The white people would not employ him in these positions, and the colored people did not have any enterprises in which they could employ him.  It is true that such positions as street laborer, hod-carrier, cart driver, factory hand, railroad hand, were open to him; but such menial tasks were uncongenial to a man of his education and polish.  And, again, society positively forbade him doing such labor.  If a man of education among the colored people did such manual labor, he was looked upon as an eternal disgrace to the race.  He was looked upon as throwing his education away and lowering its value in the eyes of the children who were to come after him.

So, here was proud, brilliant Belton, the husband of a woman whom he fairly worshipped, surrounded in a manner that precluded his earning a livelihood for her.  This set Belton to studying the labor situation and the race question from this point of view.  He found scores of young men just in his predicament.  The schools were all supplied with teachers.  All other doors were effectually barred.  Society’s stern edict forbade these young men resorting to lower forms of labor.  And instead of the matter growing better, it was growing worse, year by year.  Colleges were rushing class after class forth with just his kind of education, and there was no employment for them.

These young men, having no employment, would get together in groups and discuss their respective conditions.  Some were in love and desired to marry.  Others were married and desired to support their wives in a creditable way.  Others desired to acquire a competence.  Some had aged parents who had toiled hard to educate them and were looking to them for support.  They were willing to work but the opportunity was denied them.  And the sole charge against them was the color of their skins.  They grew to hate a flag that would float in an undisturbed manner over such a condition of affairs.  They began to abuse and execrate a national government that would not protect them against color prejudice, but on the contrary actually practiced it itself.

Beginning with passively hating the flag, they began to think of rebelling against it and would wish for some foreign power to come in and bury it in the dirt.  They signified their willingness to participate in such a proceeding.

It is true that it was only a class that had thought and spoke of this, but it was an educated class, turned loose with an idle brain and plenty of time to devise mischief.  The toiling, unthinking masses went quietly to their labors, day by day, but the educated malcontents moved in and out among them, convincing them that they could not afford to see their men of brains ignored because of color.

Belton viewed this state of affairs with alarm and asked himself, whither was the nation drifting.  He might have joined this army of malcontents and insurrection breeders, but that a very remarkable and novel idea occurred to him.  He decided to endeavor to find out just what view the white people were taking of the Negro and of the existing conditions.  He saw that the nation was drifting toward a terrible cataract and he wished to find out what precautionary steps the white people were going to take.