The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-21

rapidly increasing her plant OF cotton
mills, coal and marble mines, iron fur
naces, and no rough labor that.she can Sc
cure will supply the place of the negro for
economy and endurance. No white labor
could live in working health in many Sec
tions of the Gulf states where the negro
thrives.
The negro problem will work itself clear
in time; the negro needs peace, plows
and Schools" not high schools and col
leges, but good common schools with in
dustrial teaching such as the British
government maintains for the negro
population of her West India islands,
like the Bahamas, Barbados and ia
maica. The negro in Haiti lacks just
what he needs, attrition with the civiliza-
ton of the white race.
What the negro may be expected to do
in America may be measured by what the
negro mas done in Jamaica since his eman-
cipation, less than ifty-ive years ago.
In Jamaica the negroes pay s40o, 900 year
for church purposes and have I'll schools,
with an attendance OF Sc. 900. In the gov
eminent savings banks 1900 negroes have
deposited f95.o There are 10000 owners
of land, many of them wealthy, and they
subscribed $3.50, 900 to the Jamaica exhibit
ton of 1891. After but twenty-five years
of freedom there are now 10000 colored
teachers at the South, while the school
outside of the $50 000, 900 of public money
invested in colored common schools.
The natural bent of the negro when sub
jected to the attrition of white civiliza-
ton is toward agricultural, industrial and
mechanical skill, and great mischief has
been wrought among these singularly
initiative people by that absurd Northern
benevolence that has wasted money in
high schools, colleges and theological
schools for colored people that had been
better spent in founding schools for
thorough instruction in the rudiments
and in industrial education. The negro is
not to blame for being in the South: he
came there against his will, but he is
there to stay, for the South will never ex-
patriate the only permanent class of cheap
labor they possess or are likely to possess.
Of course, the negro will not mix in
marriage with the whites. There is no
country on the globe where he does to any
great extent, but that is no obstacle to his
becoming very useful, tractable, in
dustrial factor at the South. The Ger
mans in certain parts of the West, the
Scandinavians and the Belgians are some
times very clannish they do not mix with
Americans socially nor intermarry much
with them, but they are none the less
valuable in an industrial sense. The
negro is no more likely to become curse
to the South because he does not fuse with
the Caucasian socially than the English
workingman is a curse to England be-
cause he seldom marries outside of his in
dustrial class and social caste. 1t does not
destroy the industrial value of the
English peasant or workingman because
he does not miscegenate with aristocracy,
gentry or tradesmen. Indeed, it is gener-
ally true that the English speaking races
seldom intermarry with Italians, Span
iards, Russians, with very many races of
Latin or Oriental blood that have never
been included among the people who stand
for the mark Of Cain, the children of Ham
or the curse of Canaan.
The leading vices of the Southern negro,
RIGHTEOUSNESS and o passion for paltry
thieving are the natural outgrowth of
slavery. Slavery steals mans labor and
logically all slaves steal back their labor in
sb nd IL 4
the sanctity of marriage under foot, out
ragged family ties, cultivated concubinage as
parlor plant and, of course, the gradu-
ates of the system are sure to be unchaste
The negro has some beautiful traits of
character; his tropical soul is sensitive to
emotional eloquence of song and speech.
The 'colored gallery" at the Atlanta thea
ter sobbed outright when Christine
Nilsson sang way Down Upon the
Suwanee River" A good many persons
would sneer at this, but it was touching
incident for the song is full OF the plant
i've cry of tine old negro cabin and the cot
ton field; the wailing call for the worlds
compassion from the imbruted bondsmen
of the Old South, where work without
wages and life without liberty waited so
long for freedom.
The Sea Islands of South Carolina, with
their neat houses, well stocked with good
furniture, their cattle and good crops, are
welcome testimony that freedom to many
of the negro race has made the world far
less sad and dreary than it was in the old
days when the whole race wallowed in the
noisome marsh of slavery, through whose
bloody mist of cruelty the light of liberty
never shone until the fog finally lifted be-
fore the sun of Appomattox The pen of
Lincoln and the sword of Grant made the
world little less sad and dreary for the
negro along all the rivers of the South
than it used TO be; there is little more
sweetness and light for some of them. and
no wonder they did not hear that pathetic
plantation lament without thinking ofthe
days when they as captives "by the rivers
Of Babylon sat down and wept." A less
poetic and emotional race might be deeplv
moved by SO bitter q memory