Iowa state bystander. [volume] (Des Moines, Iowa) 1894-1916, 1915-04-16
By Professor William Pickens

the AnglO-SaXOn came 10 tnlS Cohti-
nent. Being very religious he landed
and Immediately fell upon his knees;
but being very ambitious he arose and
Immediately fell upon the aborigines'
AT that time provisions were scarce
and work plentiful in this country,
and in order to conquer the more un-
conquerable wilderness the white man
wanted the best help he could get and
wanted to pay only "board and keep
so he drove bargain with the Afrl-
cans, the unsophisticated children OF
the sun. For about two hundred and
fifty years this peculiar economic sys-
tenn persisted, the white man reaplng
the chief benefits of the economics
and the black man bearing the chief
burden of the system and the pecul-
iarity.
This system prevented the white
man from seeing the black man as
fellow Christian and fellow citizen;
when he read "Love thy neighbor as
myself" in his Bible, his imagination
pictured white neighbours and when
he wrote "all men are born free and
equal into his political creed, ne vas
thinking white. Taxation without
representation was wrong, Of course,
but right against the slave. The
white man thought black when ne
read from the Old Testament, "A SER
want of servants shall he be- or from
the New Testament, that servant
which knew his masters will, and
prepared not himself, neither did ac-
cording to his will, shall be beaten
with many stripes Little did the
white man suspect that the ultimate
test for both his government and his
religion would lie in his relation to
that silent, accommodating black
man. There is one Negro in every
ten persons in this country. How
many white American citizens have
ever imagined the congress of the
United States and the legislative and
judicial departments of all the states
with every tenth officer Negro? On
earth there are about seven colored
persons to one white. Be honest, o
white American Christians! How
many of you have ever pictured to
yourselves the joys of heaven with
seven dark souls to one white?
All other nationalities who have
come to this country since the Negro
have been more readily accepted into
the Anglo-Saxon scheme of govern
ment and Christian brotherhood. Two
hundred and fifty years of wrong re-
alationship got this civilization into
the unfortunate habit of excepting
the Negro. He became the standing
exceptions to the rules off civilization.
We can help a man best when we
know his hindrances. What are the
industrial, civil and political hind
RANGES of the American Negro?
Industrially he started as a slave,
worked two hundred and fifty years
without a pay day, and then got dis
charged without credit or capital,
when his employers fell out. The
system had marked him as mental in
the eyes of his fellowmen, and had
not made industry attractive IN his
own eyes. As free laborer he began
in the lowest paid and least desirable
occupations and rose upward only SO
far as economic necessity demanded.
Industrial society intended that the
free Negro should be what the como
mist might call the marginal empioye.
to be employed in that margin OF in
dustry where it is impossible or diff
cult to employ any white person. And
where, on the upper edge of this mar
gin, he was brought into contact with
other free Americans, he was to re-
ceive lower wages or Dear some other
distinct badge of industrial inferior
ity. We see this contact and distlnc-
ton on American railroads, where
colored men and white men who 90
exactly the same work are distin-
guished respectively as ''porters" and
trainmen." A few years ago there |
were some Negro Pullman conductors |
on road in the south, but they were
designated as "head por-
ters." 1t is needless to add that the
wages followed the designation. In
lustrial segregation has been the !!
tendency north and south; in the
south the Negro is more largely en-
ployed because he is more needed. In
both lie is the marginal employe,"
the margin being wider in the south
and narrower in the north.
1t is plain that permanent handl-
cap like that would tend to embarrass
the whole life of the Negro, for if
industrial inferiority is to be main
tanned, certain other things are neces-
sary and logical, like class education
and disfranchisement, lower stand
ard of living and lower order OF
For with brains in his
head and ballot in his hand man
cannot ultimately be industrially re-
pressed. The Negroes economic prog
ress as revealed in the census, when
seen from the standpoint of this
handicap, is exceedingly creditable.
When an unwelcome and beginning
race stands up against an entrenched
and wrests from it an in
creased measure of life, that race pos
,esses the strongest potentialities of
Look at our humble pos
sessions and see how they have
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