The Tupelo journal., 1903-03-13

live on fruit and honey. My friend
says he has framed hives ten feet
square, and robs the hives every
other day in dry season, and it is a
profitable business.
But / don't see any good reason
for driving negroes from one town
or county to another. 1t is not play
ing fair with the other towns. Chief
Ball reports that he is driving them
out of Atlanta. 1t does not seem to
concern him where they go, so they
leave Atlanta. Why not take up the
vagabonds and punish them under
the vagrant law and put them to
work; why not call back the whip
ping post? 1t will cure the negro of
small crimes and idleness quicker
than anything in the world. When
they get into the chain gang they
get a whipping-post or no post
and a good whipping before
hand would keep many a n from
going there. But the most remark
able treatise Oh the negro and his
race traits has just been written and
spoken by Prof. Dowd, of Wisconsin
a northern source is amazing. He
has been down here, and gone from
town to town and studied the ne
gro's actual condition, and declares
he is OF the downward grade in NOR
atty, in health and physical condi-
ton, and the race will become ex-
tinct il some great change is not made
in their education and some radical
control placed over their morals.
They have almost ceased to marry,
but take up and cohabit at pleasure,
and change when they feel like it.
He says that out of 100 families he
visited at Durham, n. c., only 30
of the women had husbands; and the
children are almost universally sup
ported by the mothers, while the IA
theirs spend their time in idleness or
have took up" with some other
woman He writes like he had been
to Cartersville, for in sight of my
house is a woman with three sets of
children-six in abby three IA
theirs, but she has no husband, and
never been married. She works hard
for those children, and stands we'll
in the church. Her sister has four
children and no husband, for he has
abandoned her. The colored barber
who shaved me for years had three
wives with children, and ran away
with another one, and went to Bes-
semer, and there snapped her off.
There are no doubt a hundred bastard
negro children within our town lin
it's, and as Prof. Dowd says, the mar
riage relation is now almost In
known among negroes. This degra-
dation of the negro has come along
so gradually and insidiously that our
people have gotten used to it, and no
attention is paid to it by courts or
grand j%uries. We hire these very ne-
gro women for domestic servants, and
many of them are good ones. Their
children go to the public schools, and
in time the boys get big enough to
steal and the girls to follow their
mothers examples. When will all this
folly stop?
But just now there seems to be a
cessation of political hostilities about
the negro and the race problem. A
kind of reaction has come over the
northern mind, and they, too, are
getting tired of the negro. In fact,
nobody seems concerned about him
except a few politicians like Crum-
packer, or S~tumpsucker, or whatever
his name is. But ever and anon there
comes a laundering sound from
Mount Olympus, where Jupiter Ton
ans sits enthroned in royal dignity.
Hank! Jupiter has spoken. Then
shook the hills. with thunder riven,
and louder than the bolts of heaven,
we hear a mighty voice that rolls it's
echoes from the Atlantic to the Pa
cific and ~reverberates among the
clouds and is borne on electric cur-
rents from Washington to Indianola,
and whispers: "Stand by Minnie!"
and they stand. Minnie ought to go
up there and take refuge in the
white house where Jupiter could
stand by her day and night. Now let
that be the G. o. P.'s shibboleth and
let it roll down the corridors of time
as a northumberland by Minnie!"
Bill Arp, in Atlanta Constitution.