Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-05-17
NEGROES IN THE SOUTH
PART THEY ARE PLAYING IN
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT.
ecial Correspondence of The Star.

Special Correspondence Of The Star.
NEW YORK, May IL, 1905
]. w. Lyons delivered an address last
night at the St James Presbyterian
Church. He discussed at considerable
length the important part the colored peo-
pie are playing In the industrial develop
ment of the late slave-holding states. He
showed from statistics furnished by the
census Office that farms owned or con-
trolled and operated by colored farmers
in the south are more than twice as
productive in proportion to the area cultf-
waited as the farms operated by white
farmers.
In the production of cotton. sugar cane,
rice. manufactured tobacco and cotton seed
oil. they again figure in the most credftable
manner. as to per capita productivity.
In regard to illfteracy. he argued from
the report furnished by the bureau of sta
the coloEed people are illiterate This illi.-
eracy of the eolored people he compared
to the illiteracy of several of the European
states. where the people have been free
from the time whereof the memory of
man runneth not to the contrary" as fol-
lows:
I'm Hungary the illiteracy is AS per cent:
in Portugal, 79.2 per cent; in Spain, s. per
cent; in Russia. 61.7 per cent; in Servia.
1913 per cent, and In Roumania. SS4 per
cent.
OutStr1pped europeans.
He then said: 1.-The colored people of the
United tates have been emancipated but
one generation from slavery, yet have they
outstripped European races in reducing
their flliteracy, races who labor under no
such handicaps people of color are forced
| to contend with here. If this Is not speed
on the part of the colored man, what would
you say of the people just mentioned?'
The speaker quoted with commentator ex-
tensively from the letters of Mr.. William
E. Curtis
but man does not live by bread alone. He
is net happy, and will not be, If his civil
and political privileges are abated one iota.
The wealth of Croesus will not compen-
safe for the Illegally withdrawn or re-
stricted ballot; for the infiiction of the
Jim Crow cars; the practice of peonage
and numerous other degrading and odious
discrimination. Liberty and equality be-
fore the law has been the pillar of cloud by
day and the pillar of fire by night that
has guided this nation through the shoals
quicksandS and storms of the past; ami
woe be unto us when we shall become Il b
different to these virtues.
,"Thirty-nine years ago Gen. Garfield said:
The spirit of our government demands
that there shall be no rigid horizontal
through which some classes of citizens may
never pass up to the surface; but it snail
be rather like the ocean. where every drop
can seek the surface and glisten in the sun.
L Ontll we are True enough anu brave enough
| to declare / nthis country that the hum
blest and the meanest of our citizens shall
not be prevented from passing to the high
est place he is worthy to attain, We shall
never realize freedom in all of it's glorious
meanings. We must give full force and eff
feet to the provision that no person shall be
deprived of life. liberty or property with
out due process of law. We must make
it as true In fact as 1t is in law that THE
citizens of each state shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities Of citizens in the
several states" We must make American
citizenship the shield that protects every
citizen on every foot Of our SOIL
Pursuant to the broad and patriotic plan
thus outlined by the soldier statesman, the
nation proceeded to enact such laws il
was thought would meet every emergency
of citizenship and. viewing the situation
after lapse of thirty years, 1 do not see
how the republic could have improved the
guarantees and defenses of the sacred
right"
Mr. Lyons closed his remarks upon the
practical Acknowledgement of the negro
I'm the south with another extract from the
speech of Garfield:
IT know of nothing more dangerous to
republic than to put into its very midst
four million people stripped of the rights
! of citizenship. robbed of the right of rep
resentation, but bound to pay taxes to the
government If they can endure it, we can
not. The murderer is to be pitied more
than the murdered man; the robber more
than the robbed; and we who defraud four
million citizens Of their rights are injuring
ourselves vastly more than we are injuring
those whom we defraud. l say that the in
equality of rights before the law, which Is
now part of our system, is more danger
Gus to us than to the black man whom it
DISTINGUISHES. 1t is like a foreign sub
stance in the body, a thorn in the fiesh
1t will wound and disease the body polite"