The age-herald., 1901-12-07

race qualities, race antagonisms and oth- CT factors.
 Like all other ethnic problems, 1t must rest upon economic conditions and can only be solved on economic principles. Sentiment may hasten action, but after all. the final solution must be based on economic principles.
 After the war the entire force of the government, the undivided sentiment of ergies of thousands and tens of thou sands of devoted men and women were applied to the solution of this question on other than economic grounds. For a time the work appeared to many pre- eminently successful. Paegans were writ ten in praise of a miilennial condition The negro race. sustained by all the pow CT of the national government and by the sentiment of the great body of the people Of the north, was invested with the powers and attributes of authority. The white people of .the south, disfran- chised, impoverished and discredited. were left in position historically and not inaptly described as ''prostrate and shackled" The result, was absolute dis aster.
 The government troops were withdrawn and the negro power fell to pieces, like a house of cards, almost in night.
 The north supposed that the ballot was the talisman that would bring sal vation; the south knew better than this. but hoped that education might avail. To this end serious efforts were made throughout the south to establish and carry through honestly plan to give free education to the negro.
 The report of the commissioner of ed- ucation for 1S9S-99 shows that the sixteen former slave states and the District of Columbia had, since 1S69-7O, expended on the education of the coloreo race $10., 860 e61.
 The south is now spending on negro public schools over six and a half mill lion dollars annually. Of this sum con- siderably over 90 per cent Is paid by the whites by voluntary taxation, and 1ess than 10 per cent, in some sections less than 3 per cent, is paid by the negroes. Suggestions are occasionally made by in- diyiduals that the money derived from the taxation of the two races should be separated and applied exclusively to the education of each race. This proposal has recently been reported adversely by committee of the constitutional con- vention now in session in Virginia. It haar O IT was stated on the floor of the Virginia convention in a debate on the school fund that the total amount or public school money in the state last year was s1,9T,- 900; that the total negro taxes in the commonwealth were about $125, GOO. In the village of Fairfax the taxes paid by ne- groes toward the negro school were $1.0S.
 It is the firm belief of many that the negro is in some respects in a worse con- dition today than he was thirty-odd years ago. when he was endowed with the cleo tive franchise It is the conviction of many more that but for the terrible mis- takes which were made in Initiating him into freedom he would today be in far better position than he will be fifty years hence. They cite as reasons the growing divergence of the two races, the loss of the old relation of kindliness which once existed between the old whites and the old blacks; the coldness, if not the hos tility, that Is growing up between the younger element of the two races and the tendency of the negroes towards sol- darity of race feeling on every question, t1l. cal questions. These and all other mat ters relating to the subject can only be determined after wide investigation con ducted in the most serious and philo- sophie spirit.
 Today social intercourse Is closer be- tween the whites and the older negroes than between the whites and the younger geheration of negroes.
 The two principal reasons for this are, in the writer's opinion, first, the manner in which the negroes generally, under the instigation of ignorance and passion. con- ducted themselves in the years succeed ing the war, when the white people of the South were forced by military power to stand by in impotent wrath and were
  worst element of their former slaves made rulers over them and given the pow CTS which the forefathers of the whites had secured by generations of courage and aspiration.
 Another and perhaps the principal req son is the numerical power of the negroes in the South and their hostile attitude of solidarity which under exietinO eirouv, stances might make any relinquishment of the position of the white people of the South result in a serious practical men, ace to the white race. To this has been added the knowledge of the debaslng re- suits of free social intercourse in other countries, which is abhorrent to the An glo-Saxon's pride, if not to his instinct. Whether others agree with them or not, a view held with absolute unanimity by nearly twenty millions of people must be seriously reckoned with. Unfortunately the matter has been mainly regarded po- litically and the discussion has rarely been without temper.
 A negro member of Congress, in de- fence and eulogy of his race declares in a speech delivered on January go, 19o1 that since the war the negroes have re- duced the illiteracy of the race at least 40 per cent; that they have in practice over 2000 lawyers and a corresponding number of doctors that they have about 10000 farms and homes valued at about S750. .000, 900, and personal property valued at about S17o 0OO GOO; that of this they have over 60Q,000 acres of land in the