The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-01-03
so,rr woRps or TRUTH.

The fIcnmOnu limes, m uiScussiHS the negro problem in It's various phases. says:
 There are grades of society among the whites, there are little social clidues in every community. and there must be grades and social cliaues among the blacks It all comes back to this propo- sition, that the black man must lift him. self up by his own exertions and must rise by his own endeavors and upon his own merits, or not at all. He must make his place in the country.
 Commenting on this paragraph. The virginian- Pilot remarks:
 It is a fact, and one that we have heard thoughtful leaders among the me- groes lament. that in most communities the negro seems incapable of establishing what may be called the line of respect ability--of drawing the line as to offend- CTS against morality as the whites do.
 There is much force in these views of the negro and his nature and habits. Whether it Is owing to some characteris- tic inherent in the negro race. or wheth- CT it comes up from the days of slavery when all negroes chung to each other. is not plain, but the fact remains that they have but little inclination to draw any kind of line between the good and the bad. They have little or no social dis tinctions and apparently care but little for character.
 That the white people may at times carry class and caste too far is undoubt- edly true. The accident of birth or the advantages of wealth are too frequently regarded as the only qualifications neces- sary to mark the line between "the com mon people, and the select or elect few. and this is often illogical and unjust, but it is a characteristic of the white race, and helps, at least, to keep the disrepu- table and criminal classes separate and distinct from the better citizens.
 The negro appears to have no such feel ings. As people they make no attempt to draw the line between the honest and the vicious, the lazy and the industrious or the reputable and disreputable mem- bers of their race The fact that one is a negro apparently opens to him all the doors of his race, and the lowest and most evil-minded are not discredited in the estimation of the others. It is this spirit of equality felt and practised by them which does more than any. thing else to keep the race down.
 And, although the negroes themselves may not be willing to admit the fact, it Is this same spirit of hanging together which Is responsible for many of the lyncfings which occur in the South. If. when a negro commits heinous crime, the other members of his race would as- sist in his apprehension, instead of hiding him. as they almost invariably do, there would be far fewer cases of mob law than there now is. When it becomes known in a negro community that one of their race has committed a crime against the laws, whether that crime be theft, murder or rape, all other negroes seem to think it their duty to protect and hide the offender. If they would join the whites in finding and arresting crim- inais and delivering them into the hands of the officers of the law, lynchings would be far less frequent than they now are. AS long, however, dS liio hebiooo' e"ON and bad. hang together and make no | effort to either punish crime or to make IL unpopular. they will find it difficult to elevate themselves in the estimation or the country. In short, if they make no effort to establish higher social stand ards, and apparently have no desire to
 elevate themselves. they should not com plain that others look down on them. There are reputable industrious, law abiding negroes, but do the others take them as models? By no means. col | ored bully and all-around law-breaker is | looked up to by the great majority of negroes with far more respect and adml- | ration than is the most thoroughly re- | spectacle and advanced man among them,
 and one desperado, though he may be
 saturated from crown to sole with all
 manner of crime and wrong-doing, can | control and lead more men and women of
 his race than can the highest type Of ne-
 gro in America. As long as this feeling
 and habit prevails among them there
 seems little prospect of any real advance
 in their condition. The really good he-
 eroes must set themselves to elevate the
 vicious or must separate themselves en-
 tirely from the lawless members of their
 kind and let them bear all the conse-
 quences of their wickedness and crime