THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7954, 1 February 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1906.

In the current number of the Red Funnel magazine, an exceptional! y interesting article on the future of the negro raoe in America is contributed by Professor W. E. Burghardt du Bois, who occupies the chair of economics and history at the Atlanta University. The "colour" question is certainly one of great moment to the United States, and one that is growing in importance] as the population statistics relating to the negroes in America make very clear. I'here are four ways, according to the writer in whioh the American negro may develop.

Firstly,, his present condition of serfdom may be perpetuated; secondly, his race may die out and become extinct; thirdly, ho may migrate to some foreign land; and. fourthly, he may become an American citizen, and it is development in this last mentioned direction, judging by the attiole, as a whole, that the Professor appears to consider most desirable, not only from a humanitarian point of view, but from a purely oconomic standpoint as well. Professor du Bois characterises the present condition of the American negro as that of serfdom—and without apology. Throughout the United States the mass of the negro population is curtailed in personal liberty, is insecure in life and property, has peculiar difficulty in earning a decent living, has almost no voice in its nongovernment, does not enjoy adequate educational facilities, and suffers (no matter what its ability or desert), discount, impertinence and contempt by reason of race and colour.

* * * * * Discussing the result of the emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War, the Professor says of the negro today that tiis economic condition is specially unfortunate. He was emancipated suddenly, without land, capital, tools or skill, and generously bidden to go to- work, be sober and save money. He did go to work, he did work faithfully, and he did save some money. And yet his most frantic efforts under the ciroumstances could not save him from sinking into an economic serfdom which, in its worst aspects, is worse, than slavery, and in its average is organised and systematic pauperism. To turn adrift, in modern competitive industry, a mass of ignorant and unguided workingmen, whose employer despises them, and for whom the rest of the nation evinces only spasmodic concern, is to invite oppression. The result is oppression. On the plantations of the Southern backwoods the negro is a peon, bound to the soil, without wages or rights; throughout the rural South, cunningly-devised labour laws—laws as to oontraot, lien, and vagrancy, and on employer and servant—are so applied to black men as to reduce them to the level of a fourteenth-century serf. In the South he is taxed for libraries whioh he may not use, for public high schools pnd colleges which he may not. attend, and for public parks where he cannot sit, The fear of political consequences, or of labour strikes, ntver deter an employer from discharging his negro hands or reducing their wages, while that same fear may keep out negro labourers or lead to the substitution of whites, even at an economic disadvantage. * * * # " .*. Considering the question of the negro migrating from America, or in other words being deported to some other country by the Government, the writer comes to the conclusion that it would be an undertaking impossible to carry out—and that, in any circumstances, it could not be done successfully. The negro population in 1900 was 8,833,994, and "fully 500 negro children are at present being born every 24 hours in America." In any social croup, however prosperous, degenerative tendencies may always be disclosed. The situation becomes critical and fatal when such tendencies are more manifest than those of upbuilding and progress. Among American negroes the tendencies to degeneration are by no means in ascendancy, but they have undoubtedly been enoouraged and fostered by the history of the last two decades. Those very qualities of character which (by 400 years of persistent artificial selection) have been partially educated out of the negro, are the very ones upon whioh the civilised world is putting an exaggerated emphasis to-day. A people without pluck that borders upon brazenness, and courage akin to brutality, is ruthlessly thrust aside, euphoniously designated as "lesser breeds without the law," and are robbed, routed and raped by every civilised agency from the battleship to the Christian church. ***** From such consideration, it seems inevitable, eays the writer, that a persistence in the present policy of the nation towards the negro must eventually result in increasing hopelessness, immorality and crime. Indeed, it is one of the most curious developments of the present day to witness the widespread and touching surprise of the people in the United States at the spread of crime among negroes. Men shake their heads and say: "How unexpected! bow surprising! Aud such a docile and sweet-tempered raoe!" And yot is it surprising? If you enslave aud oppress a people, ravish and degrade their women, emancipate them into poverty, helplessness, and ignorance, systematically teach them humility in a braggart age, would you expect to develop angels or devils? "Supposse, now, that tendencies to degeneration among the negroes gain the ascendancy over the persistent struggles of the negro to rise; suppose that crime and immorality get so fair a headway as to check and choke the accumulation of wealth and the education of

children—then what? Not even a rich and healthy land like America could, without imminent and last ing peril, stand the mural and physical shock, the frightful contagion, which must acnornpany the slow degradation and social murder of ten million human souls. Every selfish interest of this laud demands that if the negro is to remain here, he must be jaised, and raised rapidly, to the level of the best culture of the day." The moral of all of which is that the free and independent Yankee citizen "mas' lub hes blue* brudder" like himself, or take the consequences, which would uot bb pleasant if Professor Burghardt du Bois has a true appreciation of the question with which he deals.