New-York tribune., 1906-04-11
DIVIDING SOUTHERN SCHOOL FUNDS.

The movement TO divide the school money
between whites and negroes in proportion to
their contributions crops up in one Southern
state after another and keeps the progressive
men in the lead of educational affairs in them
constantly on the alert. In Georgia there is dan
ger that political rivalry for the votes of the
grOundlings may soon lead TO the incorporation
of this plan into some platform. In Mississippi
Governor Vardaman used it an instrument
for climbing to power, and in Alabama the
subject is being agitated for the first time. The
college presidents and others who profess
sionalIy interested in white education have been
unfailing in their opposition to the division.
The late Chancellor Hill of the University of
Georgia, when few years ago the question was
before the Legislature of his state, took a lead
ing part in saving Georgia from step which
would have doomed a large part of its pOpula-
tOn to barbarism.
The Southern states bear a heavy burden
through the necessity of maintaining a double
school system, and doing it without large wealth,
under all the disadvantages Of rural conditions.
They are entitled to great credit for their cour-
age and their general fairness in trying TO give
as good schools as circumstances warrant to all
their people. 1t is not true. az some critics of
the socalled Ogden movement" took occasion
TO say with reference to the Tuskegee celebra-
ton. that the Northern philanthrOpiSts are pri-
marily interested in the negro and have no wish
to relieve the educational poverty of the white
people The Northern attendants at the educa-
tional conferences have visited the average
as many white colOred schools and taken the
greatest interest in the development of Oppor-
tunitieS for the isolated white youth, in the
lengthening of their terms and the improvement
of their teaching. Colleges and academies for
whites all through the South are receiving the
help of the General Education Board. Likewise
in this matter Of separating the school fund,
Southern educators and Northern students OF
public questions who sympathize with their eff
forts for the enlightenment of the common coun-
try do not take their position as special cham
pions of the negro, but as devotees of American
civilization. "The Mobile Register journal
thoroughly devoted to Southern traditions thus
puts the case:
The whites bound. in self-protection to
help the negroes to an education of some sort
If education is moral influence q aIl-and of
this there should not be a doubt entertained by
| intelligent beings-we must educate the negroes.
we may shirk our duty in this regard, but only
at our own cost. What should fail to pay
for the schooling Of the negroes would have
TO pay indirectly in the maintenance of tails
and in repression of lawIessness, the result of
ignorance II we had S,O90000 Hottentots here
all newly arrived and without any education
We would be in bad way indeed; yet to deny
help to the negroes would be an act to reduce
the negroes who are here now TO the condition
of negroes in Central Africa.
OF course, the negroes who are here would never
get precisely into that low state. because they
have the whites for example and they are a n
initiative people: but to cut them off from ou,.
help in the matter of education would be 10
push them backward, whereas every interest we
have commands that they be lifted upward
The point might be pushed still further. Even
if the neglected negro freed from all the civiliz
ing and restraining influences of slavery and not
subjected TO new training fitting for intelligent
and industrious citizenship, does not relaDse IN
utter savagery, he will degenerate as NOT
only TO menace the white community as an ex
terna danger, but also to infect the whites
themselves with the poison of barbarism Take
the mere matter of lynching Make the negroes
lawless, and even the better class of whites Will
become lawless and brutal In dealing with Them
Lynching is to-day greater menace 70 white
civilization than to black criminals No com
munity can remain half civilized and half saw
age. The higher must raise the lower or he