The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-09-23
A GREAT PROBLEM
F or the American People
to Face.
What is to be the Future of the
Negro Population? Canadian
Opinion of the Race.

The greatest problem that the Amer
lean people have 10 face is the future
Of the negro population. Canadians
get but a faint idea of the conditions
prevailing in the South from the tele-
graphic reports OF lynchings. The
newspapers of the South and those OF
cities in states bordering on the South
contain accounts of many brutal
crimes OF negroes followed by swift
punishment by mobs of white men that
are never telegraphed to the Canadian
papers. In many cases the crimes of
the negroes are too horrible for des-
cription, but, on the other hand, they
are often Iynched for trivial offences,
and sometimes an innocent negro suf-
fers instead of a guiIty one, on ac-
count of a white mob's haste to find
some one to punish for crime that
shocks the community.
The fact is that some of the negroes
of the South are not far removed from
savagery. There are many races Of
negroes in Africa, some of them far
superior in intelligence and civilization
to others. The slaves of the Southern
states were not all from one tribe.
Some of them belonged to the most
savage races of Africa, while others
were of very high type. Most of the
negroes seen in Canada are of the bet
ter class. There is almost, if not quite,
as wide a difference between the
whites of the South as there is be-
tween the negroes. Many of the white
of the South are highly edu-
Gated, intelligent and refined, but there
IS a large class of illiterate whites, who
in the scale of civilization. Some of
the leaders of the colored people
strongly favor wholesale emigration to
Africa, and they are asking congress
promote emigration. They propose
that a steamship line should be estab
Iished between the United States and
Liberia, to take negroes to the Dark
Continent. Attempts to encourage ne
gro emigration to Africa have not
proved very successful in the past, and
it is doubtful if they will be in the
future The reports of those who
have gone to Africa are not at all en-,
couraging, and there does not seean TO
be any general desire on the part of
the negroes to leave America.
A Cuban writer in the July number
OF the Contemporary Review expresses
the fear that if Cuba should be annex
ed to the United States it would soon
be in undated with undesirable negro
population. He says that already
many negroes have come to the island
since the close of the war. 1t is prob
able that Cuba would be considered a
more attractive country than Africa
by many American negroes, but it is
doubtful if they could escape the ills
from which they suffer by emigrating
to that fertile island, whether it be-
comes Independent, remains de-
tendency of the United States, or is
admitted to the Union as a state.
The sad condition of affairs in the
South should be a lesson to the ma
tons. 1t shows that no nation can do
wrong without eventually suffering
for it. The sins of the fathers are
visited upon the children, and the
Americans of the present generation
are but reaping the consequences of
the actions of their ancestors. who.
while talking of liberty, enslaved
thousands Of their fellow creatures
Montreal Star.