of the capital at stake and the fundamental issues involved it was simply impossible for the railroad to give way.  The matter was at length referred to a board of arbitration which decided that the Georgia Railroad was still to employ Negroes whenever they were found qualified and that they were to receive the same wages as white workers.  Some thought that this decision would ultimately tell against the Negro, but such was not the immediate effect at least, and to all intents and purposes the white firemen had lost in the strike.  The whole matter was in fact fundamentally one of the most pathetic that we have had to record.  Humble white workers, desirous of improving the economic condition of themselves and their families, instead of assuming a statesmanlike and truly patriotic attitude toward their problem, turned aside into the wilderness of racial hatred and were lost.