The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-12
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THE NEGRO QUESTION.
Some Very Sensible and Timely
 Views Upon it.
Taalladega. Ala, Aug. 10. 1!

Taalladega, Ala, Aug. 10, 1903.v The Editor Of The Advertiser: Since reaching years of maturity, I have ever had a desire for just once to be on the popular side of some question, but the desire has ever faded away like | mist before the rising sun. To those who differ with my views of this article, beg of them kindly consideration in view of the fact that have confessed l desire their approval. Speaking out of an experience and ob- servatton Of forty years, certain facts regarding the negro seem proven, to wit: l. That If you educate. the hand. head and heart of the negro. as IS being done you tend to make him chaste, clean and responsible man. For instance, the records of Taliadega College show that no graduate of the school has been convicted of any crime, much less rape. Then. again, my per sonal observation convinces me that edu- cated negro tabor is efficient. I am just completing a brick warehouse on which l have worked twenty-five men. the fore man or whom was coal-black negro. educated, polite, accurate and satislac- tory, while three of the best brick ma sons on the job were Talladega College students. i-
 2. The ignorant, whiskey drinking, crap shooting, pistol-carryings negro Is the man to fear and who commits rape and other felonies.
 3. The landowners are leaving the farms of the South:
 Q) Because of lack of school facilities
 @ Because they fear assaults on wife and children; and the consequent effect is a world famine in cotton.
 The negro will obey the landowner while living on the farm and does make good laborer for him; but he is too ig- norant and irresponsible to be a tenant and he who tries to hire the negro and work him with an overseer is doomed to loose money; therefore, we must either:
 Ql Get all white tenants.
 petent. g
 (s) Or see our lands each year become poorer and less productive.
 years will be too poor to educate her white population, leaving out of consider ation the negro; and if the national Gov ernment insists upon enfranchising the negro, 1t owes a duty to civilization to make him qualify to exercise the privi- lege. To say that an ignorant negro, idea of chastity, and is as irresponsible as human being can be, is a safe and suitable man to have the ballot is dem onstrated failure and disgrace to civiliza- tion.
 5. The Roosevelt plan of seating with negroes and forcing them in offices where repugnant to the patrons of the office, Is driving to cover every white friend of the negro in the South; is making the Tili- mans more blatant; and is rendering an exceedingly complicated condition a menace to our form of government by feeding the. fires of race hatred. The Roosevelt plan is worse than the Tillman plan. in this, that the Anglo-Saxon is a fighting animal, while the negro desires above all else to have peace; consequent ly, in time, the Roosevelt plan will even tuate in the extermination of the negro, while the Tillman plan will result in bru- talking the white man to consent to use the negro as a serf.
 By the national Government educating the hand, head and heart of the people, white and black-upon the Tuskegee plan, and by the several States vigorously en- forcing laws preventing the amalgama- tion of the races, the dangers of rape, of lynchings and of race antagonism will be largely eliminated.
 The negro, like the Jew, will become in- tensely proud of his race, instead of be- ing, as now, ashamed of being a black man.
 We Southern people are intensely proud of colored men like w. H. Councill, and we V ho have been thrown with them on the plantation desire to see them prosper. become good citizens, and useful men. And I submit. If the general Government has the power to make negroes voters, and to prevent any discrimination against him on account of color, this carries with it the power to make of him a competent man to enjoy the privileges granted to him. H, l.. McElderrY.