The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1901-08-01
Tepma.( Shopper year, in advai ce
Six Months 80 cents.

beggal. What are we to do with him T?
AS he has grown in criminality and
physical depravity since receiving what
he has of education, that kind of
education is surelya failure. Moreover,
he has used this education, given in
compassion as an arm of defence, as
weapon of political offence against
those who gave it. Under the circum-
stances, there is natural and growing
sentiment in the south demanding tnat
we give him only the pittance that he
himself produces as taxpayer, and
then let him shift for himself.
! As problem of the future we can
not lay down the "white mans burden"
yet. 1t is thought that the hope of the
negro is industrial education. 1t is
held as discovery, and it is shrewdly
claimed that this section will check
political antag0nism. This is mistake;
any education will be used by the
negro politically, for politics once sue
cessful is now an instructive form of
warfare. The question, then, plainly
put, is simply this: Shall we, having
by great efforts, gotten rid of the negro
as a political menace, deliberately
proceed to equip the negro of the
future as an economic menace? Shall
we, knowing his primitive racial needs,
arm him and pit him against the poor
whites of the south? In the south,
policemen do not patrol the fields and
race hatred must be kept down, if only
for the sake of the black. Read any
account of a southern race riot and see
who usually furnishes the funerals.
Almost always the black.
| To see how best to educate our two
races in the south, let us look into the
recent progress of the south and see
what it shows: In 1895 there were
about 100000 spindles in the south;
at the close of 1899, 100000 sp:ndles;
today over 100000. What part has
the negro laborer played in this ex-
tension, and what part the white? In
furnishing the raw material, the cotton,
he plays the old slave-day part, but in
the function of the new south, in
manufacture, he has no part. 1t
may be asked, has he had the chance?
Yes. In Charlotte, N. c., and in
Charleston, S. c., he has been tried in
the cloth factory and in the cotton
mill, and he has failed in each case.
The reason of his failure was the alb
solute lack of moral responsibility.
The negro race is essentially a race
of peasant farmers and laborers, and
their education should be directed first
to improve them as such. It is claimed
that since education has raised up for
these people their onw leaders, the prob
lem is solved. Far from it. An
education that makes leaders at the
expense of the laborer is a failure.
Every negro doctor, negro lawyer,
negro teacher, or other leader in excess
of the immediate needs of his own
people, is an anti-social product, a
social menace. Neither in the north,
south, east or west can such pro-
fessional man make living at his
calling through white patronage, and to
give him the ambition and the capacity
and then blast his opportunity through
racial prejndices and cast instinct, is to
commit a crime against nature. In
equal measure, what is true of the
professional man is true of every trade
and calling in which the negro's
natural qualifications are not first con-
sidered. A. r. S.