The St. Mary banner. (Franklin, Parish of St. Mary, La.) 1889-1931, 1909-08-28
Idleaess the Great Evil.

The sensation of the week was
the shooting up" of the town of
Monroe by a negro named Wade,
imported from Arkansas, who,
before he was captured and killed,
succeeded in shooting some
twenty nine people, among them
the Mayor and other prominent
citizens of the town. Wade did
the work with a shotgun and bird
shot, while concealed in the corn
er of bank building on one of
the Main streets of the town The
occurrence is coincident with a
very timely article clipped from
the Plaquemine News on the
subject of the idle negro in the
towns and cities. which is the
great cause of all the trouble.
The real solution of the race
trouble is to force these idlers to
go to work. Says the News.
"Those who have had occasion to
notice matters carefully declare that
nine out of ten of the negroes before
the courts are members OF the idle
class-those that live by their wits or
who subsist Off what some negro cook
carries home with her, says the
Plaquemine News. Negroes that are
constantly employed have little time
or occasion for resOrting to crime in
order to support themselves. We feel
sure that there are thousands of in
dustrious negroes in south Louisiana
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the burdens of toll, but perform their
allotted tasks with willingness that
challenges admiration. Then there
are others who labor inditferently,
not willingly, but simply because
necessity compels them to do SO. And
we are all acquainted with the num-
erOus characters that must eat and
live, but who neither toll nor &C
cummulate.
''There are many we'll intentioned
people who have an ambition to solve
the alleged "negro problem. If they
would forget their chimerical schemes,
devised by fanatics, and get at the
bottom of the real facts and condi-
tons surrounding the negro, they
would doubtless be enabled to adopt
some practical plan for benefitting;the
black man. The best cure that we
know of is to compel the horde of idle
and vicious negroes that afflict the
towns and villages to work industriO-
usly for twelve months in the year. If
this plan was followed for while
there would be far less cause to worry
about the future status of the negro.
The negroes who refuse to work are
the very ones that keep our criminal
courts busy and fill our jails and
chain gangs. The Industrious black
man usually manages to keep out of
trouble. The lazy, trifing ''coon" is
responsible for the disrepute in which
his race is held. He consumes much
and produces absolutely nothing.
Naturally, he becomes drain on
those of his own race who labor and a
far greater drain and burden on the
white people of the community. The
heads of households in Plaquemine
and elsewhere can be of inestimable
benefit to both the negroes and their
servants, by giving the latter to under
stand, in all kindness, but with firm
ness, that there are limits in the matter
of privileges beyond which they must
not go in their relations to the house
holds. Too many lazy, vicious
negroes are fed by the cooks from the
white mans tables, and this helps to
encourage idleness and thus the end
less chain of making criminals is con-
stantly in motion. Work is the best
cure to be administered at the time"
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