N

EGRO emigration and colonization have never been a popular theme for advocacy, mainly because they have rarely been presented on their merits without personal bias and prejudice. Any project of this nature is generally branded as impracticable-a stemming of the tide of natural progress and the currents of individual inclination. Usually the project has been opposed by the argument that it would involve forcible deportation, the uprooting of a contented people from their well-loved homes; in short, the Acadian tragedy.

Nothing could be farther from the thought of the friend of the negro in America. Every one who knows the race by close contact has learned that it possesses many high qualities and is capable of development along certain lines. The colored people have made great strides since emancipation. They have acquired a large amount of property and gained the rudiments of educational training, while many of the race have achieved a worthy place in the communities where they live.

As an ethnological question, viewed in its large relations, these facts of progress signify little as to what the solution of the "race problem" in America is to be. Professor Washington asserts that the negro will remain in America. He has, nevertheless, counseled his people to let politics alone, and to devote themselves to industrial pursuits. This doctrine, popular at the present time in the country at large, and especially in the North, makes its appeal to common sense, and, what seems more important, to the practical test of Northern philanthropy. But, at the same time, the abandonment of the voting right and of the ambition to stand equal with the whites in public functions, is a virtual

acknowledgment of the central principle which the South has always asserted and for which it fought: that an insurmountable racial barrier divides the black and the white races which neither personal fortune nor mental endowment can overcome.

By all proper logic, the mental and material growth of the negro should lift him to a higher place in the civil life of hte South and insure him a larger measure of personal rights and more influence in public councils.

It is plain, however, that the progress of the race thus far has not produced these results. On the contrary, the negroes' political status has declined to an amazing extent during the past ten years, while their civil rights, guaranteed them under the National Constitution, have either been entirely taken away or else are held at the tender mercies of the whites. People lament over the condition of the Filipinos-a people without full self-government; let them look to the southern half of this free republic, where six millions of nativeborn citizens live practically as people without a country.

In the matter of industrial position, it is very doubtful if the technical training of a few hundred colored men and women, such as is carried on at Tuskegee and elsewhere, has not been greatly overmatched by the curtailing of positions for skilled labor which the negro might occupy but which are now denied him. Foreign visitors to the cotton mills of the South recently were surprised to find no negroes employed at the looms, when plenty of colored help was at hand. With the advance in general prosperity in the South has come the danger of reënslavement through the system of peonage.

To the white people the situation is more than ever before one of grave menace. People of the South know well the dangers that arise from the many roving negroes that are found everywhere in that section. The little learning which is a dangerous thing makes many of the employed class insolent and not to be relied upon, thereby crippling industries dependent upon them. More than ever the white people are aware that their section is greatly hampered by the presence of a double population, in the disadvantages it entails of duplicating schools, churches and transportation facilities, and making delicate class-lines between occupations that are "white men's work" and "negroes 'negroes' work." They would gladly throw off this incubus if they could, but no way has opened. It is not hard to see why negro education is not regarded as a panacea for the ills the South suffers. The South is struggling to place itself on a level with the industrial civilizations of the North and of Europe, but under present conditions this is extremely difficult.

On this bare outline of the situation is based the argument that negro emigration is the solution of the negro problem, from three points of view:

1. It is desirable for the negroes themselves, to enable them to develop a racial life away from the blight of caste stigma and the monopoly of land and other advantages by the whites.

2. It is desirable from the Southerners' standpoint, in that it would lighten the burdens entailed by a two-fold population, remove the dangers which the low and degraded of the colored race offer,

3. It is desirable for the nation as a whole, as the completion of a work begun and carried forward by the two great idealists of the American system, Jefferson and Lincoln, removing at last the cause of bitter division between brothers North and South.

This at any rate is a broad enough hypothesis from which to argue a vexed question. Only Destiny can bring to a harmony a theme to which human dulness and passion have set so false and uncertain a key-note. But in the past there have been a few whose almost prophetic vision seems to have compassed the whole design. About eighty years ago a few broad-minded men, among them Henry Clay of Kentucky, started Liberia, a colony for free American negroes. Lincoln, in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, specifically stated that the liberation of the blacks was to enable them "to colonize in Africa or elsewhere." And no less discerning a mind than that of the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin prophesied the return of the freedmen to their ancestral home. Liberia has been mostly forgotten in the noisy material advance of the past century, but it still exists as a very worthy example of self-government in Africa, by the Africans, despite the craftiness of European governments and a frontier crowded with the aboriginal races of the Dark Continent. As exacting an English diplomatist as Sir Harry Johnston, in his recent work, Liberia, leads one to believe that the little republic is a proper success, maintaining the ideals of Christianity and freedom in the face of great obstacles. Doubtless it would prove a greater power in Africa if its small population were to be reinforced by a new influx of negroes from America-a movement which doubtless would be welcomed by the Liberians, who now numbering only about 25,000, hold a territory as large as England and inhabi

with the negro brought into the scope of the discussion. His curiosity was speedily given check, and a new view of the whole matter dawned on him when the leader passed on to the clause following, in which Paul continues: "And hath determined . . . the bounds the bounds of their habitation," etc., the leader going on to explain these words as meaning that the Almighty made all races to be as brothers but to dwell apart, each in his divinely apportioned part of the earth. Was not this explanation a logical one? Was it not good common sense? Does it not also help mightily toward settling the vexing problem of the relation America bears to various races to-day -Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Negro?

Disfranchisement, Northern indifference, Southern prejudice-sinister omens, seemingly, for the negroes' prospects. But in the large view, signs of hope. The race, now "out of politics," is a subject that can be handled without reference or deference to any political party. Enough of fanaticism and mawkish sentimentalism; enough wrangling and harsh words; now let there be some constructive statesmanship. Northern indifference of late has done much to put the negro on his own resources. Race prejudice is in a large sense beneficent, in that it has kept the negro race remarkably pure, purer than in any other country-West Indies, South America or elsewhere-preserving the race as a distinct body of population. This separateness will be effective in enabling it to do its part in history which no mongrel race could do. Finally, then, is the idea practicable? Would it not cost too much? Is not Africa too far off?

West Africa is hardly a half farther than Europe. Single emigrants can go to-day to Liberia from Baltimore or Savannah via Liverpool for about seventy-five dollars. Before the middle of the last century regular packets ran between Baltimore and Monrovia. With such service, which demand would create, the cost of emigrating would hardly be more than that of European peasants coming to America.

Russia has spent millions to colonize Siberia. England has helped the surplus of her own crowded cities to Australia. The Salvation Army has established successful colonies of English settlers in Canada. This country, which has spent billions in a civil strife to free a race from serfdom, ought not to begrudge a few millions to set it on its feet as a people.

Just as Russians are to-day by thousands leaving their native land for a strange land of larger freedom, just as our own fathers crossed the seas to seek a condition better suited to self-development, just as in all ages great movements of population have taken place, to get away from economic pressure, escape tyranny, or seek religious or political freedom, so the negro, under the plan of an overruling power, may, at some future time, make what will be the next great migration in history-an exodus from the land of his serfdom and early training in the arts of civilization, back to the land of his origin, where, possessed of all he gained here, he may be the entering wedge in darkest Africa for the enlightenment of that continent.

WALLACE B. CONANT.
Brookline, Massachusetts.

"Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, deserves better of mankind and does more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians."-Dean Swift: Gulliver's Travels.

"He who from the soil he cultivates draws forth

one additional sheaf of corn serves mankind more

than he who presents them with a book."-Hernandino St. Pierre: Paul and Virginia.

NOWHERE in

OWHERE in the world is more organized effort made with better success to reduce these sentiments expressed by Dean Swift and Hernandino St. Pierre into fruitful practice than at an institution conducted in the interests of negroes and North American Indians at the historical town of Hampton, Virginia. At this institute the effort is made to produce useful, well-balanced and clean-cut young men and women who will go out into the community and by right living or actual teaching, influence the masses to lead healthier, better lives. The pupil is discouraged from considering book-learning achievement in itself rather than a mere means to an end. Industrial and agricultural training are employed, not only with a view to render the young men and women self-supporting and dependable citizens; but "learning by doing" is also utilized as a beneficent and powerful instrument for brain culture and character-forming.

an

Hampton Institute was founded by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong five years after the emancipation of the American negro. The General had fought in many pitched battles to help free the negroes who were held in bondage. Being a man of large sympathies and endowed with shrewd common sense, he realized that the liberation of the negro slaves did not absolve the United States from responsibility regard

the

ing their welfare. The white man had acknowledged the injustice and cupidity involved in forcibly expatriating Africander from his native continent, transporting him to America, holding his body in bondage and his mind in midnight darkness. He undertook to free the negroes whom he had held in slavery, and pledged never again to enslave them; but this was not all that was needed. In addition, some sort of reparation had to be made to the aggrieved black man. A little over four million people had been set free; but the bondage of many decades had so enfeebled their minds and clouded their intellects that they were more like weak and half-witted children, ruthlessly cast adrift, than grown-up men and women who had come into their own. Something had to be done for these helpless people-and done at once.

The native genius of General Armstrong combined with his large-heartedness, led him to resolve that he would devote his life to continuing the work of negro emancipation which had liberated the persons of the colored people, by setting free their minds and producing leaders amongst them who would make it their aim and ambition to use their abilities in the work of civilizing and modernizing their race. Both sexes would be taught how to live and work in order to do the maximum good to themselves and their community.

It was this peculiar situation which inspired the founder of Hampton Institute to establish a school which would make its sole purpose to put wits into the fingers as well as the minds of the pupils. Until then education was purely intellectual. Pupils studied books only, and the education offered in colleges