The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-12-12
DEPENDS THE SOUTH.
Strong Letter Against Misrepre-
 sentations of Southern Affairs.

It will be remembered that MT. George c. King of Concord, Mass, the brother in-law of the Rev. Edgar Gardner Mur- phy of this city, passed some weeks In Montgomery about the time Of the Con ference on the Race Problems of the South.
 MT. King is a young attorney in Bos- ton, practising with his father under the firm name of King & King. He has long taken a great interest in Southern ques- tions. especially since his sister, Mrs' Murphy. came to the South some ten years ago. The following letter from his ben in a recent issue of one of the lead ing papers of Boston indicates his earn est sympathy with our Southern people and illustrates the fact that there IS an increasing number of men at the North who are ready to speak out plainly against injustice to the South. The let ter is headed Adding Fuel to the Burn ing Question" It Is as follows:
 Tbero has recently been published a novel by Charles w. Chestnut, entitled, "The Marrow of Tradition. The motif of the novel is derived in general from the relations of the two races in the South and it's particular incidents are easily connected with the occurrences at Wilmington. N. C.. five years ago, when d short period of political control by terminated The book does not purport to be an exposition of the race problem or a fair presentation of the circum- stances inducing the Wilmington uprising. It appears rather to take for granted that there is but one side to both these questions, and to assume as beyond con- troversy that the Southern negro Is the embodiment of rugged virtue and the Southern white a hoDeless degenerate. With the authors conception of the ne- gro I have no disposition to quarrel; hope that be is right But when there is offered for sale at Northern bookstores book which is harshly, bitterly. dis hnnOra bly fO fha white and white women of the graat South l should indeed regret the denial of an opportuni- tv to add my voice to the condemnation which the North ought emphatically to express.
 The author has portrayed. ostensibly as types. group of persopages conspic- uouslv influential in their city. their com munitY and their State: the proprietor of the most influential newspaper In the State," whose influence as journalist is exerted unsparingly to the instiRation of mob violence and lynching; lawyer and prospective governor, who incident ally withholds from probate. for dishon- orable purposes, the will Of his lifelong friend: an influential citizen and aspirant for office. who is paraded in the practice of every conceivable form of vice. and who ends his career at the forefront of an orgy of wholesale murder: d scion of the quality" who enters the stage q drunkard, holds it to cheat at games of chance and finally retires after the com
  and-most glaring traVesty of all-two Southern gentlewomen. whose closest re- lation to the story is their connivance in the .concealment of marriage certificate which might have rAmoVed rom worthy negro woman the stigma or ille- gitimacy.
 More illustrations need not be given. The whole book, plot, characters. events eXhales the venom of vindictiveness, A refutation is unnecessary; the author is refuted by his own malign eXtrdvagance The typical Southern editor is striving heart and soul for orderly government the Southern lawyer would stoop no more quickly than his Northern brother to an unprofessional. criminal proceed ing; the Southern gentleman or the younger generation is as far from Tom Delemare as Heaven is from he'll and the Southern woman-I should be asham- cd to admit that we of the North had not enough of chivalry to make a word in her defense unnecessary. l am writ ing as a Northern man, Northern by ancestry, Northern by education, North' ern by utilization. I disagree most vital ly with the prevalent Southern opinion as to the proper method of regulatint the negro's franchise. But I believe that Tar less knowledge of the South than possess, far less sympathy with US at- ttude than l can admit, will inspire z conviction that within the covers or Ih' Marrow of Tradition the South has re- ceived nothing but incorporate misrep resentation.
 But this IS not the point. Even II believed that behind the story there wal shadow of justice I should still oel of you to spare space for It's condem nation. For, just or unjust, 1t can op crate in the North only to infiame, an( In the South only to bestlr a most manly Indignation. Like many publications similar in spirit, 1t can serve only to re kindle the very fires of disgust which tol the good of the whole South, for tho good of the whole country, should no be famed into flame The South, in 1t! struggle with a social problem which VI of the North can comprehend at mos very imperfectly, needs an unsparins measure of confidence; the North, Tn iti untiring generosity to the negro, needs