The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-01-02
CARL scHunx oH THE NnoRo

SSttot& t4 ttzS S&at14t N41MS1t VI e>S Clure's Magazine addresses himself in TO
 bust style to the ever recurring and eyel present question. ''what Is to be dons
 with the negro?"
 We can commend the article to al Southern readers as voicing more forci' bly than any writing of the kind we can recall the Northern view of the race issue. Contrary to what our Northern friends seem to think the South hears with more patience what can be said of the negro by his Northern friends than these same friends exhibit in listening to the negro's Southern weli-wishers. Mir. schurz tries to be fair and is not fair. From his study in New York City, profting by two trips through the south' he assumes to tell the Southern people they are on the brink of destruction be- cause they do not regard the negro as highly as he does; that they were wrong in contending for slavery once and equally as wrong in denying our black brother the fullest participation accord ing to his lights in the economic and political development of the country. We may day. by way of parenthes's, that there never was a more idle and mischievous notion than that slavery de- graded the negro. It did degrade the white man and 1t impoverished the soil. That 1t injured the negro is disproved by the striking advance in comfort and happiness he made over his African an- cestors. These remain where they were two thousand years ago buried under the weight of barbarian. In America the negro participates largely in all the benefits of more complex and civilized life and does this emphaticaliy to a greater extent in the South than at the North. Booker Washington knows this and declares it everywhere. Here. too. is the solution of what Mir. Schurs and all ssNorthern observers like him find so re- marhable in the quiet industry of the black during the war. Is the negro ex- traordinariiy fJrbearing.. longsuffering and humane, the peaceful OK of the human species? He was quiet during the excite
 lnent of war because he was in the main contented. He was loyal because the treatment he received incited to loyalty. If one one-thousandth of what the North ern anti-slavery agitstor conceived to be true of the slave system had been true the women and children of the South
 would have been slaughtered in their beds.
 There are two points in the Mcclure paper that especially invite notice. Tie first is that the negro raises the cotton
 crop and the second that an ignorant
 white man Is as dangerous as a voter as
 m ignorant black.
 That the negro is an important factor
 in raising our cotton crop no one would
 be so foolish as to deny; that you can
 build a whole system of politics on his
 work fin the cotton fields is doubly ab-
 surd. This Mfr. sehurz undertakes to do.
 No exact figures are available. for TO
 record is kept or will ever be kept of
 the precise number of bales of cotton
 raised by whites and blacks, but it IS
 well within the observation of every
 Southern man that the bulk of the cot
 ton crop is grown in so called white
 counties. The census returns confirm
 this. Texas, which raises nearly one
 third of the entire crop of the South
 contains an overwhelming number oi
 whites in comparison with negroes and there white hands plants, white hands cul-
 tivate and white hands gather the cotton The negro is useful in raising cotton
 he is by no means indispensable as Mr Schurs seems to think.
 Is an ignorant white man with ballot as distinctly q menace to orderly gov ernment as a negro in like case? Mir Schurz thinks SO We think not. We DO neve thoroughly in education. Wisely directed it elevates both the white ant the black. But governments are no founded on book learning. They ar founded primarily on instincts. The whit has the instinct for government; the nc gro has not. This is not to beg the ques' don. History proves 1t. We have right under our noses. in Hayti and San Do mingo, examples of negro Republics, gov erned by educated negroes and what are they but a stench to all men? On 'h' other hand nearly every State in this Union has been founded by pioneers un-
 tutored in books. who had the instinct fol
 affairs. who assembled, under trees Il
 may be, organized legislatures, set uT
 the judiciary, built schools and churches
 as naturally as a bee frames its cells
 That the negro is without this instinct
 is proved not only by his absurd ex- periments in other lands but with us
 We have tried hina and paid dearly fol
 our experience. We have no mind to oA-
 pertinent further with negro majorities
 We are better off and they arc better
 of. The ignorant white man with an In-
 stinct for politics gives us more promise
 than an educated negro even.
 On the occasion of MT. schurz's second
 visit to the South in the winter of 1854
 he was asked the pointed question ''whAi
 does the better element of the Northern
 people think of Southern election meth
 ods?" ''The better element there" he re-
 piled. ''are SO pleased to see the South
 orderly and prosperous that they are not
 disposed to inquire too curiously how this
 has been brought about"
 This was good sense then and it is good
 sense now.
 | - &
 | ARfaafaatnpi rnttaf attralv kSa ther y,o ro lt