Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1890-02-28
BRUCE ON THE RACE ISSUE.
He Has Some Ideas Of His Own as to
the solution Of the Problem.

"What nonsense all this talk about sending
the blacks back TO Africa Isl" said Recorder
Bruce to a STAR reporter. They we're brought
here against their will, but now they propose
to remain. Free tickets would be no induce
ment to them. People don't care to be dead
headed to place where they have no desire to
go. Even if a considerable bonus in money
were offered each colored passenger taking
ship for the dark continent precious few such
would be found voyaging southeastward across
the main. For seventy years efforts have been
made to persuade the sgroes to colonize Lii
IBERIA and yet there are at present only Is, 900
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, most OF them exceedingly
discontinued, in that country today. How long
then, do you think it would take to persuade
5000 600 or 10000, 900 to go over?"
1.-The most serious complaint against the ne
groes seems to be that they are too fecund'
DOUBLING EVERY TWENTY-FIVE YEARS.
THAT is true. 1t is estimated by those op-
posed to the race that there will be u.s. 900. 900
blacks in this country in 1880. They more
than double in numbers every Twenty-Five
years, Notwithstanding large and continual
losses by the approximation Of black to white.
In other words great numbers of person of
color are constantly arriving at complex ion
so near to white that they Join the ranks OF the
white people and cease to be regarded as OF
pressed, is that the American continent will
become Africanized But / contend that this
alarm, like the calculations mathematical upon
| which it is based, is without just grounds. A
condition of affairs not at all normal exists at
present among the negroes Of the south. Before
the war, while slavery was In control, there was
promiscuity in the relations of the black which
| for the reason that il is a natural law-bad a
tendency to repress the increase of the colored
population. When the slaves were made free
L. Al lx<rA -.
The blacks focked in couples to be married
legally in such numbers that the magistrates
found themselves unable to perform the cere-
mony and the legislatures OF the states were
obliged to pass laws legalizing by wholesale the
unions of pairs who had lived together and lie.
eliminating the offspring. Whereupon the
| colored people settled down to domestic rela
tons on the same principles as those govern.
| ing the white, and imme diately they began t
increase with an astonishing rapidity of propa
CATION. This has continued up to the presen
| day and hence the alarm"
WHAT THE REMEDY Is.
| (Which you think groundless."
Altogether so. There is a remedy for the
| difficulty and that remedy is to be found simply
| in the education Of the blacks in the south. Il
| is another natural law that human beings il
proportion as they are developed mentally anC
morally become less fecund The blacks ono,
| educated Will no longer be propagated to ex
| cess. Therefore. as a measure of protection
| for themselves, the whites should lose no time
in educating these people. BY the last census
| that Of 1880. it was shown that there We're il
that year 100000 of people south of Mason
| and Dixon's line, of which number 5O00.OOC
| could neither read nor WRITE Stats.
| tics of the national bureau of edu.
| cation show that there are at presen,
one and one-quarter million of black
| children in the south who have enjoyed nc
| educational opportunities at all 1t is high
| time something was done. In slavery DAYS il
WAS a violation OF statorial law to teach negroe.
| to read and write. Hence the beginning OF
| the illiteracy. Since then the nation has done
nothing to repair the misfortune, although il
| is due to the nations fault. l say the nation
! should come to the rescue because the states
are too poor to undertake so gigantic a labor
| unaided. Something in that line must be-
| done If the blacks are not TO go on indefinitely
| reproducing their species, as Senator Ingall.
| says, in uncomfortable ignorance and mex
| haustible fecundity. The American negroes
| owe a debt to their fatherland-they lool
| toward 1t for the future. But they will go to il
| not as coionists, but as missionaries and
| traders, to civilize the natives. Such is the
prospective relation of the Americo-African K
| the mother country"