The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-26
sPxRIT or THn PRnss.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-CompiIed Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.

The colored people have been holding a
convention at Poughkeepsie to take into
consideration the political and educational
interests of their race in three of the Con-
gressional districts of this State. The Presi-
dent made O very sensible speech, in which
he pointed out what the best white friends of
the colored people have pointed out frequently
since their emancipation, that although their
participation in politics is very we'll as q sign
of their equality and as means of preserving
it, reliance on politics for their social eleva-
tion is an immense mistake. He asked very
pertinently, ''Have they not been hewers of
wood and drawers of water long enough?
Have they not blacked their masters boots
and stood behind his chair until their
hearts were sick and sore?' To these ques-
tions, we suppose, there can be but one
answer; but it is useless, as he also pointed
out, for the colored people to expect to
escape from their degradation by simply
voting. Now that everybody votes, no man
is respected for voting, any more than for
wearing pantaloons, although inability to
vote when others did vote would, undoubt-
edly, be a mark of inferiority. In order to
rise in the social scale, the colored race must
show itself capable of the requirements and
achievements through which other races
have achieved distinction. 1t must furnish
fair quota of able and successful men of
business, of learned and astute lawyers, of
of painstaking, and clear-headed, and
thorough men of science. 1t must, too, do a
reasonable amount for the arts of music and
painting, at least-we are disposed in con-
sderation of the multiplicity of white poets
to grant it a considerable respite in the
matter of poetry. Lastly it must furnish
respectable quota of honorable and polished
men of culture, and women of the same sort.
1t is no doubt pretty hard for race situated
as it has been, and still is, to do all this; but
it must be done, in order to attain to any
thing approaching to social equality. Posi-
tion in this world is only accorded to desert
of some kind, and all the speechifying that
could be put into fifty years of conventions
would not change the rule. Of course, no
race is expected to furnish great number of
first. class men in any department, but it has
to furnish some, and of their performances
the race gets the benefit in respect and repu-
tation.
But, then at the bottom of all social i'm
provement is improvement in character.
Without a good basis of truthful manly,
self-reliant, upright character, there is no use
in the colored people trying to raise them
selves socially in the estimation of their
white neighbors, and they may depend upon
it that if they are going to act on the first
resolution adopted by the convention, they
will not hasten the formation of that type of
character, or any other type that will be of
use either to them or to the community at
large. That resolution was, "That this con-
vention will discountenance any person or
persons who has or will continue to vote
the Democratic ticket, and that we agree to
disregard them, and will not give any place
or protection or shelter or in houses or
places of business, but consider them an
enemy to our race forever" The grammar
of this is not encouraging, though if this
were its only defect It would pass we'll
enough. But the colored people could hardly
hit on better mode of keeping themselves
down, and making themselves both contemp-
tible and ridiculous than by formal attempt
to use their social intercourse as a means of
political prescription. Moreover, they could
hardly hit on better mode of cultivating
meanness, deceit, and other small vices,
which sap character just as effectively as the
great ones, and the prevalence of which
has already good deal to do with
their degradation. The resolution, too,
stands in extraordinary contrast
with the advice of the President and the
avowed objects of the Convention, both of
which urge reliance on self-culture, through
education and other ways, as the sole means
of regeneration. We are no friends of the
Democratic party, and we believe the colore
people, like the Irish, and indeed the poor
and ignorant of all races, have no worse
enemy than this same party; but, then, ne
fear that he would lose his place, or be cut off
from social intercourse with his friends,
would be contemplate fellow, and sure to
make a bad Republican. The same thing
might be said of the negroes who watched
him and prosecuted him,
OF course the professional politicians on
both sides are ready enough to work the
colored people up into furies of this kind
but the professional politicians are sorry
guides for any people which has a social
education to acquire. We see the Pough-
keepsie Convention is going to take measures
to have ''the strength of the colored people
ascertained in the three Congressional dis
tricts," which is very well as long as they
don't hatter themselves that ''their strength
lies in their numbers. Their real strength
must always be in their education, or. in other
words, in their ability to see where, in poll.
tics as in other things, their real interests
lie, and to avoid falling into the hands of,
and being led blindfold by, white denfago
CUES. For which reason we anticipate 9
great deal more good from the determination
of the convention 'to build an academy
seminary, or high school" in or near Poug6.
keepsie, than from its determination to have
''the colored vote brought out" in those
districts.
The attempts of the colored people to worl
their way up have not thus far been very for
tunate. They have by no means put theil
best men into the front rank. They have sen
one or two men to the Bar here at the North
who have been miserable failures in ever,
way; and though some of their leaders at tn
South have been good men, their politician
have, on the whole, done them no credit
Their cadets, too, at West Point have Ger
fainlv NOT haan aalaotad in such @ wav aS n