The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-04-15
CLEVELAND ON THE NEGRO
DISCUSSES RACE PROBLEM AT
 MEETING FOR TUSKEGEE.

ViciOusness and Tremendous Amount
 the Nine million Negroes-Hope for
 Their Future-FeeIing tn the South,
 New York, April 14.z-Former Presi- dent Grover Cleveland was the princi-
 pal speaker at a meeting held in the concert hall at Madison Square Garden
 tonight in the interests of the Tuske-
 gee Normal and Industrial institute.
 Among those on the platform with MT. Cleveland were Mayor Low, who presided, Booker T. Washington, Ed gar G. Murphy, Dr. Lyman Abbott, President Nicholas Murray Butler and Dean J. Van Amringe of Columbia, W. H. Baldwin, Chancellor McCracken of New York university, John Dewitt Warner and George F. Peabody. Mrs. Cleveland sat in the gallery with MT. and Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, who are MT. Cleveland's hosts while he is in the city.
 MT. Cleveland, who was greeted with prolonged applause as he was intro duced by Mayor Low, said:
 T have come here tonight as a sim cere friend of the negro, and should be very sorry to suppose that my good and regular standing in such company needed support at this late day either from certificate or confession of faith. Inasmuch, however, as there may be differences of thought and sentiment among those who profess to be friends Of the negro, I desire to declare my self as belonging to the Booker Wash ington-T Tuskegee section of the organi- Zation. believe that the days of Un- cle Toms Cabin are past. I believe slaves free, nor the enactment that suddenly invested them with the rights of citizenship, any more purged them of their racial and 'slaverybre imper- fections and deficiencies than it chang ed the color Of their skin.
 T believe. that among the nearly nine millions of negroes who have been intermixed with our citizenship, there is still a grievous amount of ignorance, a sad amount of viciousness and tremendous amount of Iaziness and thriftlessness I believe that these con- ditions inexorably present to the white people of the United States to-each in his environment and under the man. date of good citizenship-a problem, which neither enlightened self-interest nor the higher motive of human sym pathy will permit them to put aside. believe our fellow countrymen in the southern and late slave-holding states, surrounded by about nine-tenths or nearly eight millions, of this entire ne- gro population and who regard their material prosperity, their peace and even the safety of their civilization, ir- terwoven with the negro problem, are entitled to our utmost consideration and sympathetic fellowship. I am thor oughly convinced that the efforts of Booker Washington and the methods of Tuskegee Institute point the way to a safe and beneficient solution of the vexatious negro problem at the south; and I know that the good people at the north, who have aided these ef- forts and methods, have illustrated the highest and best citizenship and the most Christian and enlightened philanthropy.
 T cannot, however keep out of my mind tonight the thought that with all we of the north may do the realiza- tion of our hopes for the negro must, after all, mainly depend-except so far as it rests with the negroes themselves upon the sentiment and conduct of the leading and responsible white men of the south, and upon the mainte- nance of a kindly and helpful feeling on their part towards those in their midst who So much need their aid and encouragement.
 ''I need waste no time in detailing the evidence that this aid and encourage ment has thus far been generously forthcoming. Schools for the educa- ton of negro children and institutions for their industrial training are scat tered all over the south and are liber- ally assisted by. the southern public and private funds. So far as I am in formed, the sentiment in favor of the largest extension and broadest infiu- ence of Tuskegee Institute and kindred agencies is universal; and I believe that without exception, the negroes who fit themselves for useful occupa- tion and service find willing and cheer ful patronage and employment among their white neighbors. The man who is beyond doubt the best authority in the world on the prospects of the ne- gro race, he who founded and is now at the head of Tuskegee Institute and is the most notable representative of negro advancement, said at the Att lanta exposition in 1895: And in this connection it is we'll to bear in mind that, whatever other sins the south may be called to bear, when it comes to business pure and simple, it is in the south that the negro is given a mans chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom, we may overlook the fact that the masses Of us are to live by the pro- duction of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in pro- portion as we learn to dignify and glor- ify common labor, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the su- perficial and the substantial-the orna- mental gewgaws of life and the useful. 1
 T do not know how it may be with other northern friends of the negro, but |