To him Colonel Cresswell gave a few pregnant directions. Then he rode to town, and told Taylor again of his fears of a labor movement which would include whites and blacks. Taylor could not see any great danger.
“Of course,” he conceded, “they’ll eventually get together; their interests are identical. I’ll admit it’s our game to delay this as long possible.”
“It must be delayed forever, sir.”
“Can’t be,” was the terse response. “But even if they do ally themselves, our way is easy: separate the leaders, the talented, the pushers, of both races from their masses, and through them rule the rest by money.”
But Colonel Cresswell shook his head. “It’s precisely these leaders of the Negroes that we mush crush,” he insisted. Taylor looked puzzled.
“I thought it was the lazy, shiftless, and criminal Negroes, you feared?”
‚ÄúHang it, no! We can deal with them; we‚Äôve got whips, chain-gangs, and‚ÅÝ‚Äîmobs, if need be‚ÅÝ‚Äîno, it‚Äôs the Negro who wants to climb up that we‚Äôve got to beat to his knees.‚Äù
Taylor could not follow this reasoning. He believed in an aristocracy of talent alone, and secretly despised Colonel Cresswell‚Äôs pretensions of birth. If a man had ability and push Taylor was willing and anxious to open the way for him, even though he were black. The caste way of thinking in the South, both as applied to poor whites and to Negroes, he simply could not understand. The weak and the ignorant of all races he despised and had no patience with them. ‚ÄúBut others‚ÅÝ‚Äîa man‚Äôs a man, isn‚Äôt he?‚Äù he persisted. But Colonel Cresswell replied: