The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-02-28

Now why does 1t not occur to the southern economists to apply this gen. orally recognized truth to their own section? Long association with the negro. has overcome much of the natural racial antipathy in the south ern whites. and the average southerner will say. and say truthfuliy: T have no objection to the presence of a negro when he behaves himself As . servant class. I like him very we'll"
 No Need of Abuse.
 But we do not need to abuse the negro in carrying out this plan of equal distribution: for 1t can he justified upon either supposition, whether he Is good thing or a bad thing for the community in which he dwells. If he is a good thing for the South, he should be a good thing for the North also; for the same sort of work he Is doing in the South he might do in the North. if Northerners were disposed to give 1t to him. It Is an easy task to show that the negra is no longer doing the work which is peculiar to the south: the negro and the cotton-field are not the harmonious combination they once were. Mir. Nor man Walker of New Orleans estimated two years ago: "Out of eighteen coun- ties in the South producing over 50.- 900 bales of cotton each, fifteen are white counties, wherein the popula- ton and the farm labor are over whelmingly white.> Louisiana produces nearly two-thirds of all the rice grown, and the negroes are not responsible for 5 per cent of 1t, and in the rice dis tricts are less than 20 per cent of the population"
 S- negroes are doing for the most part Is the work of the cities. mines and railroads. Now the North has cities, mines. and railroads-more than the South by far; and If she feels as much solicitude for the welfare of the color ed race as a flood of Northern litera- ture has led us to suppose. surely she will not refuse to give some substan- half of them on her own domain. and giving them employment in her own mines, cities and railroads.
 Upon the. other hand. if 1t be con- ceded that the negro >is not good thing for either section, then we de- mand. in the name of common Justice and humanity. that the North no longer shirk her responsibility for the negro but honestly and manfully shoulder her share of his physical presence. This Is the only practical way of making the question national and of securing for its consideration the best national thought. and the largest national resources. so neces- sary to a wise and peaceable settle ment. All talk of the negro being a national question" while nine million negroes reside in the South, and only 100000 in the North. is the veriest academic twaddle. The North will never view the question through any but her ancient sectional lens, until the negroes are brought to her own doorstep.
 This is absolutely the only hope for Anglo Saxon unity to the negro, and when this Is obtained, the rest will come easy. The white people are naturally united on 1t as a race issue. but for the sectional and political com plications which have been woven about 1t, and which have so obscured the real issue that the average North erner sees only the sectional or politi- cal side of 1t. Now then it is for the South to destroy the sectional feature. and leave 1t to the North to annuf the political complication. which she would surely do under the discomfort entail ed by any considerable accessions to her negro population.
 intelligent NOrtnerners knoW that this Is so--dozens of them have admit ted 1t in conversation with me here in Washington; the shrewdest of the negroes understand 1t also, and for this reason Booker Washington is ad- vising the negroes to remain In the South. Two years ago. when the Brownsville affair was first thrashed out in the Senate one of those dis charged negro soldiers, wiser than the rest published letter in The Wash ington Herald in which he deplored the acton of negro leaders and preachers throughout the country who were heaping wholesale abuse upon President Roosevelt; and especially he