The morning journal-courier., 1908-03-07

ative imperfections.
 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN CIVIL
 IZATION, by W. H. Ferris of this
 city.
 This is a forthcoming new book to which special local interest attaches as 1t is by w. H. Ferris, a New Haven boy, graduate of Hillhouse High school, class of 1891 He has just completed the book and is to give 1t into the hands of the publishers soon. Concerning this production by MT. Ferris the Boston Transcript has the following Illuminating article by F. H. C., which is headed "Devilizatlon of Africa"
 The ordinarily sober-sided pages of Liberia (which 1t must be understood is the bulletin of the American Colon ization society. a survival of the ante war attempts to set a backfire on the sweeping flames of Abolition and now under the wing of the American Mis- sionary association) are lighted up by this fantastic new word. "Devilization" Is pun on civilization" and rep resents its antithesis. The word is a native African product, first seeing the light In the Lagos (Guinea coast) Weekly Record, invented to describe the veneer of utilization imposed on natives of Africa at tho whites points of contact with them. The Lagos publicist find that after century of trial 1t is fitting that the native should call halt and In his own interest take stock of the result of this foreign system imposed on him"
 Through the missionaries efforts large numbers of male and female children have been taken from their parents and their normal and natural mode of life to be made imitation Eu- ropeans and inducted to so-called civ- | illzed habits with the result that they | have been left stranded and founder | ing In the aggravating haze of ques- | tienab'e civilization" Family ties are seveyed, family groups and substance bec) broken up and wasted and disappear altogether, and after all the i eeTscatures of Europeans resulting produce nothing that the European trader wants. The trade with Europe and America, the activities and indus | tries which bring fleets of steamers to Africa are for the produce of natives who have not been under European training, either secular or religious. Those natives who have been brought under such training have lost the pro- ductive power of their fathers and have become useless drones. European civilization has only served to place the Liberian Europeanized African upon the shoulders of their primitive brethren to deal with the white man. Ground thus between the outer and the inner millstones, or at least tol- erated on sufferance, between white and the primitive producer, and with out any sustaining force of their own the civilized natives morals become "adjusted to the exigencies of his cir cumstances," that Is, elastic and fex. ible of conscience and shifty in shady pursuits, and the inevitable end of his traffic in the vices is extinction.
 And yet the Liberian movement ot American Negroes does not die out but Is increasing. Those who arc going out at present, taking warning by the social phenomena already touched upon, are going with the pur pose of preserving the Negro as Ne. gro, and not as an imitation white | oa the black man on his own grounds i! adopted by a small but influentia class of educated and enterprisint young Americans as a cause to strug gle for. It ia an endeavor to find al alternative to the American destin! of the Negroes--as they view it, steadily receding citizenship, de jur' land defacto. in the United States. "Fo myself," says Hugh M. Browne in vigorous article in this same numbe
 of Liberia. "I stand for a developed African race in Africa, and to me tn, United States is the greatest of tin, schools from which the founders ant builders of the African nation are t, be. graduated" With his studies ant
 observation in America and Europ and Africa he Is enabled to take tn
 broad outlook: he holds that a cen turv in the history of the race is bu as A day. and the Negro race in thi , country have had less than half cen tury of freedom, as against two cen
 turies and half of slavery. Henc
 this representative American Negr
 Hooks upon the prescriptions. dis : rciminations and prejudices which W , are made to feel at every turn in tn , Tinted States of America as
 cbastisement necessary to accomplis
 in us what the chastisement of tn wilderness ccomplished in the Jews and I fear that we have as yet bu
 tasted of the bitter waters of Mara
 tbe deadly bite of the serpent is ye | to come.
 Rut Booker T. Washington has al
 ways withheld his countenance froT all such movements. He insists tha the Africans born in America belon here and, whatever may be sai against his industrial education anon the members of his race, it cannot b
 denied that it's practical effect must h