The new age., 1907-03-16
EDITORIAL
MonOnaniacs.


gonian, and if so the following, taken
from it's leading editorial of a few
days ago, will not be new, but it is
good enough to be read the second
time. Commenting on an article by
Thomas Nelson Page, a persistent
pessinist on the trace question" and
one who labors hard (for pay, of
course) to show how incomparably
inferior the negro race is, the Ore
gonian says he is one of group of
Southerners ''who have lost their
wits entirely over the negroes" In
his article in McClure's Magazine,
Page uses the words race" and
racial" 104 times, showing how
race" made he is; that he has race
on the brain" The Oregonian says,
in part:
"The race question has become a
fixed idea with him. He can think of
nothing else, apparently, and even
upon this one paramount theme he
cannot think nationally. At times
Mr.. Pages language becomes inco-
herent; throughout it is extravagant,
boastful and wild. Most of the ar
ticle is a vague sort of rhapsody,
somewhat in the manner of Kipling,
over the great white race
For one thing he resolutely i'm
plies from start to finish that all ne
groes who are lynched in the South
have committed assaults upon white
women. 1t is we'll known that this is
not SO. More than two-thirds of the
lynchings are for crimes like theft
and murder. From this incorrect
premise he argues that the white men
who do the lynchings are "in the
skirmish line" that protects the
whole white race from the peril of
miscegenation. Mr.. Page condemns
them with feeble formality, but in
reality he thinks they are doing a
great service to civilization, since by
burning and torturing negroes they
protect the race purity of the whites.
The fact that most of the lynchings
have nothing to do with the social
equality problem does not disturb
Mr.. Page in the least. Having in
vented his premises, he stickles not
to abide by his conclusion. In Ja-
maica, where negroes are more num-
erous in proportion to the whites
than almost anywhere in the South,
there is no outcry about social equal
ity, no mob rule, no torture. Also,
one is happy to add, there are no
Thomas Dixons and no Tillmans or
vardamans. The English rulers of
the island have learned how to treat
the negroes with simple and exact
justice, and justice solves all the
problems that arise. What it does
in Jamaica 1t would also do in the
South"
After showing that if there is mis-
cegenation the whites are wholly re-
sponsible for it and it is invariably
the white males who indulge in it.
the Oregonian concludes:
Like other writer's of his class
Mr.. Page assumes, without explicitly
stating it, that we are on the eve OF
war between the white and black
races to prevent miscegenation
When that war breaks out, he in
forms the negroes. they will find al
the whites united against them by
the sacred ties of race The notion
that such war is possible could, OF
course, arise nowhere else than in
the imagination of Southerner in
famed with anger at the thought oi
his former slaves assuming the status
of human beings. 1t is utterly man
iacal. But if a struggle between the
Southern whites and. blacks ever
should arise, it is to be hoped that
the people Of the north. instead Of
taking sides with either party, would