The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-06-28

| ahead. He will chop down fruit tree | in the winter almost unconscious Of the | fact that 1t will deprive him of the fruit | in the summer, and yet 1t seems neces- | sary to him to sacrifice the fruit tree because during the warm weather he | forgot to cut wood for the winter. This lack of the reasoning faculty runs through all the negroes, and hence 1t Is I have become convinced that the salvation of | the race. if there is a salvation, depends upon their receiving first of all a common school education. supplemented with
 manual training in all of the mechanical
 arts which can be learned by observation
 and imitation and without the use of the
 reasoning faculty"
 mulatto or the hybrid negro in settling the race question, Professor Ashmore gave expression to an opinion which Is at variance with that of other Southern men as to the intellectual capacity of the mixed race. l. T have been watching this feature in the public schools" he said, and I am
 entirely satisfied that the process of anal gamation between the two races. which obtained a considerable start during slavery days, has now practically stopped The number of original mulattoes, that is to say, of children who have white parent and a pure black parent, is rapidly decreasing, so much so that they are becoming extremely rare.
 ''The light colored negroes are mixing
 with the blacks and thus are shading down from a black race to a brown race.
 which change is also influenced to some extent by climatic conditions. the North ern negro becoming browner.
 White blood tells in the negro every time. It Is frequently the case that an apparently black man shows a certain remarkable strength of character. and upon inquiry it Is generally found that a comparatively remote ancestor was white. The union with the white man does promote intellectual activity as matter of course. Often this intellectual activity is grossly misdirected because the combination is not natural and the white mans mind Is mixed up with the negro's lack of it.
 The hybrid race is apparently in most cases physically inferior to both the white and the black races. The combina- ton, therefore, of increased mental activ- ity with a weak physical condition is far from desirable. The black people. how ever, long to be white, and there is persistent tendency among the dark men to affiliate themselves with the yellow girls, and the lighter the bride the more glory there is in the attachment"
 No man can predict the future of the black race,'' said Professor Ashmore. Many Southern people are entirely hopeless as to the good effects of any education whatever upon the blacks. Naturally. as an educator. I take the ground that knowledge is better than ignorance under all conditions We should make an effort first of all to remove the actual illteracy of the negro. The higher education of the few is entirely useless in the face Of the gross ignorance of the mass. The educated negro must depend for his livelihood upon his own race. but he cannot secure support from them until they are comparatively self sustaining. and they cannot be that until they have the ground work of an educa- ton. As to the education of the mass, they need most of all a mere foundation in reading, writing, spelling, ordinary mathematics, and the bare common school branches. This should be inn mediately supplemented by careful in struction in the use of the negroes hands a general industrial education, and train ing In ordinary scientific agriculture. All of this should be done by practical les sons, where the initiative faculty of the negro can be made available, and prac- tically nothing should be left to his reason"
 In going into the question of the in- dustrial capacity of the negro Professor Ashmore explained that he had thousands of whites and negroes under his personal supervision in the school and that what he had observed came as the result of personal experience and was in no sense a matter of mere theory.
 ''The negro sems to make an admira- ble mechanic. He has the use of his hands to an extraordinary degree, is comparatively docile. and. if he has a good teacher, makes a good mechanic, because he Is a good imitator. Here in Savannah they have gone into almost all the ordinary trades. They have no success at all in the arts, because they have no creative faculty whatsoever A negro painter will lay on a color suc- cessfully. but he cannot suggest shades nor create color combinations. Many of the colored artisans here join trade unions of their own, but their allegiance does not sit heavily upon them. The negro is no general. he cannot plan campaign. and he cannot combine successfully. This makes him a failure as a trade unionist. but it does not affect his individual workmanship, which is gen erally good"
 Northern people who like to discuss the negro question from afar off are gen erally unaware of the hard work the Southern white people have to educate not only their own children, but those Ol lHe DldCh pcOple dS we'll. II must US borne in mind that the public school system is supported by general taxation, but at the same time it must never be forgotten that the white people in the South today pay practically all of the taxes.
 Here in Savannah, he said. the negro population pays less than 9 per cent of the entire taxation. We have in this State a poll tax which goes 10 the sup of ha oh o,N1 fhara .N,,Ix 6lO colored people who paid this poll tax out of a total negro population in this city in 1900 of 2S, ,135 being 1000 more than the whites. The average daily at tendance of the colored children for the year 1901 and 1902 was 1876 showing that there were three times as many colored children in the schools as there were colored taxpayers who paid the poll tax. This Is but one item of support for the public schools. and on the ordinary real estate and personal taxes the colored people pay practically nothing.