The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1905-09-16

| is being forced to look to the Old World for
| his labor. The simple truth is, the south will
! lag behind the world industrially in Just so far
as she depends on negro labor. The idea that
a white man cannot work in the fields of the
south is exploded. Only one-third of the
cotton crop is today raised by negro labor.
Even now the relations of the races, with the
negro an integral of the white man s industrial
scheme, become more and more difficult.
A Gulf That Grows Wide.
Professor Kelly Miller say: SIT is a matter
of common observation that the races are
growing further and further apart.
Mr.. Washington says on this point: ''for
the sake of the negro and the southern white
man there are many things in the relations of
the two races that must soon be changed
(page 65). The point | raise is that educa-
ton necessarily drives the races further and
further apart and Mr.. Washington brand of
education makes the gulf between them if any
thing little deeper. If there is one thing
southern white man cannot endure it is an ed
ucated negro. What's to be the end of it if
the two races are to live forever side by side
in the south
man so much skill and brains that he can cut
oats like the white man-then he can compete
with him.
And then the real tragedy will begin. Does
any sane man believe that when the negro
ceases to work under the direction of the
southern white man, this arrogant, 'rapa-
cious'' and ''intoerant" race will allow the
negro to master his industrial system; take
the bread from his mouth, crowd him to the
wall and place a mortgage on his house?
Competition is war--the most fierce and bru-
tai of all its forms. Could fatuity reach
sublimer height than the idea that the white
will stand idlu he and fhsu arf.o
ance? What will be do when put TO the test?
He will do exactly what his white neighbor
in the north does when the negro threatens
his bread-kill him
Abraham Lincoln foresaw this tragedy when
he wrote his Emancipation Proclamation, and
he asked congress for an appropriation of
| billion dollars to colonize the whole negro
race. He never believed it possible to assim-
iaie the negro into our national life. This
nation will yet come back to Lincolns plan,
still so eloquently advocated by the Negro
Bishop. Henry NJ. Turner.
1t is curious how the baldheaded assertion
Of lie can be repeated and repeated until
millions of sane people will accept the bare
assertion as an established fact. At the close
of the war, Mr.. Lincoln. brooding over the
insoluble problem of the negro's future which
his proclamation had created, asked General
/ Benjamin f. Butler to devise and report TO
him Immediately plan to colonize the me-
groes. General Butter, naturally hostile to
the idea, made at once his famous, false and
facetious report, ''that ships could not be
found to carry the negro babies TO Africa as
fast as they are born y The president was
asSassinated few days later. This lie is now
forty years old, and Mr.. Booker I. Washing
ton actually repeats it as a verbal inspiration,
though entirely unconscious of its historic or.
igin.
We have spent about $500, ,0O0, 900 on negro
education since the war. 0ne.half of this
sum would have been Sufficient to have made
Liberia a rich aud powerful negro State. Lii.
IBERIA is capable OF supporting every negro in
America. Why not face this question square
Iy? We are temporizing and playing with it.
All our educational schemes are compromises
and temporary makeshifts. Mr.. Booker L.
Nashingtou's work is Que of noble aims. A
branch of it should be Immediately established
in Monrovia the capital of Liberia. A gift of
ten millions would do this, aud establish
COLONY of half million negroes within two
years. They could lay tine foundations of
free black republic which within twenty five
years would solve race problem on the
only rational basis within human power. Col
onization is not failure. 1t has never been
tired.
We owe this to the negro. At present we
are deceiving him aud allowing him to deceive
himself. He hopes aud dreams of amalgama-
tion, forgetting that seifpreservation is the
first law Of nature. Our present attitude of
hypocrisy is iuhuman toward weaker race
brought TO our shores by the sins of our faith
ers. We owe him square deal, and we will
never give 1t to him ON this continent.