The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1922-04-13
Negroes and Rats. .
(Ry DR.. Frank Crane.)

The negroes last summer held
grand demonstration in New Yor
and gave symptoms of standing u
for their rights.
The negro has been the most wrong
ed figure in history. Compared t.
him, the 1rishman has been, you Nigh
say, coddled.
For some reason he has alway
cerried the white mans burden. Fo
the white man is superior. He him
self admits it.
White men have even circulated
the story of Ham, son of Noah, thai
he made fun of his father who hae
got drunk and kicked og the covers
That may not have been nice Of
Ham, but it was hardly serious enough
TO warrant cursing his posterity fol
thousands of years.
Even in white folks fiction the
negro gets the worst of it. Every
time Robinson Crusoe meets Friday
in the wilderness it is the black man
who carries the wood and the white
man who carries the gun.
The negroes once lived in Afr1ca'
a large continent containing a fifth
or sixth of the earth's area. There,
according to the IA points, they ought
TO have had some say as to how they
were to be governed.
They had not.
They never came over to bother
the whites; the whites CAME over to
bother them. They came as explor-
ers, profteers, slave dealers, rum
peddlers, government officials and
missionaries.
In their native land the negroes
lived at peace in the bosom OF their
families, under their palm trees, and
played arocnd in a costume which
was much more rational for hot
weather than any kind Of clothes per-
nnitted. in New Jersey.
They had their medicine men who
chanted their own lingo, even as
ours talked Latin, and gave powdered
elephant ears and grasshoppers' knees
for bowel complaint, even as ours
give more expensive cope, and with
about the same success. At least they
ell died after a while anyhow, even
as our forefathers.
They had their little dances by
torchlight under the trees, as we
have our midnight follies atox the
theater.
They beat their tom-toms and wrig-
gled their tum-tums, as also our Jazz
orchestras perform and our young
folks shirnmy and fox-trot.
They had their sorcerers and 9TH
ers whom they paid to humbug them,
even as we have our own blather-
sixties.
They made war when they were
hungry and needed food, fun and
women. We make war for no rea-
son at all, and do not even eat our
foes.
1t is a wonder Ham has stood for
his abuses as long as he has.
BE, now protests against lynching,
that is against being hung by anna
teurs and not professionals.
am for Africa for the Africans,
Ireland for the Irish, and New York
for the Jews.
The negroes are a happy, contented
and lovable people, and have as much
right to their place in the sun, and
also in the shade, Is white folks.
Rats.
One of the greatest enemies of the
human rate is the rat. He is friend
of dirt, which kills more people than
gunpowder, and an ally, companion
and carrier of the Microbe, which
takes a human life the greatest toll
of all.
Rats dc not bulk large in the pub
lie eye. =. ~"~~
They are nothing new. They have
always besn with us.
They do not attack in the open,
but skuIk in dark places.
They do no boastiag, have no
propaganda and do not advertize.
But they keep busy.
Rats, said Sir James Crichtori-
Browne, destroy as much property in
England in the course of the twelve
months as was destroyed by subfna-
rines around English coasts during
the war.
Through the bubonic plague and
other diseases which they propagate,
rats will destroy as much human life
in year as was destroyed during
the war.
We make much to-do over the dan