The record-union., 1899-03-17
PRESENT DAY THOUGHTS.
By G. Grosvenor DAVE.

"A PiCd against pfGJuulce.-Inf one
who, the very night this article is writ
tetn, lies at deaths door, Kipling, has
IN two years uttered two great notes
that have thrilled the world of English
speakers. First his "Recessional, writ
ten at the time of the Queens dia-
mond jubilee, pervaded our whole lit
erature in less than a month It raised
the thoughts of those whom strong
words could raise, far above turmoil
and materiahsn, into the realm where
we saw that power brought with it un-
avoidable responsibility
Now again confusion of thought and
doubt of destiny are swept aside like
cobwebs by his new poem THE White
Mans Burden" Why do We so heart
lily approve? Because the poet With
the stroke of a pen condenses into a
few lines the experience of an age and
the convictions of a million.
| The white mans burden is laid OH the
white mans shoulders He may rave
and he may tear, but the bands of
Almighty God hold fast and the bur-
den is still there to be carried till the
end. Errors are made down here be-
low, but not up there where One sit
teth who seeth the end from the be-
ginning. The white mans burden is
! laid on the white mans shoulders be-
cause he is able to bear it and because
the strong, in the economy of moral
| life, must carry the burdens of the
weak.
| We have the burden here among US,
and we cannot be rid of tive either
must carry it or drop defeated i'll our
tracks. The latter, however, we dare
not, cannot do; SO perforce the burden
is still ours. Zone of our United States
| Senators said as recently as February
24th "The negro is by nature and by
every instinct of his soul loafer The
colored people are a happy go-lucky,
immoral, untruthful, unreliable race
You cannot alter what God has made,
and though this or that negro may be
a decent man, or an honest man, yet the
tiger is loosened in white mans bos-
ON without regard to consequences,
when the two races come in contact.'')
This is an example of the sort of rear
ing and pitching that only makes the
burden chafe little more than before
Let us calmly look at the burden and
not attempt to roll it off into a ditch
for that is futile, nor charge its bad
aspects upon God, for that is foolish
We brought the colored people here
against their will, with the utmost
cruelty they were snatched from home
and native land. crowded on slave ships
| in conditions that were indescribabIe,
and then sold and bought like cattle.
Then for two hundred years or so they
We're held in honda ge-much of it prob
ably kind and thoughtful, but bondage,
nevertheless. Then without any culti-
walton of thrift among them, or the
shadow of a training for citizenship,
we threw them out into the struggle of
! life and of politics. Now after gen
GRAFTON is past we look for a good crop
from a field whereon we have bestowed
no care and like this Senator would
lay the blame off upon that convenient
excuse for failures. Almighty God.
|
The negro is happy -go-lucky, and it
is we'll that he is, or many a home
would have mourned because of him.
ne Is IIlIuOTdl--IfOl DCCduSt uc luCdlS
! to be, but because he is simply at the
| stage of animal existence that the
/ white man as a whole passed ages ago.
He is untruthful because lying was his
safeguard, and stealing his way to lux
ury back in those days when he was
owned He is unreliable because he
has no ancestral experience to show
him that trustworthiness is good. tie
is idle because his wants are very sim
pie, and wants-the complicated wants
of civilization-enter much more largely
into the white mans industry than he
stops to consider
He is what he is because genera
tion of wasted opportunities is not
enough to counteract ages of gross
existence. in Africa and 200 years of
! ignorant slavery in America
| He is what he is because even his
well-meaning friends have been his
actual enemies in trying to force the
stone of classical education down his
throat while his real need was the
bread of manual training.
| He is what he is because of the
hypocrisy of politics that will make
much of him once a year and exagger-
ate in his feeble brain his own import
ance, and then drop him ence more back
into his old enforced aloofness. Hence
election time merely means to him
drinks and smokes, greenbacks and ap-
| parent equality with his white neigh
Dor, and has not at all the srande 1r