The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-02-19

Richard weightman's washington Spe-
 cial to Chicago Tribune.
 To those who understand the actual conditions at the South this eternal agi- tatinn about the negro is tlresome. Every Northern politician who wants to concentrate attention upon himself; every professional philanthrOpist with an incurable appetite for other peoples affairs; every doctrinaire with a social prophyIactic he doesn't dare to exploit at home-all these and more are busy with the downtrodden negro.
 They all want to uplift and improve the colored brother and eacn has pre- gcrlption of his own device. It never occurs to these doubtless worthy per sons that they could Sdo tho negro no greater injury than by this persistent segregation of his race-this putting him apart In a class without reference to Individual merit or standing or char acter--the establishment of this sharp line of de1nition, with its perpetual re- hinder to both races that they are es sentially and therefore hopelessly dis. tinct.
 Negroes Are of Many Kinds.
 It never seems to dawn upon the busybody mind that there are as many varieties of negroes as of whites-good and bad. virtuous ahd degraded, ener- getlc, and worthless, self-respectins and contemptible, prosperous and for lorn. It Is so much easier to ignore facts of importance and to swell the parrot cry. '"rhe negro must be lifted " All Southern men, however. know that there are thousands of negroes who do not want to be improved, as if they were vegetables or cattle or poultry; who are getting on very well in their own way, and object emphatically to exaltation by wholesale.
 Nobody considers the Irish. the French, the Germans or any other of the Aryan subdivisions en masse. Tn approaching them with measures of philanthropy and altruism We talk about "the poor" or the ignorant" or 'the afflicted" or the victims of the slums." We do not beat a drum and declare from platforms and rostrums that we are about to rescue the leu tonic or the Slavonic or some other race, as the case may be. They would resent 1t.
 We take these offensive liberties with the negroes, however, and they are so acucstomed to exploitation that they submit. Some of them thrive on it. Their self-appointed leaders and opponents prosper on the so-called race issue. and the white philanthropists of the North. who are more profoundly ig- norant and unsympathetic in connec- tlon with the negro than any human language can describe, never harbor q doubt as to the usefulness Of their propaganda or the wisdom of their methods. Between the two. forces the respectable negroes, who are in over wheIming majority, are cruelty misrep- resented
 Prosperous Blacks in MisSisEIppi.
 A few days ago the representative in Congress of one of tine Mississippi dis tricts made statement which was thus condensed in a New York newspaper:
 'Adr. Humphreys district has fewer whites in proportion to negroes than any other section of the South. In one town the negroes fill all the offices and have a bank which pays dividend of I7 per cent In Greenville almost every negro owns his home. The negroes have their own newspapers, physicians, druggists, booksellers, and mechanics. Negroes who own their farms furnish