Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1902-05-14
Especial Correspondence.l ]

Especial Correspondence
Senator Tillman has recently been
quoted by some of his enemies as hav-
ing said, THE education of the negro
Is like the training of monkey-a
mere process of adding to its tricks"
Even if that corresponds TO certain re-
suits with many of our colored breth,
ren, it does not need to imply anything
wrong on the part of the coored race.
The fault may lie in the kind of edu.
cation they receive and in the sur
roundings under which most of them
have to live, whether they like it or
not. Then education has always man
aged to increase the capacity of evil.
doing with piles of men of all races,
white. black, yellow or any other color.
That, again, does not need to be the
fault of individuals, but that of the
wrong social conditions that any de-
fective education is bound to breed.
The fact is that we have made n regu-
lar fetch of the word education and
assumed that it did not need any elias
sillcation. Just as if education could
not be wrong as well as right, sound
or not, bent upon the realization of hu-
man whims or divine ideals! Just as if
education did not at least partially rest
on those who receive it, and so on their
being more or less responsive to cor
rect or twisted interpretations of that
human language that no modern ma
ton has yet learned how to make Tex
act" through precise definitions of the
principal words dealing on human du
ties and intimately connected with the
moral law! The utter absence of such
definitions actually converts our hu
man language into a veritabe tower of
Babel since we give to each man the
ridiculous freedom of using such words
under any vapid or fantastic meaning
of his own.
No wonder that in the spiritual or
der in the realm of ethics and social
morality we are yet houndering
through the wilderness and never
know where we are at. An emphatic
acknowledgment of such general
mental condition was made in Har.
pers Weekly March 10 by one of the
two usual writer's on daily or current
events. He says: "There is something
about organization that seems to be
in conflict with morality. Gather ten
honest men into a gas company. and
soon will they try to buy the common
council. Gather a hundred God fear.
ing people into q church. and in pro.
portion to its yigor it will need a care
ful restriction of its power. Gather
multitude of people in a nation. and
the bigger and richer the more its gov
ernment will tend to be regulated by
the main chance, caring no more for
moralities than dynamite does for mu.
nicipal ordinances. Government does
what times seem to prescribe and to
let history make all explanations"
All those lines and thoughts are very
sweet and to the point, coming from
dreadfully conservative weekly which
seldom has the courage to see any
thing rotten in our national life. But
why blame organization for the evils
that men agree upon indorsing as long
as such evils enrich somebody by i'm
pOverishing the bottom workers with
out whom no organization could exist?
| Why not lay the Ak of criticism on
that education that has not yet taught
men how to be honest only in so far as
it Is necessary to preserve their com.
mercia credit and escape the Jail or
something worse? And why speak of
God fearing people grouped in church.
es? Have we got any such people in
quantity or quality large or important
enough to make any show on the sub
ject of divine morality?
A few years ago The Zion Herald of
Boston was frank enough to tell the
world one of the facts unfolded by
all historical deyelopment-viz The
church has preached an abstract, not
an applied, gospel. 1t has declared
the truth. but avoided its meaning to
the Christian and society,""
Don't you see how nicely we have
| packed up education with tricks in
forms the most diabolical? And if the
negro learns trivial tricks with the ed
ucatiOn we give him some of our best
white people learn tricks of vast i'm
portance because they spread them
on the high level of the lawmaking
power, where they fix the kind of
morality most adapted to play hide
and seek with the wealth produced by
the hard labor of the millions who live
and die in poverty.
A work of giants has to be done by
somebody. We have to demolish our
material mind. We have to burn noun
| tains of fallacies, alteration and con-
ceits, and out of the ashes the truth
| has to come, the truth and its hand
maiden, freedom. Those two elements,
that we are yet trampling upon in the
realm of law, must be made the SUI
preme force of civilization if that name
! is to mean something more than the
crucifXion of humanity, since that is
| what civilization is yet. All we have
| learned thus far through our own edu-
cation and progress is to demoish di-
vine morality by law" and to legalize
the morality of our own predatory in
stincts and conceits. That is progress
in incidentals, retrogression in funda-
| mentalS. JOSE GROS.