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CHAPTER VI.

THE WORK AND INFLUENCE OF HAMPTON.

PROCEEDINGS OF A MEETING HELD IN NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 12, 1904, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE ARMSTRONG ASSOCIATION, WITH THE ADDRESSES OF MR. ANDREW CARNEGIE (CHAIRMAN), PRESIDENT CHARLES W. ELIOT, DR. H. B. FRISSELL, AND DR. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.

The meeting was opened by Mr. William Jay Schieffelin, president of the Armstrong Association, who read the following letter from ex-President Cleveland:

PRINCETON, February 8, 1904.

MY DEAR SIR: I am sorry I must forego the gratification of attending the meeting to be held on the 12th instant for the promotion of the purposes of Southern educational work.

I am so completely convinced of the importance of this cause, as it is related to the solution of a problem which no patriotic citizen should neglect, that I look upon every attempt to stimulate popular interest and activity in its behalf as a duty of citizenship.

All our people and every section of our country are deeply concerned in the better equipment of our negro population for self-support and usefulness. There should be a general agreement as to the necessity of their improvement in this direction; and all good men should contribute, in the manner best suited to their several circumstances, to the accomplishment of this beneficent result.

Different sections of our country are affected in differing degrees and with greater or less directness; but it seems to me all must concede that no agencies can possibly do better service in the cause of negro amelioration than the institutions in which they are taught how to be self-supporting and self-respecting. Such institutions as these, which have demonstrated their efficiency, and which prove their merit by an exhibit of successful effort, should be constantly and generously encouraged and assisted. The extent to which this is done may well be accepted as a test of our sincerity in the cause of negro improvement. Yours, very truly,

GROVER CLEVELAND.

Mr. Schieffelin then presented, as the chairman of the meeting, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who spoke as follows:

ADDRESS OF MR. CARNEGIE.

Ladies and gentlemen, we meet upon the birthday of the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, he who knocked the shackles from 4,000,000 slaves and made them physically free under the law. But in the higher sense he only is a freeman whom education makes free. Lincoln did his part, but he only began the task. It remains for us, the followers of that leader of men, to continue and complete it. This brings us here to-night.

There is one class of men which experience is said to teach the fools-but I suspect these are beyond teaching. Let us rather say that experience teaches the ignorant. I suggest this change because by experience I have been taught the Southern problem, and hesitate to class myself with the former. Every man and woman in the North who has not lived in the South, or visited it often

for extended periods, must be ignorant of the South and the serious problems which confront our fellow-citizens there, white and black. We have nothing like it in the North; neither has Britain nor any English-speaking community under free institutions similar conditions with which to deal, because it is not only a question of less or more education, but of race. Before I had a vote I was an ardent Free Soiler, and a contributor in my 'teens to the New York Tribune, then our great antislavery organ. After the war my brother and his family made their winter home in the South, and during my numerous visits there I was brought face to face with the Southern problem, and became deeply impressed with its gravity, as any Northern man is who is brought face to face with it. It was an entirely new problem, which I had never thought of and never could have correctly imagined. Preconceived ideas of liberty and equality, ending in the sublime privilege of the suffrage, were rudely shaken, and I was forced to see that it was not enough to say that "a slave can not live in the Republic; he breathes our air; his shackles fall." That necessary act performed, the task does not end; it only begins. We have destroyed one bad system, but constructive work is needed. The shackles may be off, but the slave of yesterday can not rise to the height of full citizenship next day. The prisoner from the dungeon, long confined in darkness, is blinded for a time by the light when released. Resolutions and party platforms, eloquent harangues upon liberty, equality, and fraternity, promote no healthy growth, produce no good fruit. Even legislation can not reach the seat of the malady. The men who stand face to face with the Southern problem are soon convinced that the needed help, the uplifting element, the indispensable instructor, is to be sought in an entirely different direction. The cure is not political, but social. Now, ladies and gentlemen, here is a remarkable fact-for fact it is as far as my knowledge extends-which I ask you to note. There never was, so far as I know, an intelligent, worthy, kindly Northern man who settled in the South and became conversant with its conditions whose experience has not been mine as I have recounted it to you. Without exception, they change their views and deeply sympathize with their sorely tried white brethren of the South and see that only through cordial cooperation with them is the needed work of raising the negro to be successfully accomplished. We should ponder upon this, especially those of us in the North who have not known life in the South. I am persuaded that the educational conference presided over by Mr. Ogden, represented here by him and others; Tuskegee, represented by that remarkable leader of his people, Mr. Washington; Hampton, represented by the president, and others are on the right path, and theirs the means through which the colored man is to be made capable of finally exercising the powers and performing the duties of a citizen of a free State with safety to the State. Many of you have read the wise paper of our distinguished fellow-citizen of New York, Hon. Carl Schurz, present with us to-night, an essay full of wise counsel. He points out that our aim should be first to lift the colored man and make him worthy of citizenship, never denying him, however, that ideal which he should strive to attain finally-complete political equality.

Perhaps I can give you a just conception of the difference in the situation with us in the North and our white friends in the South. We safely extend the suffrage in this home of free schools and universal education, and trust to education to make sober-minded, intelligent citizens as the sure effect of knowledge. The number of new citizens given the suffrage who are not sufficiently informed is relatively small. Even if they vote unwisely they do not drown the voice of the intelligent. These are still in the majority and their views prevail. Good and safe government is not endangered.

In the South the ignorant are the immense majority. To give suffrage with

out restriction to the blacks would mean that the intelligent whites were powerless overwhelmed. Government would be in the hands of men steeped in ignorance of political responsibilities to a degree impossible for northern people to imagine. Only residence among them can give a true impression. No fault this of the colored people who were reared and held in slavery, or who at best are only emerging from that depth. The cheering fact is that they have shown and are showing more and more the capacity to rise in the scale. There can not be any doubt about this; their rapid and increasing acquisition of property proves it beyond a cavil.

Now, the wise policy seems obvious. We should agree that the keeping down of millions of people, even if successful, would be destructive to civilized society and a menace to the State. To treat them as if they had already risen would be equally so; therefore, an educational test for the suffrage should be adopted and strictly applied, applicable to white and black alike, for ignorance in the whites is deplorable. There is only one way to make satisfactory members of society, whether black or white, and that is through education in its widest sense.

So much for the dangerous and difficult problem of the South. To our white brothers and fellow-citizens of the South we owe at least an equal duty, and especially to the ignorant. He is no true friend of the South or wise American who forgets this, and I hope we shall prove in the future that while we sympathize with the colored race we do not forget our white brothers. After all is said and done, the improvement of the South, white and black, must be accomplished by the best educated white element in the South, which is in sympathy with our views and seeks the steady though perhaps slow elevation of both races, not the continued degradation of either. I stand before you to-night, side by side and hand in hand with our Southern brothers of our own race, feeling that it is through them we must labor if we are to solve the threatening problem which menaces the South. Fortunately the Educational Conference, Hampton, and Tuskegee all recognize this and find a responsive white element in the South, with which they are in cordial alliance.

It is amazing to see now and then schemes for the expatriation of the colored race, as if such a transfer were possible, which is not, and further, as if such a transfer were desirable, which it is not. We have a country with less than thirty people per square mile. England and Wales, Belgium and Holland, have over five hundred. We can not produce cotton enough for the wants of the world. We should be in the position in which South Africa is to-day but for the faithful, placable, peaceful, industrious, lovable colored man; for industrious and peaceful he is compared with any other body of colored men on the earth-not up to the standard of the colder North in continuous effort, but far in advance of any corresponding class anywhere. South Africa has just had to admit contracted Chinese labor, although there are between five and six millions of colored people there who will not work. We should be in the same condition but for our colored people, who constitute one of the most valuable assets of the Republic, viewed from an economic standpoint. It is certain we must grow more cotton to meet the demands of the world or endanger our practical monopoly of that indispensable article. Either the efforts of Europe will be successful to grow in other parts, even at greater cost for a time, or the world will learn to substitute something else for it. We can not afford to lose the negro. We have urgent need of all and of more. Let us therefore turn our efforts to making the best of him. Signs are highly encouraging. Individuals of the race who have risen and are to-day good citizens and worthy of the suffrage are easily found, and it is by the exceptional man every race is lifted. ED 1904 M-36

The race is improving and is capable of continued improvement, and the poor whites of our own race in the South, it goes without saying, are capable, with proper education, of what we ourselves have accomplished. We proclaim as our sole purpose the steady elevation of the ignorant of both white and black races in the South. That is the duty in behalf of which we meet to-night, with our hands and hearts outstretched to our own race in the South, beseeching its wisest leaders to advise us how we can best cooperate with them under their guidance for the genuine advancement of that portion of our common country we love so well.

Mr. CARNEGIE. Ladies and gentlemen, I have now to introduce to you one whose voice is heard upon every vital question affecting our country; and there is one merit President Eliot possesses in the highest degree-there is never any doubt where he stands. Our universities are sometimes charged with neglect of attention to civic questions, but there are none in any other country whose presidents take such leading parts in public affairs and who are such leaders of the people. Among the foremost of these ranks he whom I beg to present, President Eliot, of Harvard, our oldest university.

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ELIOT.

There is no larger or graver problem before civilized man at this moment than the prompt formation of a sound public opinion about the right treatment of backward races, and Hampton possesses the keywords of that great problemeducation and productive labor. The support of Hampton Institute depends directly on public opinion concerning it among intelligent and public-spirited people North and South. Let these people remain convinced that Hampton not only has been but is and will be an effective instrument for uplifting the two backward races it serves, and let this conviction be as firmly and broadly planted in the Southern mind as in the Northern and the vigorous life of the institute is assured.

I therefore ask your attention to some of the resemblances and some of the differences between opinion at the North and opinion at the South concerning the negro.

In the first place, northern opinion and southern opinion are identical with regard to keeping the two races pure-that is, without admixture of one with the other. The northern whites hold this opinion quite as firmly as the southern whites; and, inasmuch as the negroes hold the same view, this supposed danger of mutual racial impairment ought not to have much influence on practical measures. Admixture of the two races, so far as it proceeds, will be, as it has been, chiefly the result of sexual vice on the part of white men; it will not be a widespread evil; and it will not be advocated as a policy or method by anybody worthy of consideration. It should be borne in on the mind of the southern whites that their northern brethren are entirely at one with them in this matter, in spite of certain obvious differences of behavior toward the negro at the North and at the South.

Let us next consider some of these differences of practical behavior. At the North it is common for negro children to go to the public schools with white children, while at the South negro children are not admitted to white schools. This practice at the North may be justly described as socially insignificant, because the number of negro children is in most places very small in proportion to the number of white children. In northern towns where negro children are proportionally numerous there is just the same tendency and desire to separate them from the whites that there is in the South. This separation may be effected by public regulations, but if not it will be effected by white

parents procuring the transfer of their children to schools where negroes are few. The differences of practice in this matter at the North and at the South are the result of the different proportion of negroes to the white population in the two sections. Thus in the high schools and colleges of the North the proportion of negroes is always extremely small, so small that it may be neglected as a social influence. Put the prosperous northern whites into the Southern States, in immediate contact with millions of negroes and they would promptly establish separate schools for the colored population, whatever the necessary cost. Transfer the southern whites to the North, where the negroes form but an insignificant fraction of the population, and in a generation or two they would not care whether there were a few negro children in the public schools or not, and would therefore avoid the expense of providing separate schools for the few colored children.

With regard to coming into personal contact with negroes, the adverse feeling of the northern whites is stronger than that of the southern whites, who are accustomed to such contacts; but, on account of the fewness of the negroes at the North, no separate provision is made for them in public conveyances and other places of public resort. It would be inconvenient and wasteful to provide separate conveyances; and, moreover, race is not the real determining consideration in regard to agreeableness of contact in a public conveyance or other public resort. Any clean and tidy person, of whatever race, is more welcome than any dirty person, be he white, black, or yellow. Here again the proportion of the negro to the white population is a dominant consideration. On the whole, there is no essential difference between the feelings of the northern whites and the southern whites on this subject; but the uneducated northern whites are less tolerant of the negro than the southern whites. More trades and occupations are actually open to negroes in the Southern States than in the Northern.

I come next to a real difference between northern opinion and southern opinion-a difference the roots of which are rather hard to trace. At the North nobody connects political equality-that is, the possession of the ballot and eligibility to public office-with social equality; that is, free social intercourse on equal terms in the people's homes. At the South the white population seems to think unanimously that there is a close connection between the two questions following: Shall a negro vote or be a letter carrier? and Shall he sit with a white man at dinner or marry a white man's sister? At the North these two questions seem to have nothing whatever to do with each other. For generations the entire male population of a suitable age has possessed the ballot; but the possession of the ballot has never had anything to do with the social status of the individual voter. In the northern cities, which generally contain a great variety of white nationalities, the social divisions are numerous and deep; and the mere practice of political equality gives no means whatever of passing from one social set to another supposed to be higher. The social sets are determined by like education, parity of income, and similarity of occupation, and not at all by the equality of every citizen before the law. Many an old New England village and many a huge tenement house in a great city at the North illustrate the sharpness and fixity of social distinctions much more strongly than the newest fashionable quarter.

The male villagers call each other John and Bill when they meet on the road or at town meeting, but their families hold themselves apart. In the tenement house families will live for years on the same staircase and yet never exchange so much as a nod. In democratic society it is only "birds of a feather that flock together," and true social mobility in a democracy is not preserved by the ballot or by any theory of the equality of all men before the law, but by public educa

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