minority has been wiser in its views than the triumphant majority. Hence, the overshadowing issue in all matters of grave public concern is to establish and maintain the kind of restraining influence and safeguarding that tends toward discussion, deliberation, and a wholesome delay. And all legislation that makes possible hasty action by an impatient popular will merely plays into the hands of those who have ulterior motives concealed beneath their fervid professions of devotion to the political, social, and moral uplift of the people. Our ancestors were wise in accepting the teachings of history as to the dangers of entrusting unrestrained power to a single person, to a single body, or even to the direct desires of the majority. They also showed commendable foresight in intrenching this wisdom in constitutions and constitutional provisions that cannot lightly or easily be changed.

The Spread of Socialistic Views.

The great changes going on in the industrial world are almost imperceptibly modifying our whole social view. Even the most conservative find every once in a while that, notwithstanding their refusal to accept the demands of the great social unrest which is everywhere evident, they have drifted with the tide of affairs and are accepting things which they had determinedly opposed. The demands of this unrest are affecting not merely financial regulations but also our political and social ways, and it is operative everywhere where industry is an important factor in the life of the people.

The United States during the past year experienced turbulent unrest in the Lawrence mills and in the mills of Passaic, in the coal fields of Pennsylvania and in San Diego; France saw the rise of a great Syndicalist movement; Germany was alarmed by the great increase in the vote of the Social Democrats; and in England so determined were the coal strikers and their friends that a minimum wage law was enacted for the entire coal industry. The latter marked an almost revolutionary step in a conservative country like England, and, taken into account with the Old-age Pension Act and Lloyd George's "revo

lutionary" budget, reveals a change in sentiment in its people that would have seemed impossible ten years ago. In this country our fundamental laws and even our judiciary were the objects of severe arraignment. And the remarkable thing to the conservative mind is the fact that these great socialistic changes seem to be accompanied with increased prosperity. Whether this has been due to an increased demand for more effective industrial and business methods, or to a substantial gain in economic and social progress, remains to be seen.

In commenting on the English situation the Boston Transcript has said: "Our friends the Socialists have always been ridiculed for their pet claim that it is the business of the government to spread happiness and plenty among the people. Yet here, in a country the very quickest of all to foam at the very word Socialism, is a string of acts each having as its tacit side-issue the partial redistribution of wealth and the spread of happiness." As Germany has already adopted even more paternalistic measures, the Transcript asks whether the time has not come for us "to frame slightly larger conceptions of government than we have been holding."

CHAPTER X 263-27

SOCIAL PROBLEMS (Concluded).

Education in the South.

FEUDS AND EDUCATION. An effective cure for the deadly feuds and the defiance of law that, within recent months, have been attracting attention to certain mountainous regions in the South is found in education. Not only do ignorance and superstition disappear before it, but interdependence, social responsibility, and the submergence of self and selfish interests into the welfare of all are pressed home upon the minds and the hearts of all who become real learners. The petty feuds of life are soon lost sight of in the bigger vision that education promotes.

An excellent illustration of this is being furnished by J. A. Burns in the Oneida Institute, which he founded in the very heart of the feud region in the mountains of Kentucky. Oneida is forty miles from a railroad station, and Mr. Burns, who himself was at one time involved in these feuds, could not at first secure help in his determination to bring better conditions as well as better feeling into the life of these people. His story is well told in the Christian Herald of March 27. "He begged a landowning cousin for an acre of ground and was refused. Then he succeeded in convincing a few Oneida citizens, and a board of trustees was at last organized. The first meeting was held in an old mill-shed which was full of bullet-holes from former battles, and the board itself was made up of two warlike factions of an ancient feud. Many at this first meeting were face to face with old enemies, and glared at each other while Burns was making his appeal. But the incorporation was effected and the enterprise was launched, though without a dollar in sight. Its single asset was Burns' inflexible faith and earnest purpose. The only help he could get from the trustees was their promise not to fight while he was building the school-house, which was a big concession; but they would not contribute a foot

of lumber nor an hour of work. It is sad to be compelled to record the fact that the promise to keep peace was forgotten. Before the building was finished the feuds had claimed more victims.

"To organize a school board and incorporate an institution was one thing, but to build a house without land or money was quite another. Burns was master of the situation because, back of all opposition, he had the one great abiding purpose to open the door of opportunity to the Kentucky mountaineers. He wanted to destroy the feuds, and he meant to do this by awakening the people to a recognition of their higher destiny. How well he did his work is best told by the six hundred students who are now a living monument to his well-directed energies in Oneida Institute.'

At first Mr. Burns worked alone, but soon his earnestness and determination overcame opposition and won friends for his enterprise. Then both friends and donations came, and a building was soon ready that accommodated 100 pupils and 3 teachers. That was 12 years ago. Now the Institute owns 1350 acres of land, 200 acres of it being rich river bottom land which produces ample supplies for the large number of resident pupils now enrolled, while on the near-by mountain slopes are ideal facilities for raising live stock. There are now 15 teachers in the school. But what is still better, Mr. Burns has opened an adjunct school 15 miles from Oneida and he is proposing a series of associated schools to be scattered throughout the mountainous regions of Kentucky.

As such territory forms one-third of the area and contains one-fourth of the population of the State, the importance of the movement can be seen. The testimony from all sources is that Mr. Burns has transformed the Oneida region into a law-abiding and morally uplifted country. The feud spirit has disappeared with the elimination of ignorance and superstition and a spirit of brotherhood has taken its place. This is one of the most remarkable concrete illustrations of the value of education to the State, to society, and to separate individuals that has been furnished within recent years.

A DEPLORABLE TENDENCY.-A deplorable tendency in regard to the status of the negro has been developing within

the last few years. This tendency is manifesting itself especially in the form of excluding him from many of the lines of honest employment which he formerly filled, and without regard to his actual capacity for doing so with ability and fidelity Strange to say, this feeling against the negro has been most insistent in the North, where formerly the negro found his strongest advocates. An editorial inone of the most prominent newspapers of the country states: "There is, perhaps, not a branch of labor which welcomes negroes to-day which did not as freely welcome them twenty years ago. On the other hand, there is scarcely a branch of labor which welcomed them twenty years ago which is not gradually excluding them to-day) For example, within the last three years at least five of the larger hotels and cafés of Philadelphia, which, in the main, had never before employed other than negro servitors, have dismissed their negro in favor of white help, while other local establishments have gone to the disquieting extreme of advertising the fact that they do not employ negro servants. New York city, Atlantic City, Providence, R. I.; Detroit, Mich.; Portland, Ore.; St. Joseph, Mo.; Chicago, Ill., and one city after another are falling in line with this movement to do away with negroes as hotel and personal servants; while the broader avenues of labor, such as shops, mills, foundries, factories, steam and street railways, mercantile and business houses throughout the North already exclude them almost completely."

The causes for this antipathy are probably not far to seek. The negro has not been conforming to the increasingly high standards of civilization. His code of morals has been regrettably weak and he has been truly charged with dissolute and even criminal habits that have entirely too often made him a menace to society. Fortunately, there are many exceptions to this rule and there are abundant evidences of more worthy things developing within the race. The trouble is that the public is apt to judge in such matters upon the basis of the poorest product rather than the best. As Holmes years ago said about his One Hoss Shay," it is the weakest link that must stand the strain. It is therefore exceedingly important that the friends of the colored race, and the colored race itself,

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