The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1898-01-23


: or these new desires. The result is
large and rapid increase OF CRIME ire
uupntly so atrocious, dibolical, anu
shocking in character as temporarily al
T. most re- ..esgtroy the reason of the white
| community in which the crimes are COM
| mitted. driving them almost to a frenzy
of summary vengeance. Year by year
this state of things has developed from
bad to wTOSc. No man can see the end
One thing, at least is sure-the negro is
not receiving the sort of education nor
is he subjected to the sort Of restraint
that tends to make him either better
man or better citizen. The long and
bitter political struggle to leglslate the
negro up to full social, civil and political
equality with the white race, and the
struggle of TIE Southern white popula-
ton to protect their property and clylll-
cation against the consequences OF such
movement, have prevented this question
of negro education and negro develop
ment from receiving, either North or
South, the careful, impartial and intelll-
gent consideration that it must receive
il our country is to be rescued from the
greatest peril that ever threatened 1t.
The question of negro slavery was rot
so momentous as the question of negro
freedom, negro citizenship and negro
education The negro problem iS not
ended, but has only begun.
YOUTHFUL CRIMINALS.
''Over one-half of all criminals in the
United States are under 30 years of
age; in the South nearly two-thirds come
Under this limit; of negro criminals near
ly 20 per cent; of negro female crintin-
ais 70 per cent. These figures tell their
own sad story and emphasize more than
words the necessity for early training.
As q matter of self-prOtection, If not
from justice and humanity, the State
should provide for every child within its
borders training adequate to make rim
a useful, honorable and self-supportinS
citizen. If private citizens will provide
this training for their children, so much
the better; if not, the state should pro-
vide it, and should see that the childre2
receive it, whether their parents are
willing or not. From families that are
depraved, vicious and criminal the child
rem should be taken away and reared
entirely under the direction of the State.
These views may seem paternalistic to
those who confound liberty with license,
who glorify personal freedom at the eX-
pense of social progress and civilization,
but these people do not belong III socie-
ty their freedom is the 'desolate free
dom OF the wild ass of the desert
Il beg leave to endorse the suggestion
of the president of the Prison associa-
ton, made in his annual address, that
compulsory education should be en-
forced throughout the United States and
that it should begin with the kinder
garten schools. / would add that every
public school should include, in every
grade, music and other arts, manual
training and athletic culture. 1t is get
ting fashionable to denounce our public
schools as inefficient and not tending to
prevent crime. The criminal statistics
class as literates all who can read and
write-a basis manifestly unjust to the
public schools. as they furnish an educa-
ton reaching deeper and further than is
implied in reading and writing. But even
upon this basis the illiterate population
Of the United States lis almost twice as
criminal as the literate.
"The public schools are also blamed
for not furnishing religious training and
are actually charged by some with in.
rreasing, instead OF diminishing, crime.
The decrease Of religious training in our
country is not due to the public schools.
winch, half a century ago, regarded the
religious training OF the young as one
OF their foremost duties. There is some
thing pitiful, to say the least, in the cry
that is going up from so many churches.
church organizations and church mem
hers, deman4Ing religious instruction for
their children in the public schools.
What most of them desire, and really de-
mand. is sectarian and theological IN
struction. intended to aggrandiZe their
particular church organizations. In
genuine religious instruction, based upon
moral principles and moral conduct,
guided and sustained by a belief in
future life and an overriding provi-
dence, but without the spirit Of secta-
rian prejudice and PROSECUTING, the pub
lie schools, at least III the Southern
States. may challenge comparison with
the private schools and so-called church
schools.
If we rely entirely upon statistics, We
will find that literacy is far more pre-
ventiye OF crime than so-called religious
training. Statistics are not full on this
subject, but those that we have speak
very clearly. In the jails of Detroit,
Mich, during Period of twenty
years there were confined 40,S3S pris-
onerS, OF whom 81 ,OS3 had received re-
Iigious training, and 2,249 had not.
Ninety-three per cent of all the inmates
OF the Elmira reformatoFy have received
religious training. OF the prisoners in
200 Jails throughout the United States,
over fifty-thrce per cent had received re-
iigioua training and less than 20 per cent
had not. Ii the religious training OF the
young received the attention that it
should in Christian communities, Chris
tian churches and Christian homes, there
would be less time and Tess occasion for
denouncing public schools as ungodly
and immoral. Our God is the God OF
truth and order and love and reverence
aud duty. These virtues are taught i'll
every publ school that deserves the
name, and are taught in the great search
for Him who created them, when He
created nature and man. / have never
been in the rooms of the first and see
ond grades of our public schools, or in
the kindergarten amid the budding bios
SONS Of humanity without feeling that
God was there. am glad to say that
at least one city in Texas. the city of lei
paso in our extreme northwestern corn
, l., ,I,nr,