The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1905-09-01
Bio Business Conference Of the
Black Man Is Held.
Something Of the Jews Who
Swarm New York.
Half of the School Children In
Metropolis Diseased.
Especial to The Free Press.l

Especial to The Free Press.l
New York, Aug. 26-In the hetero-
geneous life of Manhattan, the negro
seems to hold the center of the stage
lust now. to an extent which he would
hardly have dreamed of ten years ago.
What makes it of less avail for the
benefit of the black man in general is
that two types of negro are crowding
each other for prominence.
The sane and safe African brothers,
who have been holding a business con-
vention in a hall on Fiftyninth street,
reading papers on commercial topics and
listening to praiseful addresses, from
white men of note, are, nevertheless,
having a hard time to overcome the in
fiuenee, upon the public mind, of their
lawless brethren who live life of Ii
cense and razors in the crowded district
known as "San Juan Hill," and who
almost weekly are engaged in deadly
melee with the police.
But the Afro American in this lati
tude is not slow, whatever his caste,
to learn the value of Organization" and
a legal method of procedure, and the
black skin after all is the insignia of
union. The colored preacher is not
wasting time eXhorting the bellicose
members of his flock to ''turn the other
cheek" Instead, he has been going
about raising a fund to make it hot
for the policemen who used clubs and
pistols when the brickbats were being
showered upon their heads from the
roofs of tenements i'm the San Juan
quarter. The developments of the past
few years and the influx of up-to-date
colored population from Chicago and
problem" for New York which will fill
the Southern white man with sardonic
joy.
When Messrs. Schiff. Strauss and the
other Jewish milionaires who visited
Portsmouth were trying to show M.
Witte how valuable its Hebrew popula
ton of 100000 might become to Russia
if it was only given fair field, they
had in the American Jew great store
to draw from in the way of illustration.
What the activity of the Jew is in the
realm # mind anyone can determine
by visit to the great city libraries.
The most studious faces to be encoun-
tered there, among the people who come
to read, are Jewish. And they are max
ing their way into every place in the
city where there is book to be had
Fifteen years ago the young men of
the Jewish district swarmed Cooper
Union. Now they are in the Aston IL
brary in equally large numbers. These
are not the well-to-do. They are the
working class. who toll all day long
in groceries or grimy tailor shops, and
at night pore over the heavier sort of
literature. They are masters, often, of
three or four languages, and they alb
sorb the most abstruse and difficult sort
of learning as sponge soaks up water.
They graduate from these Libraries into
law offices, and some of the best brains
of the New York bar came to their po-
sitions by this route.
Another indication of this incessant
mental activity is found in the records
of the board of education. 1t is stated
that two thirds of the men and more
than half the women licensed in the
month of July to teach in the New
York schools were Jews, although the
race has only about a fifth of New
York's population. In Columbia and
New York universities the student body
has vast percentage of Jewish youth,
and these young men, most of them, in
Columbia at least, the better class, do
what perhaps no other similar class in
the world dream of doing-they 90 of
Saturdays down into the East Side and
labor among young fellows of their own
age, trying to keep up ambition, talk
ing about the needs of personal cleanli.
ness and the thousand and one other
things that 60 to fit the lowly to take
better place in the world
Professionalism in America has known
no more important event, perhaps, thar
the Inter Church conference which is te
begin here on Nov. Is, with the avowed
purpose of uniting the denominations
Brethren of twenty four different relig
ious persuasions are to be there Sixty
speakers are already billed and among
the presiding officers are bishops of ev
cry Protestant denomination that ha:
bishop, Supreme Court Justices, gov
errors and what not. President Roose
welt rs on record in favor of the pur
poses of the conference. The program