Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1906-05-16

savagedom, he will assuredly relapse
into an idle or savage state, unless
specially governed and forced by in
dustry." The "restraint" in this
case is not necessarily physical !; It
may be moral but contact with the
white man is necessary to keep the
negro from retrogression. He has
i, NEVER INVENTED ANYTHING
mot letters, nor numbers, nor tools,
nor harmony, nor arts, nor architec-
ture; nor has he voluntarily adopted
anything, except rum and firearms.
/ He taught himself to handle imple-
ments and weapons, both of the
rudest and most elementary kind,
and he can talk. There his develop
ment stops. In architecture he has
not progressed beyond the cave, the
hoyel and the nest. In letters he
has not devised symbol for a sound.
In science, his digits represent the
sum total of his capacity for compu-
tation. Art, poetry, mucic-it is the
same old story! Religion, law,
medicine-to-day the natives of
Uganda are perishing by the thou
sands from strange epidemic known
as the ''sleeping Sickness" The pre-
vailing scientific conviction is that it
is caused by poisonous insect of
the mosquito species, to whose at
tacks the negro is peculiarly exposed
from the fact that, unlike the Hin
doc, for example, he has not yet got
80 far as to invent garments and
cover his nakeduess. And the worst
of it is that, being thus, he is station
ary. The instinct as we'll as the de-
sire for development is lacking. Such
being the indisputable fact, Baker,
writing in 1866, closes his long emu
meration of conditions with start
ling corollary-"So long as it is
generally considered that the negro
and the white man are to be gov
erned by the same laws and guided
by the same management, 80 long
will the former remain thorn in the
side of every community to which he
may belong"
CONFLICT INEVITABLE.
If true, this strikes at the very
root of our American polity-the
equality of man before the law. We
cannot conform to it. If the fact
must be conceded-so much the
worse for the fact! By all, good
Americans, at least, the theory will
none the less be maintained, the
principle confidently asserted We
are thus confronted by a condition.
The existence of an uneradicable and
insurmountable race difference is in
disputable. The white man and the
black man cannot flourish together,
the latter being considerable in num-
Der, under the same system of gov
ernment. Drawn apart, they will
assuredly become antagonistic. An
opposite theory can be maintained,
and will work with more or less fric-
tion where the white greatly domi-
mates, and the black element is a
negligible quantity; when, however,
the black predominates, the theory
breaks down, and some practical
solution is reached not it conformity
with it. As Hamlet was led to OBJ
serve in quite different connection
-"This was sometime a paradox,
but now the time gives it proof"
What, then, is to be our Ameri.
can outcome? The negro squats at
our hearthstone; we can neither as
simulate nor expel him. The situa-
tion in Egypt is comparatively
simple. The country will be devel-
oped by European money and brain,
and the African will find his natural
place in the outcome. Facts will be
recognized, and polity adopted in
harmony with them. Will the re-
suits reached there react on us in
America? Who now can say? The
problem is intricate. Meanwhile one
thing is clear-the work done by
| those who were in nnlitical control at