The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1910-07-06

y,
and State better resources so that
your roads, schools and school houses
Will all feel and show the thrill of a
now power that has come to them &?
No matter what you have to SELL
your muscular labor, your skill. your
scientific knowledge, your manufac-
turing product, your land-you get
paid for it in proportion of the efi-
cheney and prosperity of the average
man with whom you deal, and the
great masses in the community must
be intelligent and efficient if the gem
eral level Of prosperity is to be high.
Immigration and the Negro.
This is the great bedrock principle
on which the south is beginning to
build it's institutions, and among all
the tendencies in Southern life today
1t Is the awakening to this principle
that seems to me to be most mean
ingful for your race. Heretofore
there has been oftimes menace to
your future in the threat to Withdraw
negro schools in the belief that lie
white man would be helped by keep
ing the negro down. a policy that
would have dragged down both white
and black together. Today, on the
contrary, there is a challenge to your
manhood in the South's imperious de-
mand for efficiency, in it's determin-
alton to give you square deal, to
try your mettle, to give you If you
show yourselves worthy, the greatest
opportunity here in the Southern
States that any man Of your race has
ever enjoyed in human history-all
rnat will be yours If you are willing to
II you refuse to improve these oppor-
tunities they must be passed on to the
alien and the foreigner. ...
In passing, however, let me de-
clare my conviction that there, is
| nothing of peril but rather much of
positive good for you in the normal
tide Of immigration from the North
| and West that 1 am sure is coming
South, and that only a large stream
| of lower class, Of European immigra-
ton invited by a breakdown of your
own efficiency would really narrow
your opportunities. An increase in
| the relative proportion of whites by
N nf inn, ,iorr 10,
and West, should lessen race feeling
| of the anxiety of work for your race
in !the more varied civilization we
should develop.
With an increasing feeling OF race
security, moreover, the Southern
white man will deal not less liberal
| ly but more literally with you. In
proof of this we have only to recall
! that 1t has now been just ten years
Fsince this State adopted the policy of
suffrage restriction and that every
right of your race has been even more
scrupulously safeguarded since the
| negro's disfranchisement than before.
OF late little has been heard Of the
once troublesome proposition to cur
tail the negro's school fund.- the legis.
| lature has refused to extend the now
defunct grandfather clause, permit
| ting illterate whites to register while
excluding illiterate blacks; and the
public school term of the negro has
been increased 46 per cent. in ten
years of democratic rule, while the
increase in length of white school
terms in the same period has been
only AZ per cent.
Practical Education Necessary.
In word then, the South is going
to give you square deal. She no
longer wants you inefficient; her only
fear Is that you may not become eff
cient enough. And to have efficiency
there must be intelligence and to pro-
mote intelligence there must he
schools. AS for the kind of schools,
so trite has become the argument for
INDUSTRIAL education that L have not
thought in necessary to say in this ad-
dress that the education l am ad-
vocating for the negro is practical ed :
ucation-education that trains for
the mastery of environment" in the
fine phrase Of Gov. Mann of Vir, ,ginia.
L only hope that in urging it's impor-
tance for the negro race we shall not
forget that it is not one whit less i'm =
portant for the white man. Only q
few days ago ! stumbled upon the
saying in Plutarch, that Agesilaus,
King of Sparta, four centuries before
Christ. when asked what boys should
be taught gave the sententious an
sWer THAT which they shall use when