THE AMERICAN NEGRO.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1906, 14 November 1913, Page 5

THE AMERICAN NEGRO.

EXTRAORDINARY PROGRESS IN HALF A CENTURY. A PROBLEM~OE INCREASING MOMENT. | Last year, tho negroes of the United States celebrated llje sensi-eentenary of the. Emancipation Proclamation, that wonderful measure of statesmanship and humanity by which Lincoln turned black merchandise into iicsh and blood, and gave to the negro tho right to be muster of his own body and his own suul. In those iifi'y years tho negro has made gre.it progress, progress perhaps greater than any other raco has in similar circumstances mrule in a similar length of time. It is interesting to reduce.that progress to a statistical basis and see what has been accomplished. Astonishing figures. That extraordinary man, Dr. Booker Washington, a former slave, and now the directing head of the Tuskegee Institute, which is doing a very useful work in educating and elevating his race, issues every year a Negro tear Book, the information for which is compiled by tho department of records and research. Tho facts have been carefully gathered, -and there is no reason to believe that they ate not accurate. In 1863, the year following tho Proclamation of Emancipation, the negro population of tho United States was supposed to be 4,500.000. To-day it is 10,000,000. In 1863 only a few negroes owned their farms, those few who had . been ablo to purchase their freedom, and had been started by humane land-

.owners on the road to independence. To-day 890,000 negroes are either tenant farmers or proprietors, 820,000 being in the latter class. Altogether tlicv own 20,000,000 acres of land, or 31,000 squaro miles, that is a territory twice tho sizo of Switzerland. When they were emancipated tho blacks wero credited with owning property, valued at £4,000,000; to-day their wealth is estimated at £140,000,000. This increase has been particularly rapid in the dccado 1900-1910, farm property in tho South, where the great bulk of the race lives, having grown from about £35,000,000 to nearly £100,000,000. Influence of Education. If the progress of the negro is compared witn. tliat of the liussran serf, it ia seen how vastly greater that of tho negro has been. The itussiaa serfs were amancipated two years beforo the negro was given his freedom, and estimates made in 1911 credited tho 14,000,000 former serfs with the ownership of property valued at £100,000,000, Only about 30 per cent, of the Russian peasants wero able to read and write, while 70 per cent, of the negroes afo supposed to have an elementary education. . Tho progress tho negro has made is undoubtedly due to the way in which education has been forced into. Mm. At- the time of emancipation there were a few schools in the South for the eductaiou of negroes, although the general sentiment among slave-holders was that it was dangerous to teach their slaves, t arid that an "educated nigger" was the worst kind of proporty to hold, as sdu* j cation simply spoiled him as a good farm hand or house servant, and did not qualify him for a better position.

After the emancipation schools for the negroes were established both in tho South and the North, and to-day there is ho negro, no matter where he lives, who cannot profit by his advantages 'if he cares to avail himself of them. He need not be content with merely a rudimentary education. He can qualify himself for tho professions, as there aro institutions of higher education for his solo benefit, and some of tho more liberal Northern Universities —Harvard, for instance—do not discriminate on account of colour. The South, of course, has had to bear tlio greatest burden of the. civilisation and education of the negro, and although the South has Hot. always treated tho negro in a way that humane persons can approve, it has> nevertheless nobly dono its pari in making the former slave fit to be something better than a hewer of stono or drawer of water.

In tho negro schools of. the South there aro to-dny 1,700,000 pupils, and there aro more than a hundred thousand in tho normal schools and colleges. There are colleges and institutions for the education of negro women, there are theological, medical, lav-,', mechanical, and agricultural schools solely for tho higher education of tbenegi-o. In tho prosontj year it is estimated that the cost of negro education in tho South will bo £900,000 for higher and industrial training, and £1,750,000 for tho elementary schools. One- of the liope> ful signs is the money tho negroes raise among themselves for tho education of their race. Most of tho schools aro part of tho educational system of tho State, aud supported out of the general levy of taxes,, negro property owners paying their taxes the F,nmo as this whites. v But in addition the negroes raise for educational purposes £200,000 a year. Tho Negro in Business. As a business man tho negro has not done badly. His natural inclination is to bo a farmer, for he belongs to tho soil and his earliest associations ,afo with the cotton or tobacco plantation or tho rice fields, but he lias shown ■ aptitude in other directions. Just as there are negro doctors alid clergymen Rnd dentists and lawyers, so there are negro carpenters and bricklayers and blacksmiths—in fact, thero is scarcely a trade in which he has not penetrated. He has become a shopkeeper, usually tho vendor of ico cream and sweets and newspapers and tobacco; ho has followed in,.the footsteps of tho Irish and Italian by becoming a saloon keeper and selling vile liquor to even yilor men and women, black or white; but he also conducts more reputable enterprises on a larger scale, and there are a few negro business men who may be rated as rich even in a land of gr-eat wealth. Tho really good negro business man is, of course, an exception; he is too easygoing to be a sharp trader, temperamentally ho is lazy, generous, and too indifferent to those neeessafy economies without which no business can succeed! He has tho same faults that aro to bo found in all races in whom the sun has entered at thoir birth. The negro likes light and warmth arid colour; with greater intelligence; and education hewould be a person of profound and vivid imagination and he would create a literature tho like of which the world has not yet seen; being deficient both in intelligence and education, liis_ imagination runs to superstition or is a rudi-

mentary growth that inclines him to sloth or is deadened by Ikpior. Fifty years ago no negro might have' a patent issued to him. Since them several hun* dreds liavo been granted, and recently it was reported in the. newspapers that a negro in Detroit had sold a. patent for a tramway heater to a Canadian company for £30,000. The Real Negro Problem. This' is tho pleasing Mile, of the nietnro; there is, of course, the other side, and every man who has lived long enough in. tho United States to know it intimately, and not/ to ho misled by surface impressions, which are usually unreliable, because ihey are. novel, is too often brought in close'contact with the negro who is little hotter than ht> was two or threo decades ago. The, negro of whom one despairs, the negro wiio constitutes- tho real "negro problem" in the United States—n-iid I assure you it is a very serious problem—-is not the former slave, but his child or grandchild, tho smart, pert, undisciplined young man or woman who has been sent to school and has absorbed a. smattering of education but no manners or respect for authority, who lias no reverence foe %iita.iolW' hut xhwi *nl£ codfl.

is "I aw as good as you arc." This is the negro who demands his "rights" and arouses the ire of the whites. Tin's is tno negro who insists upon his right w go to tno theatre, to oat at first-class restaurants, to stop at loading hotels; j who crowds into tramcars and sits while a white woman must stand; who, because lie lias money, travels first class display of his wealth. These things the Englishman cannot understand, but the American understands them onlv ten well, ami to his sorrow. Jlie Englishman :nav ask whv a white mnn snoiild object to a decent, wellbehaved black sitting next to him at the tiieatrc or in the samo restaurant, and tflie American's answer is that there is a _ racial antipathy that makes the mingling of the two races impossible, ami, what fs more to 'the point, the negro of the type described is neither decent nor well behaved. He 'is not quiet and orderly, but he is krac't and unmannerly; he is not considerate of his neighbour, ho is a swaggerer and puffed up by his own importance, his head is filled with faiso notions of equality and the "I am as good as you are" precept. Such.me-iv as Dr. Booker Washington,. Professor Dubois, and other real leaders of tho race are as strong in their disapproval of racial equality as the most intolerant negropltobs. They, have no foolish illusions. They know that the whites are the dominant race and always will be. They know that the future'of the negro lies not in proclaiming his equality, but in , proving that lie is worthy of the respect and confidence 0 f the whites.—Mr. Maurice Low, in the "Morning Post."