THE NEGRO PROBLEM DISCUSSED BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, AFFAIRS IN CONGRESS, AND DEATH OF MRS. JOHN KENNEDY

 

Booker T. Washington.

Cortland Evening Standard, Thursday, March 29, 1900.

THE NEGRO PROBLEM 

DISCUSSED BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON OF TUSKEGEE, ALA. Education of the Hand as Well as Mind—Putting Brains, Skill and Dignity into Every Kind of Labor—An Eloquent Address.

   The closing entertainment in the Cortland Normal School course for this season was a lecture last night at Normal hall by Booker T. Washington, the president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial institute of Tuskegee, Ala. The hall was crowded to its utmost capacity, and it was an attentive and highly appreciative audience. The subject was "The Negro Problem in the South," and it was discussed in a fair and impartial way, without prejudice, but with all the earnestness and fervor of one speaking upon a matter of vital importance. The address abounded in common sense; it was punctuated and enlivened with good stories admirably told, each one of them serving to illustrate or clinch a particular point, and at times the speaker rose to a degree of eloquence rarely heard from any orator upon any occasion and was warmly applauded.

   Mr. Washington said that he had heard three methods given for the solution of the race question in the South. The first was proposed when one day a number of years ago a ship sailed away from a southern port for Liberia bearing 600 negroes going back to Africa. There, said some one, that is the way to solve the race question. Send them back to Africa. But that man forgot that that very morning before breakfast more than six hundred colored babies had been born in the Black Belt of Alabama, and that at that rate the race question by deportation would not be settled very fast.

   The second method proposed was by setting apart a certain territory in the West and gathering into it all the colored people of the land. But there were two difficulties in reference to that proposition. In the first place it would be necessary to build a high wall all around the district to keep the negroes in, and in the second place it would be necessary to build a still higher wall about it to keep the white people out. For the whites are always sure to follow the blacks. They would follow them to Africa, especially if they thought there was gold there.

   The third method was that in time the colored race would be absorbed by all the other races that are combined in the formation of the nation. But it is a noteworthy fact—you white people may not have noticed it, but we colored ones have—that if a person has in his veins blood 99 per cent white and 1 per cent colored he is put in the class of the colored people. It therefore takes 100 per cent to make a man an Anglo-Saxon, but one per cent will make a man colored. Then we are the stronger race, and there would be much more prospect of our absorbing you then of your absorbing us.

   There is another thing; the negro race is the only race that ever came to this country by invitation. You white people didn't get any invitation. You came in 1492, against the vigorous protests of the citizens of the country. But we of the colored race were even then considered so important that they had to send for us. It would, therefore, be exceedingly unkind and ungracious for us not to remain after you took so much pains to get us, and in consequence we will stay right here.

   Mr. Washington then told of his birth as a slave on a plantation in Virginia in 1858 or 1959. He was unable to tell just when, but he had secured pretty good evidence of being born some where at some time. His home was a poor shell of a cabin of one room. He lived in this place when the war closed.  Afterward he worked in the coal mines in West Virginia. There he heard of Gen. Armstrong's school at Hampton, Va., as a place where a colored man could get an education. He went there walking and begging rides on his way. He worked several days in Richmond, on the way sleeping in a hole under a sidewalk nights and earned money enough to take him over the last part of his journey. He was a pretty rough and dirty specimen when he got there and one of the lady teachers objected to taking him in. At last she gave him a broom and told him to sweep the next room. He swept it three times and dusted it four times and then the teacher got out her pocket handkerchief and started on a tour of inspection. She couldn't find any dust. "Well, I guess you'll do to keep," she said," and that said Mr. Washington, "was my college examination, and I passed it and was entered in the school."

   In 1881, said the speaker, I went down into the Black Belt of Alabama, a section where the colored people out-numbered the whites six, eight or ten times to one—a place where it is said that no one but a black man or mules can live. I remember an old colored man remarking as he saw a man unhitching some mules from a street car "Brass de Lawd, the Yankees come down here thirty years ago and freed de colored people and now they have come down to free de mules."

   I am not here to-night to speak to you in behalf of education at Tuskegee, though that is important. I am not here to speak in behalf of the colored race of the South, though that is important. But I am to speak of the relations between the whites and the blacks of the South. Slavery wrought nearly as much evil to the white man of the South as to the colored man. Whenever the ballot of the negro is stolen away there is an injustice toward the colored man. But to the white man there is a dragging down of his soul. When there is a lynching there is death to one poor victim, but to the white man there is so much of death to his soul. I would help all the people of the South regardless of race or color.

   When I went to Tuskegee in 1881 I was one teacher and I had thirty students. Now we have 1,047 students. They come from twenty-seven states and from Africa, Puerto Rico, Cuba and other foreign countries, if you can call them foreign countries. It is pretty hard to know now what you do call foreign countries. One-third of them are young women and two-thirds young men. Their average age is 18 1/2 years. Four-fifths of them board and sleep on the school-grounds. We have eighty-one instructors in the three departments—industrial, academic and literary. Altogether including students and instructors we have about one thousand two hundred people connected with our school. We have a farm of 2,300 acres. We have forty-two separate buildings, and we have twenty-seven different industries represented in our industrial school. The annual expenses of running our institution are about $70,000.

   We are careful to make an honest study of the actual conditions and surroundings and do for our pupils what their present condition demands regardless of whether the same thing was ever done for another. The temptation is to run each individual through a single mould regardless of conditions or needs. Mr. Washington illustrated this by the story of a young colored student whom be found studying medicine in Boston and making a special study of diseases of the nervous system. Mr. Washington inquired of him where he expected to practice his specialty, and he replied among his own people in Mississippi. But did it ever occur to you," continued Mr. Washington, "that not one colored man in 100,000 has ever arrived at that advanced stage of civilization where he could suffer from nervous prostration?" The young man hadn't thought of that.

   Training of the hand, said the speaker is the vital power in lifting the colored man out of his helpless state. We cultivated 700 acres of land this year and at the same time taught the workers the chemistry of the land, how best to fertilize, how to raise crops. This is one of the kinds of training necessary for a people 85 per cent of whom depend on agriculture for a living. We built a chapel this year and every bit of the work was done by our students, and at the same time the girls did the baking, the making and mending and laundering of the clothing the boys wore.

   At the head of each of our twenty-seven industrial departments is an instructor just as superior in his attainments in his line as the instructors in our academic departments. This industrial training is valuable in helping rid the race of the idea that labor with the hand is degrading. They get that idea from the Southern whites. We teach our young men to respect the girl who does housework, takes care of bees and of poultry just as much as the girl who peddles books and poor books at that. It is better for a girl to do these things than to stand or sit behind a counter or desk in a dingy store.

   The old darkey prayed long to have a turkey sent to him and it didn't come. Then he prayed to be sent to a turkey and he found one before morning. That is the only way that races as well as individuals ever get anything as a rule. The colored man must get to his trade and then he can win a place for himself.

   Slavery was a curse to the whole people of this country, but it brought one blessing to the colored man. It compelled the white man to do business and to depend upon him for 250 years. Every plantation was an industrial school where colored slaves were taught to be skillful in agriculture and to be expert mechanics. A common black man was worth on the auction block about $800; a skilled mechanic was worth $1,500. A white man of any kind couldn't be sold for 50 cents. It was worth while training and teaching colored men trades on the plantations if it would cause the price to advance from $800 to $1,500. At the close of the war the colored race was in possession of all of the skill of the South. But as years went on and the generation of skilled black men died no new generation of skilled black men came up in their places, and an army of white men from the North and from Europe came in to take their places. The white man puts brains and skill and dignity into his labor and that is what makes him successful. The best protection of the colored race is to teach each negro to do an uncommon thing in an uncommon manner and to make him the most useful man in the community. That is the way the white man makes a success of things. Once, the colored men had almost a monopoly of the business of being barbers. The white men have gotten it all away by doing the same work better. The black man was a barber, the white man is a tonsorial artist; the black man was a whitewasher; the white man is a house decorator. All such industries have slipped from under our hands because we failed to put brains, skill and dignity into them. The negro in Georgia plowing with one mule cannot compete in raising corn with the farmer in Ohio with his improved machinery, but the negro must get in a position to use the machinery. The white man sits down and reads a newspaper while he attends a machine that washes fifty shirts an hour. How long will the colored man's laundry business in the old way stand against that? But there is no prejudice in the American dollar, whether the man be black, blue, brown or ginger bread color.

   But some one says you are speaking from the utilitarian point of view. Well, grant it, but show me a race living on the skim milk of industry and I will show you a race that is the football of political parties. The most satisfactory part of the work at Tuskegee is not that every one is there to get an education, though this is so, but also that every one is ready to go out and give light to make others useful and happy. The actual problem in the South is what will they do when they get out?

   Under the old mortgage system nearly every colored man pays from 15 to 40 percent interest and is in debt. They don't know how to spend money if they get it. I was in one house where they had a $60 cabinet organ that they were paying for on the installment plan, and they had but one fork on the table for five of us to use. The public schools run but three months in the year and each child has spent upon him but 81 cents a year for his education. Here you spent from $12 to $15 each for your children. No wonder some of the colored are dishonest when hungry. It is the old theory, "My body is my master's, the chickens are my master's. If I feed my master's body with master's chickens he has fewer chickens but more nigger."

   What is the remedy? You seldom find a black man but what he knows that he is ignorant and wants to get an education. The rank and file of the colored race work hard, but they don't know how to use the results, they don't know how to go to work about it. There is a change whenever a leader comes among them and helps them to an education and trains their hands in industry, trains their morals and religion. The greatest curse of slavery was that it deprived the colored race of their independence for 250 years. You can't restore it in 30 or 40 years.

   You can't make a good Christian out of a hungry man. He will fill his stomach before morning. You can beat us in thinking, but we are more emotional than you. We feel more in ten minutes than you can in an hour. We are gradually making improvements in the South. Some one heard Fred Douglas, the great orator, speak and inquired if he was a negro. Only half a negro was the answer. Well, was the reply, if that man as a half negro could speak in that way, what could he have done if he had been a whole negro? So far we have had only half an opportunity, but we are going to become worthy citizens of this magnificent country.

   What influence will industrial training have upon the whites and blacks of the South? This question will be solved in justice to all if we can but be patient and wise. No race can go on cherishing hatred and ill will toward another without being dragged down. The two races must be brought together on terms of good will. Any one who encourages one to hate the other is an enemy to his country. The proposition to disfranchise the negro was defeated in the lower house in Georgia by a vote of 137 to 3. That was the greatest victory in the last twenty years, because it was all done by the white men themselves.

   There is an absence of prejudice in matters of business in the South. Negroes have the same opportunities as white men at the banks and as merchants. In the light of history we must acknowledge that trade and commerce are the forerunners of peace. The negro must get hold of something the world wants. You can't convert a people by cursing at them. We made 1,000,000 bricks at Tuskegee last year and sold them to whites. We make wagons. We do job printing for several counties in our vicinity. We print the Democratic organ of our county. I don't mean to say that we edit it, but we do the mechanical work upon it. We do it so well that they come to us to do all their work. When I went to Tuskegee and started this work there, the whites turned their faces away when they met me. Now they are our warmest friends. When a white man is dependent upon a black man for something he wants it makes a great change in his attitude toward him. A white man who has a mortgage on his house held by a black man will never try to drive that black man away from the polls. Whenever a black man has $500 to lend he is sure to find a white man to borrow it.

   There is a big creamery in our vicinity. One of our graduates was engaged to supervise the making of butter. The president of the board of directors objected to a colored man in that place, but when he got 3 cents a pound more for his butter in New York than his competitors he said nothing more about it. That three cents removed all the color from the black man.

   The average crop of sweet potatoes in our vicinity is forty-nine bushels to the acre. One of our graduates, who studied the soil and the chemistry of his fertilizer, raised 260 bushels to the acre. All the white men in the vicinity were around to see how he did it. One colored man in a community who has bought and paid for his farm, paid for his house and his tools and has got a bank account will do more for that community than all the laws that were ever enacted. We must make our services so important that they can't get along without us.

   After the war when the colored men first became citizens every one wanted to go to congress and negroes spent time in politics which they should have spent in starting truck gardens. There was never a time when we wanted your sympathy, help and advice as much as now. My friends, this problem in the South concerns nearly ten millions of my people and sixty-five millions of yours. We rise as you rise, we fall as you fall, we are strong when you are strong, we are weak when you are weak. There is no power that can separate our destiny. No member of your race in any part of our country can harm the weakest and meanest member of mine without the bluest blood in your civilization being degraded. If ever there has been a people in America which has obeyed the Bible injunction "If they smite thee on one cheek, turn to them the other also," it has been the American negro. To right his wrongs the Russian appeals to dynamite, the Irish to agitation, the Cuban to revolution, but the negro, the most law-abiding and God-fearing of them all, has depended for the righting of his wrongs upon his songs, his fore day prayers, and now be depends upon his industrial training, his making himself so essential to the white that the latter cannot do without him. When this day comes he will then take his place as a citizen of this nation in reality as well as in name.

Congressman and Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler.

 

AFFAIRS IN CONGRESS.

Day Spent Considering Army Appropriation Bill.

MUCH EXTEMPORANEOUS DEBATE.

Lively Word Tilting Precipitated During Discussion of Point at Issue—Pensions Argued—Senate Bill Re-Adjustment of Otoe and Missouri Land Company.

   WASHINGTON, March 29.—The house devoted practically the whole day to consideration of the army appropriation bill. Several minor amendments were adopted and about half the bill was considered. There was a good deal of extemporaneous debate during the day, little of which was pertinent to the bill.

   Mr. Driggs created a diversion by charging reckless extravagance in the fitting up of the transport Sumner and precipitated a lively tilt upon the subject. He gave notice that later he should ask the house to investigate the subject. The final conference reports on the pension appropriation bill and the urgent deficiency bill was agreed to.

   On assembling the house passed a senate bill to approve a revision and adjustment of certain sales of Otoe and Missouri lands in the states of Nebraska and Kansas.

   The consideration of the army appropriation bill was resumed.

   Mr. Fitzgerald offered an amendment to pay to the heirs of officers and enlisted men in the regular army who have died in the service since Jan. 1, 1898, two months' extra pay. The amendment went over on a point of order.

   Mr. Lentz offered an amendment providing that no part of the money appropriated for the pay of the army should be paid to the son of any member of congress who had secured his appointment since the destruction of the battleship Maine. It was ruled out on a point of order.

   Recurring to the newspaper article read by Mr. Driggs, Mr. Wheeler delivered an appeal against extravagance. If it was unpatriotic to protest against that, he said he was willing to take the responsibility of being unpatriotic. Mr. Cochran also inveighed against profligacy in expenditures.

   Without completing the consideration of the bill the house at 5:10 p. m. adjourned.

 

In the Senate.

   WASHINGTON, March 29.—The senate has agreed to vote on the Porto Rico government and tariff bill next Tuesday afternoon at four o'clock. An important utterance was made later in the day on the bill by Mr. Davis, who advocated free trade between the United States and Porto Rico. Mr. Davis' principal proposition was that the necessary money to be raised by taxation should not be raised by a duty levied upon rum and tobacco products on the island.

   The amendment offered by Mr. Carter to the Alaskan civil code bill relating to the mining for gold under the waters of Cape Nome was agreed to, but further than this no progress was made with the measure.

 

Appointments of Confidential Clerks.

   ALBANY, N. Y., March 29.—The secretary of state has been notified of the appointment by Supreme Court Justice W. S. Andrews of Syracuse of William D. Newell of Little Falls as his confidential clerk, and by Justice Sewell of Delaware, of his appointment of Eugene H. Hanford of Walton, as his confidential clerk.

 

Army Transport SS Sumner.

Transport Sumner Inspected.

   NEW YORK, March 29.—The transport Sumner, which has been overhauled at an expense of $750,000, was inspected at her pier in Brooklyn by Surgeon General Sternberg, Quarter Master General Ludington and Acting Commissary General Weston. The Sumner will sail today for Manila with about 1,000 men on board. Her cargo will consist of supplies for her own passengers and for the troops in Manila.

 

RUSSIA'S DEMAND.

Desires to Land Troops—Korea Asks For Help.

   LONDON, March 29.—The Evening News publishes a dispatch from Kobe, Japan, under to-day's date, announcing that Russia has demanded leave to land troops near Masanpho. Korea, the dispatch says, wants outside interference.

 

PAGE TWO—EDITORIALS.

   Effie Shannon, the actress, was recently asked what she would do if she were a man, to which she aptly replied, "I wouldn't be a man for anything." This is a little straw, but it shows the way the wind is blowing. Some years ago it was common enough for girls to wish they were boys and women to wish they were men, but in these days we seldom hear these wishes expressed, and there is good reason why we do not hear them. Thanks to the enterprise and perseverance of a number of women whose names are familiar and to the wonderful growth of chivalry among men, the lot of women is becoming yearly more enviable. In those branches of society and industry which woman does not directly control she has indirectly almost a controlling influence. She is becoming the power both on and behind the throne. Let us hope that she will not use her power so arbitrarily as to reverse the old proposition and make boys wish they were girls and men wish they were women.

   ◘ Thirty thousand people recently sang the British national anthem under Queen Victoria's window. Presumably her majesty is not one of that class of people who are annoyed by glee clubs.

   ◘ Cecil Rhodes is going to Europe, but he will probably not visit the Paris exposition. Mr. Rhodes is not popular on the continent.

   ◘ There is sharp rivalry in New York for the position of dean of the faculty of getting hold of other people's money.

 

MARRIED IN BALDWINSVILLE, N. Y.

Former Cortland Girl Marries a Popular Young Man.

   Mr. and Mrs. John T. Group of Baldwinsville, who were married in that village yesterday afternoon, arrived in  Cortland yesterday afternoon and are the guests of Mr. and Mrs. G. F. Beaudry, 88 Port Watson-st. Mrs. Group will be remembered by Cortland people as Miss Nellie Jones, a sister of Mrs. Beaudry, who for some time was a sales woman in the store, The marriage ceremonies were solemnized at the home of the bride's parents, Mr. and Mrs. E. S. Darrow of Baldwinsville by the Rev J. Clark Tibbets, the Baptist minister of that place. Mr. Group is a well known and highly esteemed young man in Baldwinsville, and Mrs. Group is well known here and has a host of friends who extend congratulations to the pair.

 

Death of Mrs. John A. Kennedy.

   Mrs. John A. Kennedy, 149 Tompkins-st., Cortland, died this morning at 9:15 o'clock of tuberculosis, aged 26 years, 11 months and 4 days. Mrs. Kennedy's maiden name was Mary Murphy, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Murphy, 2 Taylor-st. Six years ago last October she married Mr. John A. Kennedy. Aside from the husband and parents, there survive her daughter, Catherine Kennedy, aged 5 years, and four brothers and two sisters.

   The funeral services will be held Saturday. The time has not as yet been fixed, but will be announced to-morrow.

 

BREVITIES.

   —The Odd Fellows will have a hop Saturday evening in Vesta lodge rooms.

   —E. B. Cummings' grocery store on Grant-st. has been connected with the telephone exchange.

   —The STANDARD is indebted to Hon. George. S. Sands for the Red Book, the legislative manual for 1900.

   —Mr. Milo D. Gillen died at his home in Groton City at 10 o'clock this morning of diabetes. His age was 44 years.

   —Cortland Commandery, No. 50, K. T., has arranged for its annual reception and ball in Taylor hall on Friday evening, April 20.

   —New display advertisements to-day are: A. S. Burgess, Spring suits and top coats, page 7; Cortland Opera House, "Faust," page 5.

   —The ladies of the Presbyterian church have arranged for a reception for the new pastor, Rev. Robert Clements in the church parlors next Monday evening, April 2, from 8 to 10 o'clock.

   —Sunday, April 8, is the anniversary Sunday of the Y. M. C. A. association when prominent speakers will address union services in the First Baptist and First M. E. church at 7:30 P. M.

   —Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Stilwell entertained their friends to the number of fifty at progressive Pedro Friday evening. Those from out of town were Mr. and Mrs. C. B. Peck of Cortland.—Dryden Herald.

   —A meeting of the Congregational church and society will be held at the close of the prayer-meeting this evening. Business of importance will be brought before the meeting and a full attendance is earnestly requested.

   —There will be a meeting of the members of the Congregational church and society to-night in connection with the prayer meeting to hear the report of the committee on pastor and to consider if it seems desirable the matter of extending a call to Rev. Robert Yost of St. Louis, Mo., who preached here two weeks ago.