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like Mahool found themselves faced with social chaos. Their efforts
had failed to cure the fundamental ills — illiteracy, morbidity, crime,
and poverty — from which the urbanizing, industrializing society suf-
fered. Thus defeated, they resolved to treat two of the most bother-
some and visible symptoms of society's ailments: riots and epidemic
disease.71

Because the riots were often racial in nature, and because the
black slums were viewed as the source of contagion, the reformers fo-
cused on the black neighborhoods. The ultimate goals of the Progres-
sives, however, were not directed to improving the living conditions of
black slum families. Progressive reformers were not concerned with
the plight of Negroes; as C. Van Woodward observed: 'The blind spot
in the . . . progressive record . . . was the Negro . . . ,72 "Victim
blaming" was much less costly than attempting to solve the underlying
social problems.73

Social Darwinism provided the ideological basis for this view, and
some reformers used it to posit a basic inferiority of black people.74
For example, the campaign rhetoric of the Disenfranchisement Move-
ment (a nationwide effort to deny Negroes of their right to vote) de-
picted blacks as slovenly and corrupt brutes.73 Tum-of-the-century
census data supported the view that Negroes were a-dying race: blacks
showed a higher mortality rate and a lower birth rate, than whites.76

Viewed in this context, Mahool's support for the first segregation
ordinance is less surprising. Similarly, the Baltimore Sun, which by
1911 had good credentials as a reform newspaper, editorially apolo-
gized for the segregation ordinance as follows: "Baltimore has to deal
with the condition as it exists and not with the abstract theories of theo-
rists and those who are not personally concerned.77

Many Progressives thus agreed that poor blacks should be quaran-
tined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidents of civil distur-
bance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby
white neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the white
majority. Historian George M. Frederickson tied these strands
together

71. R. LUBOVE, supra note 41, at 11-12.

72. C. VANN WOODWARD, THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW 9! (3d rev. ed. 1974).

73. J. LEVIN & W. LEVIN, THE FUNCTIONS OF DISCRIMINATION AND PREJUDICE 41-42
(2d ed. 1982).

74. Schmidt, Principle and Prejudice: The Supreme Court and Race in the Progressive
Era. Pan 1: The Heyday of Jim Crow 82 COLUM. L. REV. 444, 453-54 (1982).

75. M. CALLCOTT, THE NEGRO IN MARYLAND POLITICS 1870-1912 101-38 (1969).

76. Schmidt, supra note 74, at 453.

77. Baltimore Sun, April 7, 1911, at 6, col. 3.