Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-06-18
THE reports or TIE nEaao EXODUS.

| lie, ana l1ey are ~ hoSi y W S'>A"tO
ever view best harmonizes with their pre-
vious ideas on the subject. 1t is scarcely
necessary to say that both these reports
| are partisan. That which the Democrats
have prepared denies the existence of any
abuse of the negroes in the Southern
States asserts that they have been tempted
to migrate by political organizations which
have circulated false notions of the advan-
tages to be gained by the exodus, and
endeavors generally to make it appear that
the whole movement is a Republican
dodge, fraught with evil to the blacks.
The Republican report. ON the other hand,
denies the existence of any political agency
in the premises, declares that the only or
CARNATIONS concerned have been charitable
ones, asserts that the negroes have had
ample reasons for wishing to leave the
South, and maintains that the exodus is a
salutary and promising phenomenon. To
arrive at the truth it is necessary to
take the mean of these two accounts.
Neither of them is wholly trust
worthy, or wholly inaccurate. The South
ern negroes have undoubtedly suffered
much from political persecution, and from
the probably unavoidable results of their
owni ignorance and improvidence. Itisquite
possible that some political influence has
been employed as one of the factors in the
| exodus, and that in many instances gross
Misrepresentation have been made to in
duce the colored people to go North. But
when due allowance has been made for the
distorting influence OF partisan and sec
tional bias, enough solid facts Will remain
TO demonstrate the wholesomeness Of the
emigration as whole. In the first place
it has been for some time apparent that in
the States where the colored population is
the largest the opportunities for the de-
velopment of free and progressive tend
encies are the fewest. TIE negro does not,
as rule, gain anything by being shut up
to his own race influences. When the COM
munity is all black the social and political
advancement is very slow, and there is
even danger of retrogression to the plane
of the old plantation hand. When the
population is mixed, and the blacks are
scattered about among the whites.
the former are stimulated to in
creased activity. and acquire amb-
tions and desires which tend to
elevate them. In most of the Southern
States, again, the poverty OF the white
planters compels them to adopt forms of
payment for labor which are highly de-
moralizing to their employees, When ig
norant and unthrifty laborers are paid in
kind, or are allowed to trade out their
wages bills at the plantation store, they
almost always fail to accumulate any thing,
and generally run in debt. In fact, this
system of payment too closely resembles
the old slavery system to afford any invi-
cation to economy and self-denial. To
make those who were reared in slavery in
dependent, they must be taught the value
of money and the necessity of economy
by being compelled to support themselves
from day to day by their cash earnings.
There is very little opportunity for such
education at the South, and therefore it is
for the best interests of the negroes that
they should leave it.
At the North they will find different
kind of labor field. They must work hard
er, but they viii be sure of steady wages,
and they viii be emancipated from the bad
influences Of the store and the book-account
system. The large negro communities will
also be broken mp by emigration, and thus
their constituent elements VIII be afforded
much better chances of progressing and ac-
curing mental and moral stamina. Nor
must political considerations bc neglected.
The position CT the Southern negroes in the
States where they are most numerous is at
present as nearly hopeless, politically, as it
could well be. They are so situated as to
attract and keep up the hostility of the
white minority, and their inferiority to the
latter in power Of organization and capa-
city for resistance exposes them con-
stantIy to a form OF persecution which
/ threatens to become chronic, and TO reduce
them to a condition but little removed from
that Of reonage. The very best thing for
them, therefore, probably is to take them
away from all their past surroundings, and
to put them in communities having no
traditions of slavery, and where all their
capacities will have free scope. The. ff.
teen years which have elapsed since the
close OF the rebellion do not justify an
expectation that the Southern negro can
work out his own elevation in his old
habitat, without the stimulus Of changes in
his environment which are not likely to
occur. The white element OF the South
with which the negro comes most in corr
tact is not one calculated to do him any
| good 1t is an altogether different ele-
nent to that with which lie must
mix at the North The latter is
an independent, self reliant, indus
triou4 class, and its example cannot
but benefit tie blacks. The exodus of
the colored race from the South may also
eventually rebound to the advantage of
the southern whites, by removing one
strong temptation to recur to the old
sloyenly and wasteful methods of cultiva-
ton. BY solving the most difficult political
problems ever before the country, this
movement must help the South, for as
suredly solid South is the worst thing
for Southern interests that can be mag
ined. We believe, therefore, that this
migration viii go on, and that it will in the
end cause radical changes in Southern in
stitutions, views, and political programmes.
We believe that it offers perhaps the only
attainable method of settling formidable
social, commercial, and political difficulties,
and that its results are destined to be
highly beneficial both to the negroes and
to the country at large.
TEE NEGLECTED WORK OF CONGRESS-