But there is another aspect to this side of the subject which must not be entirely ignored, and that is the existence in a few instances of illicit relations between some white women and some colored men in the South. That such relations have existed in the past and do actually exist there at the present time, there is absolutely no doubt whatever. In certain localities these relations, although known or suspected, have been tolerated, while in general as soon as they are discovered or suspected they have been broken up by mobs who murder the black participants when they are caught, sometimes on trumped-up charges of having committed the "usual crime." The existence of such relations is not so strange or incredible as may be supposed at first hearing of them. For it is a fact hardly less curious, if not so strange, that there are men who while they would not think of marrying into a class beneath them would nevertheless live readily enough in a state of concubinage with women of that class. And in this upper class there are women, not many, it is true, who would do the same thing. They care enough for the men in the class beneath them to enter into illicit relations in secret with them, but not enough to enter into licit relations with these same men in the open, in the gaze of a scornful and horrified world. Has it ever been seriously considered that like father may occasionally produce like daughter in the South? And that such moral lapses by a few white women of that section may be accounted for in part at least by that mysterious law of atavism? The sons are like their fathers in respect to their fondness for colored women, why may not one daughter in, say, ten thousand, resemble those fathers in that same shameful, though not altogether unnatural respect? Do not such instances, few and far between at present though they be, furnish matter for thoughtful people of the South regardless of sex, race or color?
Have the white women of the South considered that under existing conditions they are deprived of effective influence, of effective power, to reform the morals of the men of their race? And that unless the morals of the men are reformed the morals of the whole white race will eventually decline? If the women fail to lift the level of the moral life of their men to their own higher plane, the lower morals of the men will drag downward ultimately to their level that of the women. From this inevitable conclusion and consequence there is no possible escape. But the white women of the South are powerless to lift the morals of their men without lifting at the same time the morals of the women of the black race. If, however, they steadily refuse to do so in the future, as they have refused to do so in the past, and as they refuse to do so today by the only sure means which can and will contribute mightily to effect such a purpose, viz., by making the black women their equals before the law, and at the bar of an enlightened public sentiment, and these women remain in consequence where they are today, a snare to the feet of white men, when these men trip over this snare into the hell of the senses, they will drag downward slowly but surely with them toward the level of these self-same black women the moral ideals if not the moral life of the white women of the South.