The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-02-14

or south, should strive to show just the qualities that Lincoln showed. His steadfastness in striving after the right, and his infinite patience and for bearance with those who saw that right less clearly than he did; his ear nest endeayor to do what was best, and yet his readiness to accept the best that was practicable when the ideal best was unattainable; his unceasing effort to cure what was evil, coupled with his refusal to make a bad sftua- ton worse by any ill-judged or ill timed effort to make it better.
 The great civil war in which Lincoln lowered as the loftiest figure left us not only a reunited country, but a country which has the proud right to claim as its own the glory won alike by those who wore the blue and by those who wore the gray by those who followed Grant and by those who fol- lowed Lee; for both fought with equal bravery and with equal sincerity of conviction, each striving for the light as it was given hi into see the light; though it is now clear to all that the triumph of the cause of freedom and of the Union was essential to the well fare of mankind. We are now one peo- pie, a people with failings which we must not blink, but people with great qualities in which we have the right to feel just pride.
 All good Americans who dwell in the north must, because they are good Americans, feel the most earnest friendship for their fellow-countrymen who dwell in the south, a friendship all the greater because it is in the south that we find in it's most acute phase one of the gravest problems be- fore our people; the problem of so dealing with the man of one color as to secure him the rights that no one would grudge him if he were of anoth- CT color. To solve this problem it is, of course, necessary to educate him to perform the duties, failure to per- form which will render him curse to himself and to all around him.
 Most certainly all c1ear-sighted and generous men in the north appreciate the difficulty and perplexity of this problem, sympathize with the south in the embarrassment of conditions for which she is not alone responsible, feel an honest wish to help her where help is practicable, and have the heartiest respect for those brave and earnest men of the south who, in the face of fearful difficulties, are doing all that men can do for the betterment alike of white and of black. The attitude of the north toward the negro is far from what it should be and there is need that the north should act in good faith upon the principle of giving to each bman what is justly due him, of treat ing him on his, worth as man, grant z ing him no special favors, but denying him no proper opportunity for labor and the reward of labor But the pe- culiar circumstances of the south ren- der the problem there far greater and far more acute.
 ii Neither I nor any other man can say that any given way of approach ing that problem will present in our time even an approximately perfect so- lution, but we can safely say that there can never be such solutionat all unless we approach it with the effort to do fair and equal justice among all men; and to demand from them in re- turn just and fair treatment for others. Our effort should be to secure to each man, whatever his color equality of opportunity, equality of treatment be- fore the law. As a people striving to shape our, actions in accordance with the great law of righteousness we can not afford to take part in or be indiffer- ent to the oppression or mal-treatment of any man who, against crushing dis advantages, has by his own industry, energy, self-respect and perseverance, struggled upward to a position which would entitle him to the respect of his fellows, if only his skin were of diff ferent hue. ..
 Every generous impulse in us revolts ato the thought of thrusting down in. stead of helping up such man.To deny any man the fair treatment fgranted to others no better than he is to commit wrong upon him. wrong sure to react in the long run upon those guilty of such denial. The only safe principle upon which Americans can act is that of "all men up," not that of some men down." If in any community the level of intelligence morality and thrift among the colored men can be raised, it is, humanely speaking, sure that the same level among the whites will be raised to an even higher degree; and it is no less sure that the debasement of the blacks will in the end carry with it an at tendant debasement of the whites.
 The problem is so to adjust the rela- tions between two races of different ethnic type that the rights of neither be abridged nor jeoparded; that the backward race be trained so that it