a proposition is utterly fatuous. The Negro is essential to the South in order that it may have proper labor. An attempt of Negroes to migrate from one state to another not many years ago led to open violence at white instigation to prevent it. More than this, the Negroes have now reached 9,000,000 in number. Their ancestors were brought here against their will. They have no country but this. They know no flag but ours. They wish to live under it, and are willing to die for it. They are Americans. They are part of our people and are entitled to our every effort to make them worthy of their responsibilities as free men and as citizens.

The success of the experiments which have been made with them on a large scale in giving them the benefit of thorough primary and industrial style=": "[Pg 15] education, justifies and requires the extension of this system as far as possible to reach them all.

[Pg 15]

The proposition to increase the supply of labor in the South by emigration from Europe, it seems to me, instead of being inimical to the cause of the Negro, will aid him. As the industries of the South continue to grow in the marvelous ratio already shown, the demand for labor must increase. The presence of the Southern community of white European labor from the southern part of Europe will have, I am hopeful, the same effect that it has had upon Negro labor on the Isthmus of Panama. It has introduced a spirit of emulation or competition, so that to-day the tropical Negroes of the West Indies do much better work for us in the canal construction since we brought over Spanish, Italian, and Greek laborers.

Ultimately, of course, the burden of Negro education must fall on the Southern people and on Southern property owners. Private charity and munificence, except by way of furnishing an example and a model, can do comparatively little in this direction. It may take some time to hasten the movement for the most generous public appropriations for the education of the Negro, but the truth that in the uplifting of the Negro lies the welfare of the South is forcing itself on the far-sighted of the Southern leaders. Primary and industrial education for the masses, higher education for the leaders of the Negro race, for their professional men, their clergymen, their physicians, their lawyers, and their teachers, will make up a system under which their improvement, which statistics show to have been most noteworthy in the last forty years, will continue at the same rate.

On the whole, then, the best public opinion of the North 

 Prev. P 11/12 next