The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-05-03
Bill ArIp's Letter.

Where is my grindstone? Where is
my rake and my axe? Did anybody ever
hear OF negro stealing a grindstone?
He stole it to sell or else he thought
II was a cheese. I'll bet there are TWEEN
ty negroes in sight of my house who
know all about that grindstone, but they
won't tell. That is a race trait-not
to tell ON one another. Who steals my
young pigeons before we get up in the
morning? We haven't had a squad to
eat in three months.
Mr.. Cleveland made good speech in
New York on the race problem, and so
did Mr.. Parkhurst. but you can't make
a good citizen out of a negro without
he has a master on boss on whom he
has to depend. My opinion from obser-
walton is that Tuskeegee can't do it or
any other school. The more education
the less inclination to work for a living
Where are the Tuskeegee graduates?
Just laying around or teaching school
l read in yesterdays paper whore
gro school teacher was caught in hay
ing made a fake list of his scholars and
drew more money than he was entitled
to- But neither Cleveland nor Parkhurst
nor any other Northern man knows
enough about the negro 10 talk intelH-
gently about him. Nor does this genera
tion of Southern men know much more.
Nobody knows but the few old men who
are left. Our editors and newspaper
men do not know. They are all too
young and most of them came from
stock that did not own negroes in the
cid slavery times l do not assert this
through conceit, but it pains and
astonishes me to hear Northern speakers
and some editors from the South saying
that since the negro was set free he has
made wonderful progress, considering
that for a thousand years he had been
either a savage or slave. Mr.. Cleye-
land said there is still grievous
amount of ignorance, sad amount Of
vieiousness and a tremendous amount
of laziness and thriftlessness 4 inter-
mingled with their citizenship.
If Mr. Cleveland had been an old citi-
zen of the South he would have said
Before freedom came the negro was
doeile, moral. Industrious. and as intel-
ligent as thousands of the uneducaJed
white people Of the South. Not an out
rage was committed by them during the
war from the Potomac to the Rio Grande.
There was not a convict camp nor
chain gang in all the South The man
riage relation was faithfully observed,
and negro families were coutenIed ana
happy, for most of them had kind mas
tiers and mistresses, who would get up
in the night and minister to their sick.
Bad negroes had to be punished, of course
and so 90 bad white children, but it
seldom had to be done. Talk about the
shackles and the chains Of slavery. It is
all rot and imagination. Our children
have master until they are 81. The
negro had one all his life. and, as pr.
Parkhurst said, most of them need one,
and need one now, and so do thousands
Of white people The fact is there are
few people who have not got one. I do
not admit that I have. bur I have a.
mistress, and that is the same thing.
There is not a clerk in a store, whetner
male or female, but is under the corr
troll of somebody; not conductor on
railroad train nor sailor on a ship nor
a pupil in the schools nor policeman in
the towns Nine-tenths of the people in
civilized countries are subordinate to the
other tenth, and it looks like everybody