The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1914-06-13

said of the cOlOred delegates to the
Memphis Conference, Most Of them
are white And the friend who sat
beside me at the Saturday night meet
h.g looked up in the almost crowded
negro gallery 1--WE could not see the
negroes who were on the first floor
welD and said, "if you were to take
out five dark negroes from that
crowd. 1t would pass for a white GAL
lery!"
That is the situation we have to
face in the South--that while full
blooded negroes might be content
with this or that, there is an ocean
of uncurbed and unresting white blood
mixed with the black in our colorcd
Per rulatiOn; and thus the lives of the
I'm moral white men, the traitors in
our own ranks, may yet pull down
the whole temple Of our race integrity
unless we look we'll both to it's ,cc-
servation and to their punishment.
In your State Of Virginia there was
from 1890 to 1910 an actual de-
crease Of 64,811 black negroes and
an increase Of 100.496 mulattoes. In
q reighbOring county last month a
friend said to me, II know fourteen
children in my towns
white schools and there are q hundred
and fifty in the schools of the county,"
Within two miles from my old home
know Of three mulatto girls who
nave moved away and married white
men. And il these things arc done
IN the green tree, what shall be done
IN the dry? What shall happen if we
let down the bars moro and more.
Important as I believe social SER
vice Is, 1 know no social service of
greater importance to the South, in
this day Of increasing economic and
social perils, than that Of preserving
the purity and integrity of the white
race and the saving Of the rural
South to the white race.
Now, my dear governor, do not mis-
understand me. God knows I would
not be unjust to the negro. For the
Shylocks and vultures of our own race
who fatten financially upon his ignor-
ance and weakness I have nothing
but the utmost contempt and loath-
ing. For all who would oppress him
and keep him in peonage 1 have no
shadow Of sympathy. believe in
helping the negro and in being just to
him. But, sir, l also believe In help
ing and being just to the working
white man of the South whose ances-
tors through centuries of toll wrought
out the civilization to which the ne
gro himself owes the very peace,
safety and prosperity he enjoys. And
l tell you that all in all the handi-
capped man, the disadvantaged man,
in the South today is not the ,,negro,
but the laboring white man who must
compete industrially with a race with
lower living standards and whose
white social life is impoverished if
not imperilled by the universal sand
wiching Of white and negro homes.
The negroes not only have the ad-
vantage over the white farmer of
being able to buy land and make
crops on a scale of living, clothing
and housing the respectable white
farmer and his family cannot meet,
but the negroes have the additional ad-
that where negroes begin to
the whites, or are of bad
character, the whites may be forced
to surrender the whole community to
the negroes because there Is no longer
an adequate white social life or for
reasons Of safety. This has happen
ed in thousands of cases.
Booker Washington himself boasts
that in every Southern State east of
the Mississippi, except Florida, the ne
groes are gaining on the whites on
the farms and rural districts are be-
blacker instead of whittier. In
your own State of Virginia for ex-
ample, he boasts that while the ne
grOes In the last census decade gained
only 1 per cent in population, they
gained 20 per cent In number of land
owners, the negroes in Virginia to-
day owning three acres for every two
they rent.
Now, Sir, If the negroes were gain
ing this advantage by virtue of SUI
perior character and civilization, we
should have no word of protest. But
they are gaining chiefly because they
will live in shabbier houses, eat mean
er food, wear dirtier clothes than is
possible where the living standards
of a white civilization are maintained,
and because peprO landowners crowd.