and of course any such change of front on the part of white workmen would menace some of the foundations of racial strife in the South and indeed in the country at large.  Just how effective the new decision was to be in actual practice remained to be seen, especially as the whole labor movement was thrown on the defensive by the end of 1920.  However, special interest attached to the events in Bogalusa, La., in November, 1919.  Here were the headquarters of the Great Southern Lumber Company, whose sawmill in the place was said to be the largest in the world.  For some time it had made use of unorganized Negro labor as against the white labor unions.  The forces of labor, however, began to organize the Negroes in the employ of the Company, which held political as well as capitalistic control in the community.  The Company then began to have Negroes arrested on charges of vagrancy, taking them before the city court and having them fined and turned over to the Company to work out the fines under the guard of gunmen.  In the troubles that came to a head on November 22, three white men were shot and killed, one of them being the district president of the American Federation of Labor, who was helping to give protection to a colored organizer.  The full significance of this incident remained also to be seen; but it is quite possible that in the final history of the Negro problem the skirmish at Bogalusa will mark the beginning of the end of the exploiting of Negro labor and the first recognition of the identity of interest between white and black workmen in the South.

3. The Great War

Just on the eve of America’s entrance into the war in Europe occurred an incident that from the standpoint of the Negro at least must finally appear simply as the prelude to the great contest to come.  Once more, at an unexpected moment, ten years after Brownsville, the loyalty and heroism of the Negro soldier impressed the American people.  The expedition of the American forces into Mexico in 1916, with the political events attending this, is a long story.  The outstanding incident, however, was that in which two troops of the Tenth Cavalry engaged.  About eighty men had been sent a long distance from the main line of the American army, their errand being supposedly the pursuit of a deserter.  At or near the town of Carrizal the Americans seem to have chosen to go through the town rather than around it, and the result was a clash in which Captain Boyd, who commanded the detachment, and some twenty of his men were killed, twenty-two others being captured by the Mexicans.  Under the circumstances the whole venture was rather imprudent in the first place.  As to the engagement itself, the Mexicans said that the American troops made the attack, while the latter said that the Mexicans themselves first opened fire.  However this may have been, all other phases of the Mexican problem seemed for the moment to be forgotten at Washington in the demand