address to scatter it in large headlines through thousands of homes.

More numerous than these who bid us strike for our rights are the counsellors of a pacific policy. Their aim is the same, survival, but our part in the struggle must be, they say, a humble, or at least, an inconspicuous one. We should stoop to conquer, one tells us; while another, phrasing technically the same thought, says, we must march along the path of least resistance.

That the second thought is only the first in another dress scarcely needs the[Pg 8] proof which a few words will give. In order to determine in advance, which of many paths will offer the least resistance, we must know the nature of the body moving, and of the field through which the body moves; and also the changes which both the body and the field undergo during the passage; the problem being a somewhat different one at any moment from what it was at the preceding moment. Still, the variations would be comparatively few were not the body, our own chaotic mass, and the field, which is, in this case, the American people, such changeable factors. As it is, the determination of the path of least resistance for our eight millions is a task which a college of scientists could not hope to accomplish.

[Pg 8]

The problem becomes very easy however, if we make two assumptions: the first, that the colored people of this country are immeasurably meek, patient and long-suffering; and the second, that the white people are determined, right or wrong, to rule and have. These premises being granted, it seems at least to follow, that the path of least resistance for the colored people is one of submission. But there is a difficulty, which at once confronts us: the unvarying meekness of the Negro is denied by the very circumstance which brought out this solution,—the race conflicts. This unquestionable fact, that “race riots” do crop out in all parts of the South; and the equally incontrovertible fact that men of character and influence encourage a spirit of stubborn clinging to rights deemed inalienable, must be held to justify us in raising the question: which path is the Negro pursuing, that of submission, or that of resistance. It avails us nothing to insist that the former is the way of life, the latter, of extinction; the way of least resistance is, by no means, always, the way of life. The drunkard follows the path of least resistance, when he lifts the cup for the twelfth time to his lips; the moth follows the path of least resistance when it flies into the candle flame. The path of least resistance is the path, which, whether chosen by 

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