The Irish standard., 1911-07-29
NATIONAL PROBLEM
The Coored Question is One That
Confronts the Entire Nation,

Confronts the Entire Nation.
Father Wendell, S. " d., who is in
charge of the negro mission at Meri
dan, Miss, which he started less than
q year ago with three Catholics and
which now numbers thirty Catholics
with more than a hundred pupils in
the school, has given great deal Of
thought to the negro problem Writing
in the Catholic Columbian on this cues.
ton, he says:
There is one question which we
have to face and which every Amer
lean, who has the welfare OF his coun-
try at heart, must face and that is
| the colored question. Many things
have been said in favor and many more
against our colored fellowmen. We
are glad to notice that the best Amer.
leans sympathize with the negro, who
no matter how black he is, is still not
merely man, but often very high
type of a man, though not yet develop
ed to his own best and highest posi-
bility.
l cannot refrain from quoting a
passage of Professor Kelly Miller Of
the College Of Arts and Sciences,
Howard University, Washington, in
the Nineteenth Century," He says:
The negro is now considered as the
man OF over-soul, as Emerson would
say, by reason of his marvellous emo
tional characteristics" Then the pro.
lessor adds some startling figures to
show how important the part of this
emotional race must be in shaping
the America of the future. "The ne
gro he continues constitutes polit~
ical and social factor, which cannot be
/ ignored without local and. national
peril One in nine of the American
people is black; the race is promiscu-
ously scattered over the whole area of
the United States from ten to one in
the black belts OF the South to less
than one in the hundred in the North.
One In nine of the whole people is
already good deal; but the negroes
make one in six of the wage.earners
$50 the negro is inextricably inter-
woven in the national industrial, and
economic fabric; he speaks the same
| language, conducts the same modes of
activity and reads the same literature.
He therefore belongs to the nation as
much as the white, by the same right
and title as worker and as operator
in the national life, not like the red In.
dian, who stands stolidly aloof from
the great throbbing current of ma.
tional thought, feeling and aspirations
A Catholic Problem.
This is surely a great problem for
our nation, but there is another far
more important. How VIII the negro
worship God? Shall he run headlone
into Protestant sectarianism or shall
he be infected by the white plague of
inditferentism, which is worse than in
! ndelity? Catholic Americans awake!
Look at the man in the gutter of in
fidelity at your very doors. Look at
him, how he longs and thirsts for the
truth of Christ's religion and how few
are found to quench his thirst.
What We Are Doing?
We are trying to do the same work
that st. Boniface and st. Patrick did
for our forefathers. We are erecting
schools and churches in the centers of
the colored population to teach them
Christ. We labor under hard circum-
stances; sometimes the DEVILS roaring
seems to deafen our ears.
The boys of my school are the most
interesting crowd I ever saw, full of
life, fun and wit. In fact there is
sometimes too much of good thing
and we have to stop their overlooking