teaching the imperative necessity of the race’s applying its chief energies to building itself up industrially.

[Pg 5]

The South, indeed, after years of struggle, considered that the question which had confronted it and largely affected its policy for more than a third of a century was sufficiently settled for the whites to divide once more on the great economic questions on which hang the welfare and progress of the people. Suddenly, however, there has been a recrudescence of the whole question, and it might appear to those who base their opinion wholly on the public prints as though nothing had been accomplished toward its definite settlement in the last generation.

Only the other day, the President extended a casual social invitation to the most distinguished educator of the colored race: one who is possibly esteemed at the South the wisest and sanest man of color in the country, and who[Pg 6] has, perhaps, done more than any other to carry out the ideas that the Southern well-wishers of his race believe to be the soundest and most promising of good results. And the effect was so unexpected and so far-reaching that it astonished and perplexed the whole country. On the other hand, this educator, speaking in Boston to his race in a reasonable manner on matters as to which he is a high authority, was insulted by an element, the leaders of which were not the ignorant members of his race, but rather the more enlightened—college-bred men and editors—and a riot took place in the church in which he spoke, in which red pepper and razors were used quite as if the occasion had been a “craps-game” in a Southern Negro settlement. The riot was quelled by the police; but, had it been in a small town, murder might easily have been done.

[Pg 6]

In view of these facts, it is apparent that the matter is more complicated than appears at first thought, and must be dealt with carefully.

One great trouble is the different way in which the body of the people at the North and at the South regard this problem. We have presented to us the singular fact that two sections of the same race, with the same manners[Pg 7] and customs, the same traits of character, the same history and, until within a time so recent that the divergence is within the memory of living men, the same historical relation to the Negro race, should regard so vital a question from such opposite points; the one esteeming the question to be merely as to the legal equality of the races, and the other passionately holding it 

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