FIRST MOHONK CONFEREf?t6:go pi ^25 ON THE LI3RA 'iX Negro Question HlLL at LAKE MOHG.NK, Ulster Count-, N-^.W YORK, JUNE 4, S, 6, 1390. Repofted \: / said, "they are 'seeking': they can do nothing but come t . They have to get up every night, and wander through the night, pray ing : that is the way we did in old times. They can do nothing eis^ because they are seeking. They have meetings which last from aark till daylight." Then I went to the minister of the church, and asked him what to do about it. He said, "You can do nothing: the old habits of slavery are on this people, and they do not know how to get rid of them." "Do you hold," I asked, "that it is a good thing tor children of ten years of age to be wandering about and praying all night ? " " No," he said ; " but it is an old habit of .slavery. At the same time they are working out of this, they are becoming more enlightened by degrees, and they are forming for themselves new homes. In Beaufort, three-fourths of the land is owned by col ored people. I was told by one of the town officers that they never mortgaged their property, they never endangered their homes, they always pay their taxes, no matter what their other indebtedness may be. The homes are almost invariably held by the women. The rule is to put up a shanty of a house, often without a chimney. Then they put in a chimney, then ceil the house, and then put in glass. windows instead of shutters. So it goes on from year to year. Most of the houses are one-story high, but a few have put on another story. There is where civilization comes in, when homes are built. All around me people are marrying and settling in the community, building as near the school-house as possible. They no longer sit on the floor and eat with their fingers, or sit in the corners with their backs to each other. They have tables and dishes and ornaments, and one family has a parlor organ. Several have " machins," as they call them ; but, I am sorry to say, the machines interfere with their fine sewing. I have tried lately an experiment in my neighborhood. Many of those who have married had been to school to me, and their children are now going. We now cut the children's clothes, and let the gar ments be made at home ; and I am delighted with this experiment. They come back proud of their ability to do this work, and it is well done. Judge A. W. Tourgee, of Mayville, N.Y., was next recognized. Judge Tourgee. — So much has been said this morning about the industrial deficiencies of the colored people of the South that I have j been greatly surprised at the omission of any reference to the other ' side of the question, — their industrial excellences. I have always] been less impressed with the industrial needs of the colored man ' than his industrial achievements. From 1865 until 1880, I had a peculiarly good opportunity for observing his qualities both as an agricultural and mechanical laborer, having first and last had some hundreds in my employ, and during much of the time each year trav- ' 25 elling in different parts of the State in which I then lived. As a result of constant study of their conditions since emancipation, I do not hesitate to say that the colored people of the South have accomplished more in twenty five years, from an industrial point of view, than any people on the face of the earth ever before achieved under anything like such unfavorable conditions. The manner in which they live and the things they do not do have been alluded to here as if they were racial qualities, and not for tuitous, resulting conditions. I was much impressed with the sugges tions of raore than one who has spoken, as to what they should be taught to do, as if they were industrial babes. I would like to see any of their advisers give the colored man lessons in the management of a mule, or teach him to raise a crop of corn or cotton or tobacco, or work a bad hillside at the South. In those forms of industry which they have had an opportunity to acquire, they have shown an aptitude and success which are simply amazing, when we consider their previous lack of opportunity to learn management, thrift, and economy. The Northern man is always prompt to criticise their agricultural methods ; yet the Northern farmer who goes South and relies upon his own judgment and his own labor is very generally a failure. So, too, in comparison with the " poor whites " of the South, the landless cropper-class, it is unquestionable that the Negro has ex celled them greatly in industrial progress since his emancipation. In five of the heaviest cotton-growing counties of five States of the South, it is estimated that from four to six per cent, of the heads of families among colored people live now under their own roof-trees. In the regions where agriculture is more varied, the proportion is much greater. Probably six per cent, is a fair average. Now, if, under the conditions prevailing in 1865, two in a thousand had housed themselves in twenty-five years, it would have been regarded, by the observant political economist, as nothing short of an industrial miracle. I have no doubt that five times as large a proportion of them have become home-owners and self-employers as of the " poor whites," who raost nearly approach them in educational and financial conditions, and with whom alone they can be justly compared. Indeed, they already stand above the average of the white race in sorae industrial conditions. There is only half as large a percentage of paupers araong thera as among the whites of the eight States of the " black belt " of the South, and the proportion of paupers among the whites of the South is much less than at the North. It has been claimed that the reason of this is that the old masters support the aged and infirm who have been slaves. No doubt, this is sometimes true ; but, even in slave times, it required special statutes in every South ern State to prevent the masters from abandoning such infirm slaves to live by their own devices, and it is not reasonable to suppose that the white man would support the infirm freedrnan and send the dis abled ones of his own race to the poorhouse. It is simply a remark able econoraic fact which establishes beyond controversy the re markable economic value of the colored man as an industrial element of American life. Something has been said about the frequent absence of the sur- 26 name among the Negroes of the South. In " Bricks without ^'^^^', I fully discussed the cause and character of this, to us of the ^""^ ' singular feature of the freedman's character. It is a terrible un<^° scions testimony against the treatment American Christianity accorded our "brother in black." It was natural that the freedman should be a little lax in the matter of names. The slave had never been allowed a surname, — could not have one, indeed, because ne had no father. The law expressly forbade it. He was always a nul lius filius, and was indicted, tried, and hanged simply as Jim or John. And it must be remembered that indictment and trial was the only legal privilege the slave enjoyed. He could be hanged, but could not be married; and his master changed his name as often as he chose. Why should not this man, new-born to self-control,_ make sorae experiments in nomenclature? He was a good way behind us, who have been fooling with our names for centuries, and have not always gotten them entirely satisfactory even yet. This is not a racial peculiarity, but an eternal testimony against injustice. At the close of the war there were set free 5,000,000 of men, women, and children, without a husband, a wife, a lawful father, a legitimate child, or a legal family name among them all ! They were without homes, without money, without lands, tools, seeds, or stock, without educa tion, without experience, without inheritance, without the impulse of generations of thrift and intelligence. Yet, without a family name, except one of his own selection, with wages hardly one-third those of the agricultural laborer of the North, the Negro accomplished indus trial results which must make any observer of facts who can lay aside prejudice and forget theories, utter, with profound amazement, those words first of all flashed through the electric wire, " What hath God wrought ! " President C. C. Gaines, of Eastman College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., next spoke :, — Pres. Gaines. — Mr. President, although I have little disposition to take part in this discussion, and came to the Conference intending to be a listener only, yet I cannot resist the temptation to take the floor for a few minutes, for the sake of giving certain information, appar ently not within the knowledge of those who have spoken. Like Dr. Allen, I am the son of a slaveholder. As far as I know, my people have all been slave-owners ; and, as I have been reared in this atmos phere, many things which seem, to say the least, singular to those unacquainted with slave life on a Southern plantation may be ex plained as common incidents of the institution. Let me speak first as to the matter of names, to which allusion has been made. In our section of Virginia, plantation negroes never had but one name. They were only a few generations removed from absolute savagery, and as such knew nothing of Christian civilization. As soon as they became the slaves of a particular master, they were listed under such Christian name as he might choose to give, as Jim, Tom, Harry, or George, — and their ages and other distinguish ing characteristics set down. If they had a surname at all, this was supposed to be that of their raaster. So, if the surname of the master happened to be Bruce, the slave would be Jim or Tom Bruce. Excep- 27 tions to this rule occasionally occurred through the repetition of the same name on one plantation, when some mark peculiar to the per son or incident to his history would be given as a surname. Espe cially was this true where slaves were sold, when they often were known by the surname of an original master who might then be dead. Thus you will find many Negroes to-day who do not retain the sur name of their last owner, but are known by that of a remote ancestor who years ago carae out of another estate ; for, when they were freed, they chose such naraes as they pleased, and many of them observed such reasonable rules as to ancestry as naturally apply. A word as to Negro children not knowing their names and ages. My own observation is that many white children, when very young, are much perplexed by similar questions. I have often stood in a company of Negro children and asked one of them his name, and had him answer the name of every other child on the place before a sug gestion seemed to come of his true name. He knew all the other children by their names, but it had never occurred to him that his own name was thus and so. This is not so much a matter of mem ory or intelligence : it is a lack of proper teaching, probably of a correct association of ideas. The same might be said of their ignorance of their ages. It has been my observation that very few Negroes can give correctly their own ages. Even to this day there hardly passes a month that one of our former slaves does not come to the house with the familiar in quiry, " Marster (or Mistis), how old is I ? " Such facts, I see, occasion some surprise among you, who are raore or less strangers to these unfortunate people ; but allow me to ask that you keep in mind constantly, in discussing their present condi tion, how greatly improved it is compared with what it was when they first landed. It is related of a cargo of slaves who had lately arrived that, when after debarkation they had been fed with a good supper, they fell upon the carcass of a dead horse which had been left in the neighborhood of the landing-place, and fed again. I have often heard it said by old men in Virginia, who remembered Negroes of recent importation, that they had known such to go out and catch snakes, lizards, frogs, toads, — the vilest reptiles of any kind, — and devour them raw instead of living on such good rations as were provided for them, for which they seemed to have little appetite. In fact, as to diet, and in many other respects, they differed very little frora our Indians on the frontier. Upon such conditions, they now show splendid improvements ; and I cannot but agree with the last speaker, when he says they have made the greatest strides the world has ever known. I go back for a visit to Virginia frequently, and thus keep informed as to what is doing there, and am not a little surprised at the changes taking place. Many of the reptile-eaters of a generation or two ago are accumulating a little property and getting on well. Some have bought good holdings, and cultivate their own land. I asked a county treasurer, who, as he is collector of taxes, is in a position to know, how many Negroes owned farms in his county. He replied that he could not undertake to answer accurately off hand, but that he was under the impression that there were about four hundred. This in 28 a population of about fifteen thousand, considerably more than ha of whom are colored, I consider a most encouraging sign. Let me give Judge Tourgee a point as to his statistics touching pauperism among thera. The reason there are so few Negro P^"P^^^ is that the old and infirm araong them are still supported by their former masters. I know intimately not less than a dozen families in Virginia who do more charity of this kind than can be well imagined, and could give the names of half a hundred poor old colored people who are literally their dependants. Some of these have children and grandchildren very capable of caring for and supporting them ; but, I am sorry to say, a great weakness of the race seems to be a tendency to disregard family ties, even in their holiest relation.. I have always despised slavery ; but during the existence of the institution there was no such thing as an insane asylum or poorhouse for Negroes. In fact, I have often heard it stated that there was almost no insanity among them, though there is plenty now ; and, as for the poor and helpless, every raan took care of his own. That custora has corne down to this day, and I trust you will pardon my saying that it is one in which I take no litde pride. Who would have the heart to send a family servant of thirty years' standing, whose usefulness had departed with increasing age, to take her chances in a public alms house ? So every old-time owner of a plantation, who is still able to keep his own together, is in a large sense the conductor of an elee mosynary institution, retaining at the same tirae his own self-respect and the friendship of a people who have heard too often that he was their worst enemy. The Negroes are citizens now, but they are not politically emanci pated. For ten years after the war a strenuous effort was made to bring them to such a condition, but it failed through difficulties that their would-be friends had not apprehended and could not surmount. What they need most is a radical change in character. Next to that, their acquisition of some property is the chief desideratum. Much has been done for them in the way of education ; but they have not yet property enough to enable them to avail themselves of their learning, — that is, to use and increase it as thev go through life. I believe in giving to all the colored people the rudiments of an educa tion. Let them learn the "three R's " at least, but, if possible, give them in addition what General Armstrong has impressed as so impor tant ; that is, better morals, some industrial training, habits of thrift. Teach them, above all things, to acquire some property ; for, as soon as they do, they will become supporters of the public press, will buy books, will read the newspapers, and through such reading will keep and improve what they may have learned in the public schools. Otherwise, what they learn between the years of five and fifteen will lapse ; for I know it to be a fact that just this thing has happened practically in raany instances. The colored faraily takes no paper, and, as a rule, has no books, few of them even as much as a Bible, prayer or hymn book, the reading of which, I am glad to say, is always listened to by them with the keenest delight. They must be educated, too, before they can be in any sense fit to govern the States where they dwell. At present they are entirely under the control of one or another set of selfish politicians. At 29 elections, the majority of them may be bought for frora twenty-five cents upwards ; for they have little appreciation of the real issue on which they vote, and less understanding and knowledge of the eco nomic value of questions. They vote for that candidate who can pay most, as this seems to be as near to their interest as they can get. The sin of using money in elections is not peculiar to any party; and I have known colored men, prominent as leaders among their people and as partisans, to lie around the polls all day without voting, waiting to be paid to vote or not to vote by the party which they had generally opposed up to that time. The people at the North have given and are giving noble sums of money to educate these people, to endow their universities. But, while you are thus giving the interest on your millions, do not forget that the Southern people are also giving their millions in yearly taxes. Georgia alone pays a milHon dollars annually for this pur pose, forty-nine per cent, of which goes to support colored schools ; and this is exactly her percentage of Negro population. Ninety-five per cent, of these taxes are paid by the white people of the South, who are in every State awaking to the importance of assisting in the most substantial manner to educate and elevate the colored citizen. And, although this great work is still very deficient in many sections, I think we may take courage from the fact that an honest effort is being made, and that no better word can go forth frora this Confer ence than that which carries your sympathy and countenance to those among whom this problem is a stern reality and by whom it raust be solved. Professor William E. Hutchison of Biddle University, Char lotte, N.'C, followed: — Prof. Hutchison. — I think a good many people who have not been South may get a wrong idea of what colored people need. I believe in industrial education and in what General Arrastrong has said. But, when we speak of industrial education, we should erapha- size the word " education." If there is any industry in the South, the Negroes have got it. What they want is the education. What can you teach colored woraen about washing clothes ? They do what laundry work there is to be done. The Chinaman can scarcely do it better. But how are the children of these woraen who do your laundry work in the most approved style dressed ? How are the women themselves dressed ? They go in clothes that sadly need mending, and have not been washed — I do not know for how long. All the blacksmiths of the South, nearly, are Negroes. You cannot teach them anything on that subject. But they have no education outside of their trade. They are no better for it, they are no better citizens ; for the education part has been left out. How about car penters ? You need not tell them anything about carpentry. Our big building at Biddle University was built by the labor of colored men and white men ; but a colored man was the master carpenter, and the best man of the lot. What we want to do is to educate them, so that they will do these things for themselves. They can build a good house for another man, but they will live in a log cabin themselves. I know a good carpenter who lives in a wretched house. 30 He is no better off because he is a first-class carpenter. fjjgjj many of those who know trades well do not want to work a , trades. Negroes like to be together where they can have a & time. They would rather work for sixty cents at any sort o where several of them can be together than to work ^^^^ ^ . work as requires skill for a dollar and a quarter a day. j^'^^i-g.-j,. use in trying to help the Negro race by technical schools, or by - ing them trades, if you do not emphasize the educational parr oi their training. That will make them better men, better citizens, and will be the means of uplifting them in every way. The following paper was then read by John C. Covert, editor of the Cleveland Leader. THE RACE PROBLEM. by JOHN C. COVERT, OF CLEVELAND, OHIO. The Negro problem is now attracting the attention of the philan thropic and thoughtful classes of the United States, and it is destined to still more completely absorb the public mind in the near future. It is a subject worthy of the most thoughtful study. Senator Eustis, of Louisiana, expresses a very common opinion in saying that it "promises to be the most serious of all problems, and is still far from being settled." But sorae systematic and well-defined plan must be reached for the gradual solution of this problem. As the Negro has been made an integral part of the American people, his moral, intellectual, and industrial condition is a question of vital national importance, and it should be a subject of earnest study by the American people. It is the bounden duty of the people to see that no pains are spared to make him an honest, self-supporting citizen and a good neighbor. This work should not be left entirely to the government, either to that of the nation or the State. The vital principle underlying our institutions is that the people are the government, and thus far in our history every great movement for the public good has started from and spread through the people until it became a ruling force and an accepted principle among thera. In a government of the people, where the organic law proclaims an equality of rights, there must, as far as possible, be an equality of mental and moral conditions. The four million slaves, made free by an act of emancipation, clothed with rights of citizenship by legislation, must be made morally and intellectually the equals of their fellow-freemen. To secure this end, the varied civilizing agencies which have elevated the white raan to his present condition raust be placed within the reach of the Negro. The Negroes of the United States are increasing in number with remarkable rapidity, and the great mass of them are in the South. Private enterprise will provide them with work, develop their energy, and make them self-supporting and productive members of society; but the State and the philanthropic agencies of the country must furnish the means for developing their mental and moral character. It is to the potent influences of religion, education, industry, ^nd 31 commerce that we owe our present high state of civilizadon. These influences have lifted the Anglo-Saxons, the Latins, Celts, and Slavs from barbarism to refinement. They have wrought wonderful changes in the character of man even during the last century, giving him more exalted aims, making him better morally and intellectually. The Negro cannot enjoy the same advantages without undergoing a similar improvement. As sure as the sun breaks up the frozen earth, awakening all nature to a new and brighter life, so sure will the light of religion and education invest the mind of the Negro with all the moral and intellectual attributes which belong to exalted conditions of manhood. 'The present condition of the Negro, accord ing to those who have studied the subject, in the black belt of the South is most deplorable. We are told that he is ignorant, imraoral, and indifferent to raany of the great duties of life ; that he neither understands the true spirit of the religion which he ostentatiously professes nor conforms to its requirements in his daily life. While we all know that there are many to whom this description will not apply, yet it raust be correct in regard to the great' mass of men and women who vyere born in slavery, or who born since have not en joyed religious and educational surroundings. It would be an injus tice to attempt to gauge the capacity of the Negro from conditions so near to a state of society where his intelligence was repressed by law through fear that he might learn the lessons of insurrection. The people of the South recognize this fact. Mr. Hilary A. Herbert, of Alabama, in a book recently written by fourteen eminent Southern gentlemen, says that, " when the Negro was a slave, the white men of the South made it unlawful to teach hira to read," but " now these same whites are taxing themselves lo fit him for freedom." There can be no doubt that the influence of education will " fit him for freedom " ; and it is the duty of all classes of people, all over the country, to co-operate with the white men of the South in this noble work. The Negro population of this country now numbers nearly 8,000,- 000, of whom 1,320,000 are voters. By the year 1900 it is estimated that they will be in the majority in eight States. Among the present Negro population there are 1,103,000 colored children of school age who do not attend school, purely because of the absence of schools. According to the census of 1880, there were in the sixteen old slave States 4,715,395 persons over ten years of age who could not read or write, 63 per cent, of them, or 2,961,371, being grown up men and women, far beyond the school age. The 1,103,000 boys and girls in the South now out of school were born free, and are deprived of all educational advantages. The number of children is increasing more rapidly than the facilities for education. These children will soon be voters, exerting for good or evil an influence upon the nation. They will be fathers and raothers, moulding the character of children, and charged with the performance of social, religious, and moral duties. Unless they are elevated by religion and education, they will inevitably impart to the coming gen eration the same defects which slavery has bred in them and their parents. That they have shown themselves susceptible of high improvement and are actuated by an earnest desire to advance will 32 not admit of dispute. Every teacher who has worked among them reports that they are hungry for educadon. Mr. George W. Cable, whose earnest labors in behalf of the freedmen merit the highest praise, says : " Right here in our midst is the greediest people tor education and the gospel on the face of the earth not counted among our white race. Why, if you knew the national value of the work, you would quadruple your offerings." One of the teachers from Scotia Seminary, North Carolina, writes : " Since the first of last September until the present date, December, over 130 applicants have been refused, and almost every week, almost every day, brings us more to whom we say, ' No ! ' When we see numbers of girls and young women going astray whom we might save, could we take them in, some of whom have begged for admittance, our hearts are sore. Sometimes the mothers come in person to plead with us to take their daughters. A girl came from a long distance, and, when told there was no room, said : ' I don't want to go back. I have had too hard work to get here. I am willing to take half a chance, just half a chance.' ' But you would not like to take less than half a bed,' was the reply, 'I have slept three in a bed before now, and am willing to do it again, if I can only stay,' was the quick response. Two girls grown women, ignorant, but anxious to learn, walked twenty miles, and shed tears when told there was no room for them." Dr. Curry, a Southern raan and the very efficient and energetic general agent of the Peabody Fund, says, " The Southern States, on whose territory the war between the States was waged, and which came out of that terrible' struggle crushed and reduced to poverty, have paid nearly or quite $50,000,000 for the education of the. Negroes " ; and General Armstrong, the able principal of the Hampton School, says : " Southern tax-payers are doing raore than any others for the Negro by maintaining 16,000 free colored schools, at an annual cost of over $3,000,000. Of every $100 paid in Southern taxation, I91.50 is paid by white people." The Christian Church, aided by the generous philanthropy of a few large-hearted, wealthy raen, is raaking its beneficent influence felt in behalf of the freedraen, though its efforts are not yet commensurate with its ability or at all proportioned to the vast field of labor. The Board of Missions for Freedmen of the Presbyterian Church reported at the General Assembly May 19, 1890, as follows: — " Twenty-five years ago we had no church, school, educated colored preacher or teacher; while to-day finds us with 245 churches, 78 schools, 117 colored preachers, and 133 colored teachers, and not less than 500,000 freedmen are now reached by their good influence. The receipts of the board during the year were $176,000, a gain over last year of $41,000. The freedmen themselves have given toward the support of their own churches and schools, $40,000. Nine new churches have been organized in the Carolinas " There is similar progress in Arkansas, where many of those who have left the seaboard are settling. The Negroes as a whole are multiplying far faster than the means of educating them. But in the regions where o g^^ools are illiteracy wanes Parochial schools are especially helpful. At Brainerd Institute nearly every new Sd- ing needed, including a large three-story dormitory,^for three or four 33 years has been put up by the students. During the year we have had 316 missionaries, 252 of thera colored, 26 more than last year. The whole number of communicants is 16,502; of pupils in 254 Sunday- schools, 17,782. In our other 78 schools are 10,169 pupils and 171 teachers." In 1889 this mission reported that it had seventy-six schools, ten less than the preceding year. It had been compelled, through financial embarrassments, to close ten schools during the year 1889. It had nineteen applications for new schools, and by the closing of ten the board fell 29 schools short of supplying the demand. Only two new schools were started last year, where hundreds were needed. In these 78 schools, the report says, there are this year 10,169 pupils against 11,175 pupils given in the report for 1889, — a falling off of 1,000 pupils in one year. The number of communicants in the report of 1890 is placed at 16,502. The report of 1889 places them at 17,480, a falling off of over 1,000 in one year. This decrease in the school attendance and in the number of communicants is no fault of the freedmen. For the year ending April, 1889, they contributed $31,092.47 for the support of this mission work, while last year they contributed over $40,000 for the sarae purpose. The last report of Presbyterian work among the Negroes shows an increase in con tributions and in the number of churches contributing; but the good work is not growing in proportion to the expansion of the field of labor. It was with great propriety that Rev. Dr. R. H. Allen, the active and earnest secretary of the Board, told the General Assembly that " there was serious trouble ahead." " Six hundred Negro chil dren born every day," he said, " and destined to be in the majority in eight States in less than ten years." Yet there are 3,773 Pres byterian churches in this country which do not contribute to this noble mission work. At a meeting of the Protestant ministers of Cleveland, May 13, 1890, reports were read of the work of the various denominations among the freedmen. The Baptists had fifteen institutions for edu cating the Negro, and property valued at $763,000. In the last twenty-five years they have expended $2,000,000. In their schools are 131 teachers and 3,106 students. They have educated over 13,000 persons. The Congregadonalists have invested $8,000,000 in establishing industrial, mechanical, trade, professional, and other schools for the freedraen, and have educated 6,000 male and female teachers. The Methodist Episcopal Church has established 7,678 schools for freedmen, 65 of which are institutions of the higher grade of instruction. During twenty-three years it has expended for the edu cation of the freedmen $2,506,847. The Methodist Episcopal Church Extension Society has spent $4,000,000 in helping to build thousands of churches in the South. Araong its 454,000 communicants, 226,000 are colored. The Reformed Episcopal Church reported 40 mission chapels along the Atlandc Coast. The United Presbyterian Church reported five mission stations in the South, 4 ordained colored minis ters, 23 colored workers, a day-school enrolment of 1,500, and a Sunday-school enrolraent of 12,000. All of these reports represented the Negro thirsting for educadon. The schools are powerful evangel izing agencies. The individual, the horae, the community, are all 34 touched by their elevating influence, and the students spread the seed in receptive minds all over the country. The noble Peabody Education Fund, from October, 1888, to October, 1889, distributed $69,633 to public, normal, and training schools, scholarships, and teachers' insdtutes. This amount, wisely distributed through ten States, went to help young people who are struggling to help themselves; and its beneficial influence will be felt for all time throughout the South. Mr. W. H. Payne, Chancel lor and President of the Peabody Normal College, Nashvdle, lenn., expressed the object of the directors of this fund in saying that it was " to give to the country leaders in educational thought, men arid women who are able to mould public opinion." The inflexible rule of Mr. Peabody, as stated by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, was " to help those who helped themselves " ; and this principle has been rigidly followed by those in charge of the Peabody benefaction. The fund has there fore offered aid proportionate to what a State might do in the sup port of normal schools. As a result of this wise offer, Virginia, in addition to Hampton, has three normal schools. $8,000 has been applied for such schools in North Carolina. Alabama has seven normal schools. West Virginia has six, Louisiana one. Texas has the Sam Houston School, with 400 pupils. Georgia and Arkansas are progressing in the good work ; while Tennessee has the Normal College at Nashville, in which every constituent State has represen tatives. The benefits of the Peabody Fund, as its generous giver re quired, " are being distributed among the entire population, without other distinction than their needs and the opportunities of usefulness to them." The John F. Slater Fund, originally $1,000,000, is now $1,200,000. The trustees having it in charge confine their work entirely to aiding schools already established, and by that raethod a wide-spread influ ence has been exerted for good. For the present school year amounts ranging from $200 to $5,000 will be given frora this fund to thirty-four schools. Dr. A. G. Haygood, the general agent, reported at the recent meeting of the trustees in New York that the most gratifying results had been achieved during the past year of educa tional work among the freedmen. In this brief and cursory review of the field, I have necessarily failed to mention some of the institutions that are doing noble work in the South. There are the Scotia, Mary Allen, Hartstown, Benedict, Jackson, Shaw, Roger Williams, Leland, Atlanta, Straight, Fiske, Lemoyne, Lewis, Tillotson, Tougaloo, Biddle, and others quietly, indus triously, and perseveringly engaged in sowing the seed that will yield a rich religious and intellectual harvest. They are threading their way to the raind of the freedman, and opening it for the reception of the light of knowledge and truth. To aid in this noble work is the highest and most imperative duty before the American people. The wealth of a nation is the intelligence and the industrial capacity of its people. The security of a republic is the intelligence of its people. The mighty ship which rides safely at anchor may be set adrift and driven upon perilous shoals by a flaw in a single link of the chain that holds her. So the lack of intelligence and religious sentiment in the invisible links that bind patriot to patriot, in love 35 of country, may cause our gallant Ship of State to break frora her moorings and drift upon the breakers strewn with the wrecks of the republics of old. Danger is most likely to come from that portion of our population where the moral and religious sentiments are least developed. It is there where the future historian will find the fatal defect in our republic, should it ever be subjected to a strain that it cannot resist. As the chain can only be made secure by strengthening its weakest link, so our Ship of State can only be trusted to buffet and resist the storms that may some day beset her by interweaving the sentiments of morality and religion throughout our whole population and lifting all to a higher plane of life. The Conference adjourned at i p.m. Wednesday Night, June 4. The Conference was called to order by President Hayes, at 7.45 P.M. A paper was read by Rev. A. D. Mayo, LL.D. THE NEGRO AMERICAN CITIZEN IN THE NEW AMERICAN LIFE. B Y R E v. A. D. M A Y O, A. M. During the past ten years of a Ministry of Education among the Southern people in all the Southern States, I have been often chal lenged to formulate my opinion concerning the present condition and future outcome of the Negro. My invariable answer is : I have come to this portion of the country as an out-and-out advocate of the uni versal education of the heart, the head, and the hand possible for all orders and conditions of the American people. I believe the Christian religion, as it lay in the mind and shone forth in the speech and life of the great Teacher and Saviour of raan, includes this idea of educa tion. All the progress this world has seen out of old pagan conditions of race, caste, society, and governraent, has been the work of this mighty regenerating influence. I hold it the deadliest treason and revolt against the Christian civilization, a backing down into pagan ism, or a worse lapse into the Slough of Despond of absolute atheism and secularism, to impeach the power of this divine agency to cure all our American ills. I began my present Ministry of Education ten years ago, in the Southern States, in full faith in this gospel of the reconstruction of the whole republic from "the remainder of wrath" that still vexes its progress and looms like a black despair over its least advanced portion. And, although I cannot pretend to have converted or convinced anybody, I have seen with what an uplifting of the soul the better sort of the Southern people welcome arty man who, in honesty of purpose, love of country and of all his countrymen, endeavors to get down to the bottom facts of the situation, with a just appreciation of the position of all true men, and with an invincible hope and a holy obstinacy in standing by the bright side of God's providence in American affairs. The fact that one man can go through all these States, among all classes, everywhere testifying to the grandeur of the full American idea, and urging the people to live up to the vision of the Fathers, with all but universal acceptation, so that the discords in this ministry have hardly been enough to emphasize the harmonies, is to me an assurance that the same line of work, assumed by a greater 37 man, and finally adopted by the influential classes of our people, wil' shape the highway out of the present complications. My only recipe for the solution of all these problems that still divide the country is the putting on of that judicial and resolute Chris tian atdtude of raind that insists on looking at all the facts of the case, setting them in their proper relations, all the time searching for the elements of progress which are the vital centres. It seems to me that a great portion of the misunderstanding and conflict at present, is the result of a pracdcal inability in the masses of the people to rise to this position and the mischievous pertinacity of too many leaders of public opinion everywhere, in keeping the national mind engrossed with the temporary and unessential facts of the case. With no disposition to misrepresent or misunderstand anybody, I respond to your call to tell my experience as an observer of the Southern situation, especially as it concerns the Negro citizen in the sixteen Southern States of the Union, as I have seen him during a virtual residence in these States for ten years past. It would seem that thoughtful Christian people might at least endeavor to realize the simple gospel rule of "doing as they would be done by " in the judgment of each other, in an affair so moraentous, where raistakes are fraught with such raournful possibilities as in this great discussion. It is easy to see how much of the difficulty comes from this inability to " put one's self in the place " of his opponent. Would it not be possible for a larger number of our foremost Southern leaders, in Church, State, and society, to try to appreciate the motives and temper of the loyal people of the North in the great act of conferring full American citizenship on the Negro, after his emancipation, twenty-five years ago ? I do not defend any injustice, tyranny, reckless experimendng with government itself, that followed that act. No thoughtful man defends such things to-day. But I do hold that no true conception of this matter can be had by any man who honestly believes that this exaltation of the Negro to full Amer ican citizenship was either an act of sectional revenge, a narrow and ferocious pardsan policy or the reckless experiment of an excited sentimentalism. If ever a people, in a great national emergency, acted under a solemn sense of responsibility to God, humanity, patriotism, and republican institutions, I believe the conviction of the loyal Northern people, that shaped the acts of reconstruction, is entitled to this judgment, and will so abide in history. It was the most memo rable testimony of a national government, just rescued frora desperate peril, soleranized by the death of its venerated leader, to its faith in popular institutions, recorded in the annals of mankind. But it -must be acknowledged that the very nobility of the act that conferred the highest earthly distinction of full American citizenship on a nation of newly emancipated slaves, of an alien race, involved the penalty of great injustice to its object. It was inevitable that the nation, having comraitted itself to this daring experiment, would watch its success from an ideal point of observation. So, for the past twenty years, one misfortune of the Negro citizen has been that the portion of the country that won his freedom and lifted hira to this proud eminence could do no otherwise than judge him out of its own lofty expectation, piecing out its almost complete ignorance of any similar 38 people or situation by repeated drafts on a boundless hope, an almost childlike trust, and a deep religious faith, proven by the cheerful giving of fifty millions of dollars and the sacrifice of the service of noble men and woraen of priceless value, in the effort to realize the great expectation of the nation. Again, is it more than plain justice that the leading mind of the loyal North, that saved the Union to nationality and freedom in 1865, should endeavor to represent to itself the actual point of view of the Southern people concerning this act of reconstruction, then, and, to a great extent, in the present time ? I know that the most painfulles- son of history is the difficulty of such comprehension of an aristo cratic form of society by a people for a century trained in the school of a proud and successful democracy. Not one educated man in a thousand in the United States can put himself in the place of one of the great Tory leaders or scholars of Great Britain, or listen with anything but impatience to the account that any European government or the Catholic Church can give of itself. How much more diflScult for the average New England or Western citizen to understand the attitude of mind with which an old Southern planter or a modern Southern politician must contemplate this sudden and portentous upheaving of five millions of freedmen to the complete endowment of American citizenship at the close of the great war. For, surely, at first sight, no body of five millions of people could be imagined less qualified by its past to justify such expectations than the Negro freedmen. Three hundred years ago the Negro was a pagan savage, inhabiting a continent still dark with the shadow of an unrecorded past. A hundred years ago the ancestors perhaps of a majority of the seven millions of Negroes now in the United States were in the same condition. Of no people on the face of the earth is so little known today as of the African ancestors of the American Negro. Of various tribes, nationalities, and characteristics, perhaps with an ancestry as varied as the present inhabitants of the European nationalities, these people were cast into a state of slavery which con founded all previous conditions, and only recognized the native ability of each man or woman in "the survival of the fittest," in the struggle for existence on the plantation and in the household. Once more : it has never been realized by the loyal North, what is evident to every intelligent Southern man, what a prodigious change had been wrought in this people during its years of bondage, and how, without the schooling of this era, the subsequent elevation of the emancipated slave to full American citizenship would have been an impossibility. During this brief period of tutelage, briefest of all compared with any European race, the Negro was sheltered frora the three furies of the prayer book, — sword, pestilence, and famine, — was brought into contact with the upper strata of the most powerful of civilized peoples, in a republic, amid the trials, sacrifices, and edu cating influences of a new country, in the opening years of " the grand and awful tirae " in which our lot is cast. In that condition, he learned the three great elements of civilization raore speedily than they were ever learned before. He learned to work. He acquired the language and adopted the religion of the most progressive of peoples. Gifted with a marvellous aptitude for such schooling, he was found, in 1865, further "out of the woods" of barbarism than any other people at the end of a thousand years. The American Ind ian, in his proud isolation, repelled all these beneficent changes ; and to-day the entire philanthropy, religion, and statesmanship of the republic are wrestling with the problem of saving hira from the fate of the buffalo. I find only in the broad-minded and most charitable leaders of our Northern affairs any real understanding of the inevitable habit of mind which the average Southern citizen brings to the contemplation of the actual condition or possibilities of the Negro American citizen. With a personal attachment to the Negro greater than is possible for the people of the North ; with habits of forbearance and patient waiting on the infirmities, vices, and shortcomings of this people, which to the North are unaccountable and well-nigh impossible of imitation ; with the general willingness to co-operate, as far as the comfort and the personal prosperity of its old slaves are concerned, — is it strange that this act of statesmanship should appear to him as the wildest and most reckless experiment in the annals of national life? Even the most intelligent and conservative parent finds it difli cult to believe his beloved child is competent to the duties of man hood or womanhood, and only with a pang does he see the dear boy or girl launch out on the stormy ocean of life. What, then, would be the inevitable feeling of the dominant Southern class, to whom the Negro had only been known as a savage slowly evolving into the humbler strata of civilization, as a dependent chattel, when, at the end of a frightful war, it found itself in a state of civil subjuga tion to its old bondmen? No subject race ever reveals its highest aspirations and aptitudes to its master race ; and it is not remarkable that only the most observing and broad-minded of the Southern peo pie, even yet, heartily believe in the capacity of the Negro for civil, social, or industrial co-operation with any of the European peoples. Now, say what we will, this obstinate inability and soraetiraes un willingness to put one's self in the place of the opposition has been the most hopeless feature of the case, the real " chasm " between the leading mind of the North and the South. So to-day, while even partisan politics seems to pause in uncertainty on the steep edge of a dark abyss, when noble and humane people all over the country seem to be falling into despondency, when an ominous twilight, threatening a storm, is peopled by all the birds of ill omen, and " the hearts of men are shaken with fear," I am glad that we have been summoned here to look things squarely in the face, to bring a varied experience to bear on a new and more careful consideration of the whole matter, and by the guidance of a Christian insight endeavor to see the hopeful elements of the situation. We do not need to rehearse our separate knowledge of the shadow side of the new South. The shadows we have always with us, everywhere. But, if we can locate the centre of the new " Sunny South," we may go home with the conviction that, while the shadows in human affairs are always on the move, the sun shines on forever, and is bound to bring in God's final day of light. The pivotal question on which this vast problem turns is. Has the Negro, in his American experience, demonstrated a capacity for self- developing American citizenship? I leave out of the estimate, at 40 present, the exceptional people of the race, and look for the answer to the average Negro, as I see hira in the Southern States. ^ For I suppose nobody believes that full American citizenship is possible, as the permanent condition of any people destitute of this capacity for self-dependent manhood and womanhood. The child race must be cared for by a paternal organization of society, and that element of paternalism is just what every good American citizen declares he will not have in his government. In lieu of that, an extemporized or perraanent social public opinion, or an unwritten law, will take its place and do its work. If the Negro, as so many Southern people believe, is only a per petual child, capable of a great deal that is useful and interesting, but destitute of the capacity for " the one thing needful " that lifts the subject of paternal up to the citizen of a republican government, then the thing to do is to leave him to the care of his superiors in the South, who certainly know this side of him far better than the people of the North, and, whatever mistakes on the side of occasional severity may be made, will, in the end, do the best for his permanent estate. In fact, nothing seems more evident to me than the practical inability of the national government to essentially change the status of its seven millions of Negro citizens, except through national aid to education. There is no power at Washington that can hold up, for a series of generations, any people in the permanent state of illiteracy in which the majority of the Southern Negroes are at present found. This illiteracy is simply a mixture of ignorance, superstition, shiftlessness, vulgarity, and vice. The general and State governments, aided all the while by private benevolence and missionary zeal, can surround these people with an environment of valuable opportunities. Indeed, in many respects, they are now environed with such helps and encour agements as no race, of European lineage, has enjoyed at a similar stage of its history. But the test question is. Has the Negro, on the whole, during his entire life of three hundred years on American soil, indicated his power to appreciate and use such opportunities for full American citizenship as are now vouchsafed to him by a gracious Providence ? To my mind he had vindicated his capacity for indefinite improve ment in this direction even before he received the precious boon of citizenship of the American republic. Remarkable as his progress, in some ways, has been during the past twenty-five years of freedom, I would be content to refer to his two centuries of slavery for proof of a remarkable aptitude for civilization. The best evidence for such capacity is a certain unconscious tact, a habit of getting on in a toler able way under unfavorable circumstances, the turning his sunny and adaptive side to a hard bondage, the eager adaptation to and taking on of all helps to a better state of living. Contemplate, for a moment, this people, landing from an African slave-ship on our shores. Contrast the status of the American Negro, with all his imperfections, in 1865, when he appeared, the last comer that has stepped over the threshold of the higher civilization and begun the upward career. How can that amazing progress in practical ability, in adaptation to the habits and manners of civilized life, reception of a Christian faith, be accounted for on the theory of perpetual child- 41 ishness, as a race characteristic ? Did any people, under a similar strain, realizing, as the Negro did, the awful issues of the mighty Civil War amid which his closing years of servitude were involved, ever bear itself with such personal fidelity to present duty, with such remarkable wisdom and tact, with such complete reliance on Providence for the result ? Bishop Haygood says the religion of the Negro accounts for his bearing during these tremendous years, when the home life of the South was virtually in his hands. That a race, less than two cen turies out of the jungle of African paganism, was found so imbued with the central element of Chrisdanity, is evidence that it is not the perpetual child of humanity. Grant the failure of the Negro, during the fearful years that followed the war, to govern States rocking in the throes of a defeated rebellion, exasperated to the death by all the passions that wreck the souls of men and communities. Still, what a display of ability of many sorts, the practical faculty of getting a living, often the higher faculty that has thrown up thousands of shrewd, successful people, there was ! Radical that he is, the Negro has shown himself the most politic of peoples in his endurance of what could not be overcome, and his tactful, even crafty, appropria tion of all opportunities. He has pushed in at every open door, listened at the white man's table, hung about church and the stump, taken in the great public day, looked on when he did not vote at the election. He has been all eyes and ears, and every pore of his skin has been open to the incoming of his only possible education. Deprived of books and the ordinary apparatus of instruction, he has used all the more eagerly the agencies of God's supreme University, human life, — used thera so ranch better than several millions of " the superior race " that, in proportion to his opportunity, he has made more out of the Southern American life than any other Southern people. On the eve of the day when the great assembly of Confederate veterans at Richmond solemnly buried their old cause in the unveiling of the statue of their great military commander, I sat on a platform, before a crowded congregation of Negro citizens, in the city of Wash ington, gathered at the commencement exercises of Wayland Semi nary. Eighteen young raen and women, all from Virginia, received the diploma; and ten of thera appeared in the usual way. As I looked over that audience of well-dressed, well-mannered, apprecia tive people, and listened to the speeches of those young folk, so marked by sobriety of style, soundness of thought, practical views of life, lofty consecration of purpose, and comprehensive patriotism ; as I read their class motto, " Not to be ministered unto, but to minis ter," and remembered that, only two hundred and seventy years . ago, the first cargo of African pagan savages was landed on the shore of the Old Dominion, and all this was the outcome of that, — I wondered where were the eyes of raen that they did not behold the revelation of Divine Providence in this little less than the miraculous evolution of the new citizenship of a State destined yet to praise and magnify the ways of God in American affairs. Say that this only demonstrates his " power of imitation." But what is this mysterious faculty of " imitation," that everybody says the Negro has to the last 42 degree, but another name for a capacity for civilization ? Nine- tenths of our human education is imitating what a superior person does, from the child repeating its mother's words to the saint " put ting on the Lord Jesus Christ." It may be granted that, in one respect, slavery was a help to this progress. It protected the Negro frora his lower self, on the side of vagrancy ; and that is " the terrible temptation " of every people in its rudimentary years. He was protected against vagrancy, laziness, drunkenness, and several teraptations of a semi-tropical clime which are too much for thousands of his betters. But here has been a sore obstacle to his success in his new estate of freedom. A great wrong that has been done him during these years has been the neglect to enforce order, decency, and industry, along with the observance of the comraon moralities of every-day life, by the people among whom he has lived. What would be the condition of New England to-day, had her people tolerated, in the multitudes of foreign-born peasants who have landed on her shores, the vagrancy, laziness, shiftless ness, dependence on common charity, with the perpetual violation of the minor morals, which confront the observer, from every part of the civilized world, in his travels throughout the Southern States ? Here was the place for the Anglo-Saxon to assert his superiority, by insisting on the common observance of the com mon order, decencies, and moralities of life, in and out of the house hold, by the freedman. For lack of this, the vagrant class has been left virtually at large, like a plague of frogs and lice over all the land, choking up the towns and villages, making good housekeeping, for the Southern woman, the most trying human lot, and surrounding childhood, of every condition and class, with such teraptations as no people can permanently resist. If the well-disposed class, the majority, could have been aided by the law of the land and public opinion to move on unhindered by this intolerable impediraent, the last twenty-five years would have told a far different tale. Of course, the white people of the South do not realize this. Slavery was a police that made vagrancy impossible, and the lower slave element was securely locked up under the Argus- eyes of the old-time system of labor. I am not here to defend any denial of the suffrage, or social or industrial disability, inflicted on the Negro cidzen ; but I 'give it as ray deliberate conviction that all these things have not been so harmful to the Negro as this strange neglect of the Anglo-Saxon South to enforce the recognized policy of all civilized lands on its vagrant colored and white class, at the very dme when this race specially needed the primary lessons'of sobriety obedience to law, every- day morality, and of that hard work without which " no man shall eat." Yet, spite of this drawback (and only an observer from a differently regulated community can appreciate what a drawback), the better-disposed class of the Negroes has signally vindicated its capacity for civilization within the limitations of per sonal and race impediments, and in the use it has made of its opportunities. I observe, also, in the average Negro, an amiability, a patience and forbearance, a capacity for affecdonate devodon, sacrifice, and un selfishness, that separate him decisively from the savage and the savage 43 side of civilized life. What an element of civil, social, and industrial lubrication this may become, has already become, in our grating, pitiless, ferocious Anglo-Saxon greed of power, gain, and all kinds of superiority, any raan can realize who sees the working of it in a thousand ways. I can understand why the Southerner feels a certain loneliness amid the splendors and well-ordered regulations of our higher Northern life. He misses the atmosphere of kindliness, broad good-humor, real belief in human nature, that the Negro always diffuses around hiraself. I feel it the moment I touch a Northern city on my return from every annual visit to the South ; and I thank God that the Negro " man and brother," especially the woman and sister, were sent by heaven to teach our proud, restless, too often in human civilization some of the amenities that outlive the inhumanities and finally bring in the kingdom of God. Another quality the Negro displays, of great promise in the future, though so often turned to his disadvantage in the present, — a love of approbation, -self-possession, and an ability to "put his best foot foremost " and show for all he is worth, the perpetual assertion that he is going to be somebody some time. " Why did you sell that corn you promised to me ? " said a white parson to his Negro " brother in the ministry." " Well, boss, I got a bigger price for it." " But was that honest ? " " No, it warn't that." " Why did you do it ? " " Be cause, boss, I warn't the man I took myself to be." It is well to " take yourself to be " a man of parts and character, even at the peril of disappointment. And that persistent pushing to the front, crowding in at every open door, " claiming the earth," which now makes the life of the raost sensible and considerate white citizen of the South often a weariness, sometimes a despair, in his dealing with the Negro, is the prophecy of an aspiration for better things and a loftiness of manhood and womanhood of vital impor tance. Along with this is the eagerness for knowledge, that is still a char acteristic even of the ignorant classes, though less apparent now than in the years following the war. Spite of the neglect of the proper conditions and the means of gaining this precious boon for the chil dren, the average Negro, in humble estate, believes in the school with a vigor that in the lower European classes is not developed, more than in the corresponding class among the Southern whites. Discon tent with a low estate is the movement power of American civili zation, and no class in America is less content with its own infirmi ties than the better sort, the majority of the freedmen. Another valuable characteristic is the good taste, love of beauty, native capacity for ornamental art, which always appear in the Negro, when suitably encouraged. The handwriting in the colored schools is often remarkable, the drawing uniformly respectable, the taste in dress, the arrangement of flowers and ornaments, above the average of any corresponding class in the country. In the Negro, the new South has its raost valuable deposit of " raw material " for the best operative and mechanical class for that clime and country. Already he is domesticated in all these mechanical and operative industries, with the exception of the cotton mills, where the labor is still monopo lized by the poorer white class, greatly to its own advantage. Here 44 is a great work being done by the numerous mission schools, ot the higher sort, supported by the Christian people of the North, in the organization of industrial education. In this important branch of schooling, the superior class of Negro youth has, so far, enjoyed greater opportunities than the corresponding class of white youth. And, although the graduates of these schools will not be day laborers or servants, yet, as teachers, housekeepers, and general leaders of their people, they will exert a prodigious influence in the years to come. The introduction of a simple and practical annex for industrial education, for both sexes, in the school system of the South, espe cially for the Negro children, would be a movement of incalculable value to the whole people of that region, so much in need of intelli gent and skilled labor in the uprising of its new industrial life. All these qualities tell in the steady progress of large numbers of these people toward a raore comfortable, wholesome, and respectable way of living. This is evident especially to a regular visitor, not involved in the wear and tear of seven millions of freedmen getting on their citizen legs, as are our Southern white brothers and sisters. I see, everywhere, every year, a larger number of well-looking, well- dressed, well-churched, housed, well-mannered colored people. One reason why our Southern friends are not so impressed with this up ward movement is that, as soon as a colored family gets above the humble or vagrant class, it somehow disappears from the ordinary view. One inevitable result of the social boycott that shuts down on every Negro family that attains respectability is that its white neigh bors are put out of connection with this class, and left to the tender mercies of the class beneath, where their patience is worn out, and, too often, the impression taken for the whole race. The estimate of the increasing wealth of the Negroes is often disputed ; but, at the most reasonable figure, it is a significant testimony to the growth of pracdcal enterprise and steady iraprovement in the upper strata of the whole body. While the acknowledged vices of the race are still a terrible weight on the lower and a constant temptation and humiliation to the better class, it is not certain that any of them, save those " failings that lean to virtue's side," are especially "race defects." A disdnguished physician of Alabama has shown that the illegitimate births among the Negro population of the black belt of that State are in the exact per cent, of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Certainly, the vices of the lower class of the south of Europe people, that are now swarming the shores of the Gulf States, are not less common, and far more dangerous, than those of the Negro. Huraan nature, in its lower estate, especially when shot out from its barbarism into the devil- side of civilization, is fearfully deficient in its appreciation of the ten commandments. But I believe no people of the humbler sort are making more progress in overcoming the weakness of the appetites and getting in sight of the Chrisdan moralities than the better sort of the Negroes. In the church, the horae, and the school I see the growth of a self-respecting raanhood and womanhood that in due dme will tell. Though differing from many whose opinions and experience I respect, I do not regard the temporary isolation of the Negro in th 45 Southern church, school, and society, so much an evil as a providen tial aid in gaining the self-respect and habit of self-help absolutely essential to good citizenship. Spite of the hard side of slavery, the Negro has not had his fair share of the rough training that brings out the final results and the determination that tell in history. A habit of dependence, even to the extent of servility, in the lower orders, is sdll one of his raost dangerous teraptations. He has also been greatly tried by being, for a generadon, the roraantic figure of American life, — the especial object of philanthropic interest in Church, State, and society, everywhere outside the sixteen Southern States. It is well that he should be relieved for a while from these temptations. In company with the white boy, the Negro boy, on the same school bench, would all the time be tempted to fall into his old position of an annex to the white raan, and, in the Church, would be under a strain that would sorely tax his raanhood. Where he is, he grows up with a wholesorae confidence in himself. His own best people are teaching him, with no hindrance, the law of responsible manhood and womanhood. The result is that, when he emerges into active life, if he has well appropriated his training, he is in a position to treat with a similar class of white people on terms that insure mutual respect. I am struck with this feature of Southern society, — the constant " working together for good " of the better class, especially of the men of both races in all communities. The outrage of a drunken rabble upon a Negro settlement is published to all the world; while the constant intercourse of the respectable classes of men of the two races, that prevents a thousand such outbreaks and makes Southern life, on the whole, orderly, like the progress of the seasons and the hours, goes on in silence. It is not necessary to project the social question into the heart of communities in this state of transition. The very zealous brethren of the press and the political fold, who are digging this " last ditch " of social caste, away out in the wilderness, half a century ahead of any present emergency, may be assured that nobody in the United States will ever be obliged to associate with people disagreeable to hira, and that, as Thomas Jefferson suggested, "if we educate the children of to-day, our descendants will be wiser than we, and many things that seem irapossible to us raay be easily accora- plished by them." At present, the office of colored teacher and preacher is the noblest opportunity for general usefulness granted to an educated, righteous, and able young man or woman in any land. That teacher or preacher becomes the man or woman of all spiritual work to a constituency singularly appreciative ; if instructed in indus trial craft, all the more valuable. I am amazed at the assertion of some eminent people that the superior education of the Negro youth has been a failure. If the destiny of the Negro is only that of a child-peasant forever, this is true ; but, if his range of possibility is what we believe, no such result of even a modified form of the secondary and higher education, with industrial accompaniments, has ever been seen in Christendom, as is evident to any man who regards this side of the life of this people with open eyes. All that I have said bears on a fundamental truth concerning the uplifting of the American Negro citizen. The Northern white man, 46 especially if a philanthropist, regards the Negro as an annex to the Northern, the Southern white man regards hira as an annex to the Southern white citizen : but the Negro is anything but an annex to anybody. He is an original element, providentially injected into American civilizadon, — the only man who did not come to us of his own will. It may turn out, for that reason, that he is to be the " little child that shall lead them," and finally compel a reconciliation of all the distracting elements of our national life. Every race that has any outcome finally demonstrates its capacity by throwing up a superior class by which it is led, stimulated, and gradually lifted to its own highest achievement of civilizadon. Tried by this test, the Negro is not behind. I have spoken so far of the average man and woman of the race. But that observer must be strangely blinded who does not see the evidence of the formation of a genuine aristocracy of intelligence, character, industry, and superior living among these millions. I do not refer to that unfortunate class who assert a superficial superiority by separation from their people and an uneasy longing to be recog nized by their white superiors. I mean the growing class that is try ing, under a solemn sense of gratitude to God, love to the brother, and consecrated patriotism, to lift up its own race. Among the seven millions of this people in the United States, there must be several hundred thousand of this sort. They are found everywhere, all the way from Massachusetts to Texas. They already form a distinct society; and the most American of all our great newspa pers, the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, has already recognized the fact by the prominent " Colored Society Column " in its Sunday morning issue. This class is becoming a distinct power, and its influence on the classes below is one of the most important elements of the race problem. It is already on good terms with the corre sponding class of white people, though differing in politics and often grieved by what it regards public, social, and industrial injustice. One significant fact in this connection is that now the Negro is the most determined Southerner. The young Southern white man, re lieved frora the attractions of the old aristocratic position of slave holder, like all American young men of parts, is on the lookout for the main chance. The South is less and less to him a name to charm with. His own State no longer seems to him a " nation " which claims his uttermost devotion. A million of these young men, it is said, have left the South for the North and North-west since the war. Whole regions of these older States are as steadily drained of this im portant population as the older portions of the North-east. The Southern young woman will follow as soon as her call is heard. At present she is the " main-stay " of the rural South, the good angel of its coming civilization, getting more education and having more to do with the upper story of Southern life than her average male com panion who stays at home. But the Negro loves the sacred soil, the old home, the climate, and its surroundings. In due time he will become the dominant occupant of large pordons of the lowland South. He has no more idea of going to Africa than the Southern Jew of going into business in Jerusalem. He will move about as he becomes more intelligent and understands his own interests ; but he 47 is the Southerner of to-day, and all persuasion or threats that would dislodge hira are vain. As the political issues of the past fade into the distance, he will raore and more act in all public affairs with the leading race, with whom his companionship and interest belong. He must be educated where he is ; and, as the years go on, he will rise to the call of his own superior class and find his own place, — a great and beneficent place in our wonderful American faraily. Educadon is the lever that will raise this great mass of humanity to the high plane of full American citizenship. I believe it would be a great blessing to the whole South, could the suffrage, educadonal, labor, and vagrant laws of Massachusetts be incorporated into the legislation of every Southern State. Protection to the child, suppres sion of vagrancy, enforcement of industry, an educadonal test of suffrage, better churching, improvement in the home, reading of good books, all the influences that are so potent in any respectable Northern community, will in good time achieve the success of every class and race of the American people. For the Negro, two-thirds of this education must be, for a generation, outside the school-room, in the broad university of the new Southern American life. If we only knew it, this is one of the richest educational opportunides God has ever vouchsafed to any people. What a call is this opportunity for missionary service, in its broadest and loftiest aspect, to the whole American people. Every theory of despair on the race problem proceeds from a, pagan or atheistic estimate of human nature and destiny, and leads down to despotism or anarchy. Without the blessed gospel of Christ, our American race problem would be loo awful to contemplate. Thank God, it did not come to us in an age of pagan darkness, of mediaeval violence, in a land crowded with people, in a civilization cursed by the bitter results of a long and stormy past. It came to us in an opening age of light, when all the celestial forces are at an upward slant, when the Church is getting itself together to work for man while God takes care of the creeds, in a country so large and bountiful that hundreds of millions would not crowd it, and " every man may sit under his own vine and fig-tree, with no one to molest and make afraid." As I am borne through the vast spaces of our marvellous Southern land, and stand in amazement before its revelation of resources, hitherto unknown, I ask myself ; — Is this only to become the theatre of a greater greed of gain, " a hazard of new fortunes," its only out come a semi-tropical materialism, an inevitable temptation to a dis mal era of "booms" and "syndicates" and "trusts," with a new insanity for the almighty dollar, so powerless to satisfy the deeper need of the humblest human heart ? May it not, rather, be God's summons to such an awakening of our overworked and material ized American people as will compel them, in sheer self-defence, to give mind and heart and hand to that lifting up of the lowly, and that preaching the gospel of self-help to the poor, which is the end of Christian charity ? I look for the day when the divided churches of our three great Protestant denominations will be brought together by the growing sense of this "home mission" claim, and the whole Church and the adjacent realm of the world be polarized 48 in one supreme effort to solve this old caste puzzle of the nations and ages, by showing that the simple gospel of Christ means peace on earth and good will to all men. But now comes the final question, on which not so much the destiny of the Negro citizen as the very existence of Southern American civilization depends. Will the Anglo-Saxon Southern people, at present nine-tenths of the entire white population, in due time appreciate this opportunity, and join hands with all good men and woraen, at home and abroad, in this, the grandest crusade of all the ages ? I have no doubt that the race problem will finally be solved, in the South, largely through the agency of the Southern Anglo-Saxon peo ple, — not over their heads, but with their thorough co-operation. I see already, amid superficial indications to the contrary, the converg ing lines of this tendency, and, below hostile theories, the inevita ble drift of the common life of all these great commonwealths towards the American type of society. I see the positive indication of this great convergence of opinion, especially in what may be called the Educational Public of the South. By this, I mean that portion of the Southern people, of all classes and both races, which within the past twenty-five years, amid diffi culties and complications almost unconquerable elsewhere, has quietly and persistently laid the foundations of the American systera of uni versal edflcation in every State, county, city, and neighborhood in these sixteen commonwealths. The common school is so much the habit and unquestioned postulate of republican government everywhere in the North that we have never done half justice to the people of the sixteen Southern States for this, by all odds, the most significant movement of the past genera tion this side the water. That a people, in i860 the most aristocratic in organization of its society upon earth, who fought through a bloody war and only fell in " the last ditch " of the absolute ruin of their old social order, should have risen up frora this awful overthrow, cleared the ground of rubbish, and, with scarcely any aid that they could use, of their own will have planted on the soil the one institution that is the eternal foe of everything save republican governraent and deraocratic society, is the wonder of the age, and the complete vindi cation of the essential Americanism of the Southern people. It would be well for our cynical scholars and self-confident politicians, who dilate on the imperfections of this system of education, to reraera- ber what Massachusetts was, fifty years ago, when Horace Mann drew his sword, what Pennsylvania was, thirty years ago, when Wick- ershara took command, what even to-day some portions of the older Atlantic States are declared by the testimony of their own educa tional authorities to be. Doubtless there has been exaggeration of the achievement of the South in popular education, partly through ignorance, more in the way of home advertisement, most in the interest of the defeat of the Blair Bill. But, with all this drawback, the Southern people have taken " the first step that costs," and estab lished the free school, for all classes and both races, unsectarian, but practically one of the most potent moral and religious forces of this section, growing all the time, already beyond the peril of destruction 49 or serious damage from its numerous enemies ; and it " has come to stay." True, the educational public has not half converted the aver age Southern politician, for whom, as General Grant said, " there is too much reading and writing now." It has not yet entirely swung the Southern clergy and the Church over to its hearty support, as against the old-time Protestant parochial and private system of instruction. It is still a social outsider in some regions ; and, through vast spaces of the rural South, it is so poor that it seems to have hindered more than helped the better-off classes who shoulder its expenses. But it has for the first time gone down into the basement story of the Southern household, bearing that common schooling to the lower orders and the " plain people," which means modern civili zation and progressive Christianity, involving the full comraittal to the new Araerican order of affairs. It is a wonder that the leading classes of the North — the press, the political organizations, the indus trial leaders, even the philanthropists — are still so imperfectly informed concerning this, by all odds, the most vital and significant end of Southern life. The splendid mission work of our Northern churches, which, indirectly, has so greatly aided the growth of the schools for the Negroes by training their teachers, has sometimes obscured the magnitude of the home work. But this, with the remarkable rally of the whole secondary and higher education, is a demonstration that the South has no intention of reraaining perma nently in any second place in the great educational moveraent of the time. Imperfect as the common school is, the Negro has been the greatest gainer therefrom ; for, through it and all that goes along therewith, he is laying up a steady increase of self-respect, intelli gence, and practical power, which will astonish many good people who still go on repeating the parrot cry that education has only demoralized the younger Negro generation for the industrial side of life. But it is not what the comraon schools have done, but what the Southern people has failed to do to re-enforce them, that still holds thousands of Negro youth in the bonds of a vagrancy, shifdess- ness, and debasement that deserve all things that can be said against them. The cure for this is more and better education, re-enforced by the policy of every civilized land in the suppression of the devil-side of society, that will ruin the greatest country under the sun. But, below and beyond this open and evident work of education, I see more cleady, every year, that the logic of the new Southern life is all on the side of the final elevation of the Negro to the essential rights and opportunides of American cidzenship ; and, beyond, to the generous co-operation with the nation in aiding him to make his own best use of that supreme opportunity. We at tbe North are con stantly misled by the press, which is a very poor representative of this most important element of Southern life. We hear the superficial talk and read of the disorder that is the inevitable accompaniment of States in the transition from a great civil war to their final adjust ment to the national life. An eminent educator of the South wntes me : " Ask a hundred men at the street corner what they think about the education of the Negro, and seventy-five of them will demur, and some of them will swear. The next day every man of them will vote for the higher school tax that gives the Negro a better school-house so and the permanent establishment of his education." Our Southern friends are no more logical than other portions of the country, and the superficial life of all countries is constantly adjusting itself to the logic of its undertow. I can see, in more ways than I could explain, even to a Northern community, that these people are " in the swim " whose tide can only drift them off into regions of life which seem almost impossible to them to-day. The test of this drift is that, spite of all obstacles and embarrass ments, there is, in every respectable Southern community, no real hindrance to an intelligent, moral, industrious, and prudent Negro family getting all out of American life that anybody expects, save that social and, in some localities, political recognition, that are the last achievements of long periods of social evolution in national affairs. In all essential respects, the Negro citizen is better off in the South than in any Northern State. The outward opportunities for full asso ciation with the white population in the North are, after all, of little value in comparison with the substantial opportunity for becoming the great laboring agricultural class and of capturing the field of mechan ical and operative labor. It will be his own fault if he permits the insolent naturalized foreign element that now dominates our Northern industrial centres to elbow him off into a peasantry or a menial and subordinate laboring population. As I look at the way in which these seven millions of people are gaining all the vital opportunities of life among the twelve millions of their Anglo-Saxon neighbors, I am amazed at the way they seem to go on, only half-conscious of what the rest of the world is saying about them, " working out their own salvation " by the power that is in them, in the only way by which an American people can finally succeed. The only fit symbol of this mighty movement is the Miss issippi River after it has become " the inland sea " of the Southland. States and their peoples. Congress and the nation, scientists and cranks, debate and experiment on the way to put the " Father of Waters " in harness, to tie up this awful creature that holds the fate of ten millions of people in its every-day whim. But all discourse, legislation, and experiraent, at last run against the question; — What will the Mississippi River do with us next week? So, while the Southern people and the nation are wrestling with what they choose to call the "race problem," this inland. Southern human ocean, searching and spreading and pushing into every nook and corner of the low-land, is going on its way; and every deliverance of the scientist, the socialist, and the statesman, brings up against some new and unexpected thing that the Negro has really done. "How are you getting on with your neighbors down here ? " said I to a deputa- don of fine-looking colored men, who stepped out of a carriage and presented me with a well-written address of welcome to the city of Vicksburg. "Well, we used to have trouble; but we have finally concluded the white man has come to stay, and we adjust ourselves to that fact." The white man has indeed come to stay all over the United States of America ; but he will stay, not always as the white man proposes, but as God Almighty disposes. And, wherever he abides, he will finally be compelled, by the logic of American events, to stay in peace and justice, in freedom and order, in Christian co- 51 operation with all the great elements of republican society, shaped frora all the peoples that a beneficent Providence has called to abide together in this, God's morning land. Miss Emily L. Austin, of the Slater Training School in Knoxville, Tenn., was invited to speak. Miss Austin. — The work of our school is somewhat different from that of teachers in other places. Our idea is to engraft indus trial training on the public school system, so that our work is as much with and for the white people as for the colored. We want to keep the subject before school boards and the community in gen eral until they see the wisdom of adopting it. Dr. Haygood tells a story of an old colored man who said that industrial training " was only a white man's device to make the Negro work." As long as this view of it is prevalent, we have trouble in getting regular attend ance and intelligent interest. The colored people say, " If this is such a good thing, why do they not have it in the white schools ? " And they oppose the children in carrying out in their homes what they are taught in school. A girl was asked if she took the covers from the bed and aired them in the morning. Her reply was, " Mammy says that is white folks' way, and she ain't going to have no such clutter in the house." Another child was asked by the teacher if she set the table and waited on it as she was taught in school. She replied : " Oh, no, 'deed I don't ! My dad would clip rae over the head mighty quick if I tuck his plate befo' he done eat his dinner." We can only make the most of manual training when it is given to all alike, and when the idea of the true dignity of labor is a fundmental one in public education. In our efforts to introduce cooking, we have twice invited the mayor, the School Commissioners, members of the School Board of Education, and others interested, to a dinner prepared and served by the children in our school-house. We have also had carpentry and housekeepers' classes on public exhibition, and had the Opera House well filled with our best people, both white and colored. The work is gaining ground ; and our cooking teacher had a class of ladies last winter who expressed their satisfaction with the training, and their desire to have it where their children could have the benefit of it. One thing in ray experience is a hopeful sign of progress. The children in school who learn the best, who are the neatest in their dress, and who give evidence of coming from good homes, are those whose parents, one or both, came to our schools when we first opened them, twenty years ago. A friend visidng the school re marked on the great difference in the scholars. I a,sked her to pick out those whom she considered the best, and in every case but one those whom she chose were the children whose parents had them selves been in school. These parents show their interest by insist ing on regular attendance and by more or less frequent visits to the school. This is an encouragement in the line of persistent training. Hon. Edward L. Pierce, Milton, Mass.— Undoubtedly, we are confrondng here the greatest problem of our time ; and yet it is a simple one, and is working itself out. Considering the advance made 52 since 1861, there is no occasion for being pessimistic, but rather every reason for being hopeful. We are far ahead of all that philanthropists then dreamed we should be in a generation. De Tocqueville, who looked more thoroughly into American life and character than any foreigner has ever done, except perhaps Mr. Bryce, came here in 1831. He talked with Dr. Channing in Boston; he shot birds at Memphis ; he sought the wilderness at Pontiac, to see where civilized shaded off into savage life ; he went as far south as Alabama, where he studied slavery socially and politically. He was impressed with the difference between the institution here and as it was in antiquity and in other countries. There masters and slaves were of the sarae race, but here the indelible brand of color divided them, creating a perpetual distinction, which no intelligence, education, or law could override; and he closed his chapter in despair, with the conclusion that the two races must live together as master and slave or .extermi nate each other. What this philosopher thought impossible sixty years ago we have accomplished. The same despondent view I encountered twenty-eight years ago in leading the first enterprise for the education and industrial development of the freedmen. Returning from the Sea Islands in February, 1862, where I had been under a commission from Secretary Chase, I made a statement to the Massa chusetts delegation in Congress who met to hear my report ; and one of them, an old abolitionist, whispered to rae, " Do you think it possible to raake anything of this people ? " Such was the prevailing scepticisra at that time. It needs now no argument to prove that the American Negro is capable of civilization, is adapted to civilized life, and has moral and religious instincts, and that in a condition of freedom he does well as soldier and laborer. All this is settled. Before the Civil War it was said that, if the slaves were freed, there would be no cotton crop ; that white men could not, and the Negroes as free men would not, work it. And yet we are raising year after year — the Negroes are doing it — a cotton crop twice what it was under the condition of slavery. Even the Southern people knew before the war what was in the Negro. It will be remembered that General Lee, just before the end of the war, proposed to arm the slaves, with the promise of freedom, knowing well that they had the essendal elements of man hood. So we need not spend tirae in proving the capacity of the Negro for civilized life, with freedom as its condition. We encounter, however, certain practical questions which this Con ference should consider; and they may be included in the inquiry: What are to day the difficulties which the Negro has to encounter in the Southern States, and what can be done to remove or mitigate them ? First, it will be agreed, I think, that the Negro develops best when in reladons with the white raan. The experiment on the coast of Africa, where he is by himself, proves this. At any rate, his fortunes in this country are bound up with the white people of the South. Now, whatever you or I at the North may think of him, the important question is. What do the Southern white people think of him ? Are they hopeful or not ? Do they think him capable of good citizenship, of being a good member of society ? What is in their minds as to his present and future ? Informadon on these points is very desirable. 53 Another question : What wages is the Negro getting ? They doubt less vary greatly in localities. The other day I was in Edgefield, S.C, and a colore^ mechanic told me that colored carpenters, then at work on the Baptist church, which was being rebuilt, were receiv ing two dollars a day, which, considering the different raodes of living, would equal twice that amount with us. The colored people are largely the mechanics in the South : they work in the forges, though not, I believe, in the cotton mills. What do they get as laborers on cotton lands ? They seem to work by shares, a system not easily understood by an outsider. Do they get a reasonably fair share for their labor ? This is also an important inquiry. What does the Negro do with his money ? Living in his simple way, there must be something, often quite a sum, to be saved. What becomes of the surplus ? Is he thrifty, as our Irish are, who put the surplus dollar into the savings-bank ? The colored people had at the beginning an unfortunate experience with the Freedmen's Savings Bank ; and what is their resource now in its place ? Again, are they investing in land and becoming proprietors ? Do they find any diffi culty in buying land, when they have the means to buy ? Are the land-owners willing to sell to them as to other purchasers ? The question whether the Negro is able to save and does save, and how he invests his savings, seems to me all-important ; for, when he is the owner of houses and lands and stocks, and holds mortgages on white men's property, the race problem in this country will be well nigh its solution. Dr. Edward H. Magill, President Swarthmore College, Swarth- more, Pa. — We are here to consider what we may best do to elevate the colored race, not in one section, but in the whole country. We are here not so much to find fault with others as to take a lesson home to ourselves. It is a remarkable circumstance that in that part of this country where the Negro has suffered most, where he has been enslaved, his condidon to-day is more favorable than in the so-called free States which we inhabit here in the North. I therefore feel it my duty to call the attention of this Conference to the condition of the colored man in the North as well as in the South. We have heard that in the South, where he is employed as a workman and overseer, he is advancing. We have heard frora Dr. Mayo that the colored raen in the South are raaking raore progress than the colored raen in the North. It is the cruel and ignorant prejudice of the North to which I wish to draw your attention. We have heard of colored carpenters building a church in the South, with a colored man as master mechanic. In the city of Philadelphia, a colored man may carry mortar up a ladder, but he is not allowed to lay the bricks. He cannot be a raaster raechanic; he cannot learn bricklaying. What is it that does this? It is not the employer: it is the cruel prejudice araong the working people that keeps thera down. We ought to do something to direct our attendon to this prejudice, to see if anything can be done to lessen it. In Philadelphia, if a colored man should mount a street-car and atterapt to drive it, he would be mobbed. There are certain occupadons from which the colored peo ple are kept out, and this is to be seen in nearly all the States of the North. I think we ought to do something to express our judgment as to the best way to lessen this prejudice. 54 Judge Tourgee. — Amen to that! One of the phases of this ques tion which has given me a deal of trouble, and with the consideration of which I have been compelled to trouble the American people, is the view which has been presented by Dr. Magill. The people of the North do not seem to realize the fact that we owe an industrial ex ample in this respect to those of the South. We do not give the colored man a white man's chance industrially and commercially. Throughout the whole country we find him meeting unjust prejudice in business. In the law and letters he is fairly recognized. In trade and labor he still has to carry this weight. In the church it is not much better. We have driven him off by hiraself, in order that the problem of his existence may be as far from us as possible. I sup pose we are willing to meet the Negro in heaven, and allow him to be white there ; and perhaps a majority of us may be willing to forgive the Almighty for having created hira black. But, when he goes into a respectable white church in this world, he is apt to be as badly off as if he had on a ragged coat. He finds no place there except it is about as far out of sight and hearing as he can be stowed. I think he generally, in our Northern city churches, gets a seat where he hears more of the machinery of the organ than of the voice of prayer. While we criticise our Southern friends for their attitude in regard to the Negro's rights, it behooves the people of the North to show a willingness to give a man a fair chance in any business he may seek to pursue, even though he may have a black hide, if we expect our protestations to be heeded. We should wash our own hands before we undertake the purification of others. General O. O. Howard, Major-General of U. S. Army, Governor's Island, New York, spoke as follows : — Gen. Howard. — I hold in my hands a clipping from the Evan gelist, which, with your permission, I will read. It is as follows : — " On July I the manager of the Tradesman sent the following cir cular to the managers of industries in the South : — " ' Chattanooga, July i, 1889. "^Gentlemen. — The Tradesman is endeavoring to ascertain from demonstrated facts the degree of efficiency Negro labor has attained in Southern manufactures ; and, to aid in our inquiry, which, we think, if favorable to this class of laborers, must be beneficial to the South, we ask you to answer the following questions : — "' I. How many Negro laborers do you employ.' "'2. How many are skilled and how many common laborers? " ' 3. Wages paid common and skilled Negro laborers .? '"4. What degree of efficiency do you find in common and skilled Negro labor as compared to white labor in like work.' " ' 5. Do you intend to continue the employment of Negro labor .' '"Your answer will be treated as strictly confidential, the facts only being used impersonally and discussed generally, together with a large mass of similar an swers from Southern manufacturers. Yours, etc., '"Tradesman Publishing Co., '"Geo. W. Ochs, Manager! " We have in hand at this writing answers from twenty-eight con cerns scattered throughout the South. These answers are printed elsewhere, and we ask for them the attention the subject demands. 55 Especially do we invite scrutiny by our Northern friends to this rec ord. We here sura up briefly the general result of this inquiry : — " I. The total number of Negro laborers, skilled, semi-skilled, and common, covered by these replies, is about 7,000. " 2. Of these the number skilled and semi-skilled are one-quarter, say 2,000. "3. The average wages paid for skilled labor runs at about $1.75 a day, though several of our correspondents pay colored heaters, puddlers, and other high-class workmen as high as $4 and $5 a day ; and many furnaces pay from $1.50 to $2.50. Average wages of com mon labor, $1.15 per day. " 4. The general tenor of the replies indicates perfect satisfaction with Negro labor, and announces a practically unanimous determina tion to continue its employraent, and to advance Negroes into the raore skilled and better paid ranks as rapidly as possible. "5. Several of the raore thoughtful of our correspondents, and those of longest experience with black labor, regard the Negro in several kinds of furnace and mill work, where high temperature is encountered, superior to white labor ; and the majority prefer him to white, as a common laborer. " 6. No one, so far, who has given this class of labor an extended and fair trial, thinks of discontinuing its use or of diminishing the number employed. " 7. The answers cover a wide range of Southern territory, and embrace rolling-mills, furnaces, saw-mills, and logging parties, and, perhaps, some others ; and" we may take them as thoroughly repre sentative of the tendency towards the exclusive use of Negroes in the heavier and hotter work of Southern industries, both as common and skilled labor. " 8. A careful scanning of these replies, with pretty full information of the various lines they cover, shows beyond question that the Negro has greatly improved in the last fifteen years in reliability, skill, and general ef&ciency, and that the improveraent is raore and more com mending him as a laborer to the most intelligent, painstaking, and successful of our Southern manufacturers. Several of our corre spondents, speaking in general terms, say the Negro is, upon the whole, the better laborer. None who employ Negroes in any depart ment of their works discriminate between white and black in the matter of wages. The same work commands the same pay. " The object of this inquiry and the publication of the answers of our correspondents is to lay before the manufacturers of the country the simple and reliable facts touching the present stage of the effi ciency of Negro labor, and furnish a reliable basis for prognosticating the degree of skill in general the race will develop in those industries to which this labor is specially adapted in the Southern States ; and it is the opinion of the Tradesman that our exhibit is thoroughly con clusive of the fact that the Southern Negro of to-day is one of the best of common laborers, and that he is rapidly advancing as a work man in skilled lines. "We disclaim all personal and polidcal bias. Our sole aim is the ascertainment of facts of vital importance to the development of the South. The very substructure of a great industrial community is a 56 reliable working element. If the South possess this, together with its enormous supplies of raw materials so located as to reduce cost of handling thera to the minimum, then the past achievements of the section as a manufacturer of iron, a miner of coal, and a producer of lumber, need surprise no student of economics. " A grave error concerning Negro labor has found lodgment in the minds of many Northern men, with reference to its slowness and slovenliness. Many Northerners will say that one white laborer in Ohio or Pennsylvania will accomplish as much as two Negroes in Tennessee, Virginia, or Alabama. This is wholly erroneous. The forces employed about Southern furnaces are about ninety per cent. of the whole Negroes, and they are not more numerous than the white forces at Northern furnaces. Under proper direction, in rolling-mills, tanneries, lumber-yards, about furnaces, in coal mines, the Negro is the most efficient laborer in this country. Upon this head, the Tradesman has the testimony of managers and superintendents, exclu sive of all we have published in this and preceding issues, that Negro labor compares favorably with white labor anywhere, and is superior in endurance and docility to white labor in the Southern States. Our entire range of direct information covers not less than ten thousand Negro laborers ; and the testimony of their employers is practically unanimous that they are, on the whole, preferable to white labor, whether the latter be collected here or brought from abroad." After reading the foregoing, General Howard related an instance illustrating the power of Christianity in reaching the Chinese in Cali fornia through the influence of Christian households. He continued : " I take it as a rule that those who love our Lord will do everything they can to open the way for these people. The Negro is kept out of labor because of the selfishness of men. We want everything for ourselves. We do not want Chinamen ; we do not want Negroes ; and, if the Indians were numerous enough, we should not want them. This is all selfishness. I do not know what we can do, but I think we ought to labor to get some genuine Christianity inside of our church edifices and into society until the time shall come when a laborer shall not be excluded because he is black." Gen. John Eaton. — And let me add because she is a woman. Hon. Philip C. Garrett, Philadelphia. — Some years ago a few gentlemen in the Academy of Natural Sciences were attempting to decipher a Latin inscription. Being unable to do it, a colored woman, who was washing the floor, and had overheard their conversa tion, looked up and said, " Perhaps I can help you, gentlemen." She was educated at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. And I could not help wishing, when the chairman invited the ladies to speak, that we had had with us Mrs. Fanny Jackson Coppin, the colored principal of that institution, who is one of the noble women of this country, not only as to her Christian character, her spirit of self-abnegadon and generosity, but also as to her intellectual attain ments. When almost a girl, immediately after graduating at Oberiin College, she was placed at the head of the giris' department of this institudon. It is a remarkable school, almost a college in grade Within a few years, Mrs. Coppin has become convinced that the really essendal kind of instruction to give is industrial, not because 57 the colored people are necessarily inferior in intelligence, but because they are obliged from circumstances to assume a lower station in society. The managers have therefore introduced there an admirable industrial school, in which they are teaching, among others, the trade of bricklaying. I think that this is the true remedy for such diffi culties as Dr. Magill has mentioned. Such instances as that cited by him merely show the tyranny of trades-unions. Trades-unions prevent white boys from entering trades. The only remedy for this despotism over the boys of both races is an education in trades- schools, trades such as bricklaying, blacksmithing, carpentering, etc., which will send the children out from school fitted to work as me chanics. Dr. Strieby. — How could they get work afterwards ? Mr. Garrett. — We have fifty thousand colored people in Phila delphia, and their first opportunity would be with their own people. Lack of work is not the difficulty. The difficulty is in learning a trade. Rev. Frank G. Woodworth, President Tougaloo University, Mississippi. — Coming in contact, as I do, with students from all parts of the States of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, I have taken pains to inquire along the lines of those questions which have been suggested as to the average wages. I think that what General Howard read is undoubtedly correct as regards those branches of which he speaks. The ordinary laborers on plantations do not often receive raore than from seventy-five cents to ninety cents per day. I want to speak of the value of industrial education. Boys who come to us untrained, often able to earn only seventy-five cents a day, are sent out as carpenters, blacksmiths, or tinsmiths, able to earn from $1.25 to $2.50 a day. We are having that repeated constantly. That is the bread-and-butter view of industrial education, and it is worthy of mention. The mechanics who receive $2 a day do not live in a one- room cabin. They are getting to have good little homes of their own. The question has been asked whether they can obtain land. I think they can. I think the old unwritten law that no Negro should hold land has been so thoroughly broken up that no attention is paid to it in many parts of the South. The South is spotted as well as the North. There are spots that are bright and spots that are dark. We can raake no generalization. It is impossible to say that all through the South a certain condition obtains. I can only speak of one sec tion. If we each remember that, it will save us frora many a hasty statement. I have been inquiring frora our students about the hold ing of land. I find in raany counties in Mississippi the colored people are acquiring farms which they are gradually paying for, sorae of thera farms of two hundred acres or raore. One man who sends his children to our school tells rae that he has now 1,190 acres with out encumbrance of any kind. The credit belongs to the railroad companies. They sold land to Negroes, and gave clear titles ; and that has compelled the selling of land in other places. The question of saving has come up. I am afraid the colored people do not save. I have one suggestion that I want to make, and that is that the postal-savings system might be indorsed by this Conference. I think it would be an excellent thing, and would do 58 more than anything else for the uplifting of colored people in a material way. They would then save all the time. Their natural tendency is to save after they have been educated up to it. Sorae one has spoken of the attitude of the white people of the South toward the colored. I think the white people feel kindly toward the colored people. The editor of the leading paper of Mississippi said publicly at our Commencement that the best people of the State are solid in favor of the education of the Negro, and I think he knows pretty well the state of feeling throughout Mississippi. I know, too, that a Congressman of that State said that he welcomed what had been given to Mississippi by such schools as ours, and he recognized that a helping and beneficent hand had been stretched out from the North toward the solving of this great problem. The State Superin tendent of Education said last year to me : "I wish you would go North, and raise a million dollars, and establish other schools like yours for the benefit they are to the colored population. If the colored people are to stay here, it is better for us and them that they should be educated." I believe the general tendency of the best classes is toward the education and uplifting of the colored people. There is to be a constitutional convention in Mississippi in July and August, and the whole atmosphere is full of that ; and a great many of these things which might not have been said a few months ago, are now spoken of freely, because the whole question has been thrust upon us for discussion. Dr. Strieby. — Does your school get aid frora the State ? Prof. Woodworth. — Yes : it has had aid for a number of years. It receives $1,500 a year. This gives us the recognition of the State. All the expressions which have been used in regard to our school recently by the officials of our State have been very kind indeed. Two years ago they had a retrenching legislature, and the House cut off appropriations from all institutions, even cutting down the insane asylum $16,000, and they cut us off entirely; but a conference committee arranged matters, so that we received something. This conference comraittee had on it some of the Bourbons of the Senate, and it showed something of the estimation in which they held the school. I think we had over one hundred white people at our Com mencement. Adjourned at 10 p.m. SDIjttti Session. Thursday Morning, June 5. The Conference was called to order at ten o'clock, ex-President Hayes in the chair. President Gates, Chairman of the Executive Committee, spoke as follows : The committee have thought that perhaps it would possi bly relieve a misapprehension existing in the minds of some if it were clearly understood that the programme of this Conference had not been prepared in advance. Indeed, I ara authorized by our host lo say, what I supposed to be the fact, that no persons were asked to prepare set addresses on special subjects, but that a general invitation was given to be present, and to confer on these themes. The com mittee have had a difficult' task in attempting to find persons who were willing to advance their views, under these circumstances, and to speak on special aspects of the general subject. Each phase of the subject is thrown open for general discussion. There is as press ing an invitation to all to share in the discussion as to any one. The outlines which should guide us have been clearly stated by our President. The programme which your committee are laying out is based on the phrases he used. The five special divisions which we shall consider are the industries of the Negro, his home life, his edu cation, his morality, and his religion. We do not propose to ask for any long addresses on "what the Negro ought to be." We wish to consider rather what he is. We have faith in what God designs to bring out in the life of this race of our fellow-citizens. If we expected to bring out a type of Negro manhood after the model of the Plymouth Rock Pilgrira, we should probably be disappointed. The educadon of the Negro is the raain theme for to-day. That will lead to a discussion of what effect this process of education has in his home, and what relation to his morality and religion. We should be very careful to follow the line indicated by the President. We want to speak from a sympathetic point of view, — to keep that ever before us. We wish to draw from the friends of the Negro in the Soui;h points of view that differ from those most commonly talked about in the North. We feel that there should be a rational optimism, based on the belief that God reigns and is working out his purposes among us. The outcome of our Conference should be to make stronger throughout the nation a rational confidence in the future of this race. Your coramittee wish to submit first the reading of brief extracts of letters from invited guests who are unable to be present. This will be followed by a discussion of the home life of the Negro in the districts where the blacks outnumber the whites, — what can be done to improve it. Miss Eraerson, President Woodworth, and Dr. Pitzer, 6o of Washington, will speak along that line. The next topic will be education for the race. This will be opened by the Hon. John Jay, of New York, and Dr. W. T. Harris, of Washington. Nuraerous extracts from letters were then read by Mr. H. O. Houghton, who said that he had been very much struck with the wide range of invitations which had been sent throughout the country to representative men of all sects and denominations. The general tone of these letters was regret at the inability of the writers to be present and hearty sympathy with the object of the Conference. Among others from whom such letters were received were United States Senator George F. Hoar; Colonel J. M. Keating, Memphis, Tenn. ; S. M. Finger, Superintendent of Public Instruction, North Carolina; Bishop J. P. Newraan, Washington, D.C; Professor George L. White, Ithaca, N.Y. ; President W. H. Hichman, D.D., Atlanta, Ga. ; Rev. Samuel Longfellow, Cambridge ; • Solomon Palmer, Superintendent of Education, Alabama ; Senator H. L. Dawes; Pres ident D. C. Oilman, Johns Hopkins ; Bishop Whipple ; Hon. Levi P. Morton, Vice-President United States ; General William Preston Johnson, New Orleans ; General Rufus Saxton ; Dr. J. L. M. Curry ; Bishop Gillespie, of Michigan ; Simeon Gilbert, editor of Advance, Chicago. HOME LIFE OF THE NEGROES. address by miss D. E. EMERSON, AMERICAN MISSIONARY association. I can give only a little of my own experience and observation in relation to the homes of the colored people, dating frora 1869, when, in comraon with many others answering to the call for woman's help, I found ray way to the black belt of the South. My first experience was in the school. When I stood up in that school-room, with ninety or one hundred black children, youth, men, and women before me, I felt perfectly helpless, because I had no knowledge of them in their home life. I did not know how to meet them. I began by following them to their homes ; and, after school, many a long walk I took, sometimes through the trackless sand along the cypress swamp, up embankments where I found the clusters of cabins which they called homes. Coming, as I did, from a New England town, with Christian family training, though I had not seen wealth in ray own home, yet, having felt nothing of real want I saw in these Negro cabins only the poverty of the people, the out ward lacks. I saw nothing, at first, of the lack of inward grace. But when I came to the educational part in connection with these youth' then I found what made their home life so barren and poor. Home and woman are synonymous terms ; and so, if I speak to you this morning of the women of the colored race, you will understand how that touches the life of the colored race. Taking the young people as they come into our schools, we find first, that it is not only book knowledge that they need. The irregu larity of their habits of life, their lack of knowledge of all that per- 6i tains to neatness in person and neatness in dress, or the proprieties of life, show that they have had no training whatever. We also find their sensibilides blunted or torpid. It seems as if they were but one mass of corrupted humanity, and it is worse looking upon this in women. Finding them thus, we must teach them at first habits of cleanliness, neatness, and order ; and, to do this, we must bring the young people into our school homes or home schools. We found that it was useless to go into the homes and talk about something that they never had seen and could not understand. If we spoke of better ways, they would say, " Yes, yes " ; but we never saw much improvement in them from that alone. We must show them the thing itself. We must be to them in everything what we would have them to be. We must go to thera, and show thera in the working of our own homes what we would have them develop in their homes and lives. We could not go and plant Christian homes all over the South, so we planned to make one school home serve for rfiany, where, bringing in the youth, we might give them the ideas that they needed. We began by requiring order and cleanliness in their rooms and persons. We especially reached out to girls, guarding, guiding, and helping them ; and we found great changes as a result, — won derful changes. It is one of the raost marvellous things that out of that which seemed to be so corrupt there should arise so much of what gives evidence of true, pure womanhood. Let me give a few traits that I have observed. We all know their great love of music. It does seem as if a people with so much melody of voice must have melody, though untrained, in their hearts, — raust have something there that will work out what will be melo dious in life. Then there is observable in them, and it has come to be more apparent within a few years, a great love of the beautiful in color. They respond to everything beautiful in nature. The young people in our schools will gather wild flowers and bring them in ; and, in the hands even of little children, they seem to group themselves naturally into the most charming bouquets. They have taste and consciousness of harmony of color that is very noticeable. Twenty years ago, when I first knew them, this appeared in a certain gro- tesqueness of dress and in arrangement of bright colors ; but, though they still retain their love of that which is bright, it is toned down, and they work out the harmony in their own way. Then they are a very sympathetic people, very kind. Possibly one reason why there is so little pauperism among them is that almost every colored family has adopted orphan children. They will always open their doors to orphans. When the mothers bring their children to school and offer to pay for their tuition, we sometimes say, " You seem to have a large family of children." " Yes," they will reply, " but three or five of them are my sister's children, or a friend's children." If they have made a promise to the dead mother that they will take care of the children, it is sacred. They never break such a promise. So long as these children are dependent, they will divide their last crust with them before they will turn thera away. They are also very kind to the sick. It is true that in their igno rance what they mean for kindness is really cruelty; but, with a proper knowledge of physiology and hygiene, I cannot think of a 62 more gentle, soothing, helpful nurse than a colored woman would make. Bring that element into their home life, and you can conceive what it would be. They are very forgiving and loving in their natures. This last Decoration Day one of the woraen of the town called at our school home, and brought with her the loveliest flowers in bouquets, and in designs, a cross, a crown, an anchor, and others. She was going forty railes to lay these flowers on the grave of her old mistress. "Madam's children," she said, — she did not say "Missis," — " Madam's children are all dead, and there is no one but me to lay flowers on her grave." We found that the only thing this woman spent money for, beyond the bare necessities of life, was to pay her fare every year going these forty miles on the train, to lay flowers on the grave of " Madam." By the development of these qualities and careful training, these young people gain self-respect, and are able to stand as the leading influence in their own communities. I reraeraber such an instance of a young girl living in one of those one-roomed cabins which have been described, without any window, with just an open fireplace, with no closet, no shelf, no table, no regular meals, no dishes of any sort, only a skillet on the hearth, from which any one ate when he was hungry, if there happened to be anything in it. I remember such a girl coming into one of our homes, such a horae as a company of Christian Northern ladies can raake. It was like heaven to her. She began to grasp, a litde at a tirae, the different lines of domestic work and of teachings such as abound in Christian homes all over the North. After having been there four years, and at the same time having been in the school, she married a colored minister of the town, one who had been educated in our schools. Together they went out, and with the money they had earned built a little house in the outskirts of the town. Twelve months ago I was in that house ; and, truly, it was like one of the raost charraing little New England homes, but planted down there in Alabama. There was a cosey sitting-room, a pleasant kitchen, a little room for the pastor's study, and two chambers, all neat and clean. The young woman took pride in taking me over it. It looked as if, anticipating my coming, she had put it in readiness ; but my visit was a surprise to her. She, with her litde three-year-old child, was at the window, watching for her husband's return. In the sitting-room was a table, and books upon the table, showing that they enjoyed such things as well. I asked her if she was not lonely, for there were not raany of her own people who were her equals. She said no, that her husband spent his evenings reading aloud to her. Contrast that with what you might have found among that people only a few years ago, and note what a marvellous thing has been wrought. There are springing up all over the South such homes as that. To be sure, it seems as if it is a very little thing, as if it were a very slow work, as if it were impossible to reach the masses. It is true the work must be largely individual ; but it is wonderful how soon one family reached will convey to another family the help which has been received, and how constantly the elevating influence is felt. Each of these litde homes sends out its ray of light toward those sitting in darkness beyond. Yet the darkness beyond is there. Go out from the towns, away from the reach of these schools, and you will find in the plantations in the black belt people living almost in a state of animalism. When we get any young people from that class into our schools, as we do occasionally, we find often that they have never sat at the table in their lives, that they have never used a knife and fork, and more than once girls have come to us who had never slept in a bed. They did not know how to get into bed, and would perhaps lie on the floor under it, or on the top without opening it. We speak of the eight million blacks in the South ; we think of the few thousands in Christian homes, of the comparatively few that we have reached, and we raust see that there is an immense work to be done among them yet. But I wanted for our encouragement to men tion these hopeful signs as pertaining to the family. We are work ing along these lines in developing character. It is true we aim to put them in the way of independence and self-support ; yet I do not think so much of that as of putting them in the way of establishing beautiful, comfortable homes for themselves. The girls are not all going to be school-teachers or dressmakers or milliners. They marry, and have homes and children. They are to be wives and mothers, and what we need is to bring out all those influences that will be helpful in home life. But the girls must be educated, in order to be congenial companions. They find their husbands in the schools where they have become acquainted. After being there, they could not go out and intermarry araong the lower, more ignorant classes; and we must give them the enlightenment of mind, the edu cation, that will keep them right along with each other in their path of life. Rev. F. G. Woodworth, President Tougaloo University, Missis sippi. — Miss Emerson has left very little for me to say. I suppose the reason I am asked to be here at this time is because my school is in the centre of Africa. Within the four counties close to us — we are just out of Jackson, Miss. — there are over 100,000 colored peo ple, and the farthest are not forty miles away. Within a radius of seventy-five miles there are 450,000 colored people ; and, at the present rate of increase, the State of Mississippi will probably show in the present census something like 850,000 or 900,000 colored peo ple in the State. In the black belt the Negroes are in an iraraense raajority. In those counties where there are 100,000 colored people there are but 60,000 whites. One of our boys on Commencement Day had an oradon on the question of emigration. One point that he urged in favor of it was that the colored people have no homes. That might be said of the mass of the colored people, for very few know what a real home is. Miss Eraerson has spoken of the one-roomed cabin. I wish I had power to picture it to you, — built of logs, chinked with mud, a mud chimney on the outside which goes up in any direcdon except straight, sometimes a window,— that is, a swinging shutter,— and sometimes a floor, which you can find with a hoe. In a great many there is no furniture of any kind. Somedmes a dozen people live in this one room, ten by twelve feet ; and you cannot imagine any home 64 life in such a place as that. I honestly believe that the greatest curse of the Negro is the one-roora cabin. Take away the one-room cabin, and you will have elirainated the greatest cause of iramorality in the South. Can you think of moral life where there are men, women, and children by the dozen in one room, eating, living, sleep ing together ? One of our teachers went to visit a family where they turned out the cow, that the teacher might come in ! That was within a mile of our institution ; and I suppose there are thousands of cabins unworthy to be dignified by the name of home in that region. They do not know very much about what we consider the conveniences of life. I was driving by one of these cabins the other day, with Dr. Wright; and he asked me how many lived in that cabin, just such a structure as you have heard described. I told him about eight or ten. The children went to our school. "What do they have for meals?" he asked. I told hira that, when one of the children was hungry, he would poke around in the ashes, — for the fire was always kept smouldering on the hearth, — until he would find a sweet potato. He would eat that, and consider that he had had his dinner. Sorae come to school and stay all day without anything to eat. I have seen some of them at luncheon take out a pocket handkerchief, and tied up in a corner would be four hickory nuts for luncheon. Their ordinary fare at home is corn-bread and sweet potatoes, with sometimes a little bacon. I speak of the lower classes. If you go into the towns, you will find better living. You will also find on plantations many homes which are vastly better than these. Within the last two or three years there has been a great change in many of the homes. I remember one home of the one-roomed cabin description which was very much crowded. Within the last spring that faraily has built a two-rooraed cabin, of boards set up endwise and battened, with a good chimney, fireplace, and windows. This house showed great enterprise ; but you would pass it by here, and say that some one had simply squatted there. With us, it shows great progress. One thing that must be done is to instil in the minds of the young people an intense dissadsf action with their ordinary home conditions. If once we can make them dissatisfied with the one-room cabin, and give them an aspiration for cleanliness, and half a chance to be moral, we shall have accomplished a good deal. You might go up to one of these homes and see nobody there. There would be a pad lock on the door. " Where are the people ? " you ask. Farther off in the fields you will see an antiquated mule, with a piece of rope harness, and a buU-tongued plough, which scratches up the ground from an inch and a half to three inches. Following the plough, you will see a raan, who is the head of the cabin. Following hira are the women of the establishment, for they all work in the fields in that region. The little children will all be working, too, probably, all en gaged in manual toil. They are pretty well instructed in that kind of labor ; but we want to give them the possibility of a better life than that, something higher than the old condition of affairs. When the boys go to school, they learn how to make better cabins, and to make tables and stools, and the girls learn how to cook, so that they can have something better than hoe-cake and bacon. 65 Very few of these people know the value of money. They spend what they have carelessly ; and the credit system, which is a great curse, is largely responsible for a good deal of their difficulty, and of their failure to get along in the world. If we could eliminate that, their homes could have more comforts. There is no elevation possible for the colored people until their homes are made better. To my mind, that is the vital point. What shall we do about it? Do all that we can, see that all the persons who can be reached are reached by the best influences, — influences that will help to lead thera into a better condition and a nobler life. One of the raost useful things with us in our school is the Girls' Industrial Cottage. We have regular classes in household economy. We have also a little house; which we call the " Girls' Industrial Cottage," in which four at a time keep house. We give them a sum of money and an account book ; and they do the housekeeping. They buy their provisions, and do everything that ought to be done in a well-regulated house. Thus they get a knowledge of how to conduct a home. They become competent to make good wives and house keepers for the boys who want thera. That is the kind of girl that the better class of boys are going to demand, but the supply raust be equal to the demand. Gen. Eaton. — What is the influence of the uneducated ministers on the home life ? Prof. Woodworth. — The influence of a great many uneducated ministers is bad, wholly bad. Gen. Eaton. — Have you known them to justify vice in the family ? Prof. Woodworth. — I have known them to practise vice in the family. I suppose that would be justifying it. I would not dare to tell you some of the things that I know. I know of a number of instances where the churches have been split along that line, where the better element withdrew because they would not countenance such things in their minister. Dr. Strieby. — How well are they acquiring homes ? Prof. Woodworth. — I think that quite a number of them are doing so slowly, but surely. I think, if colored men and women would save their money and lead a respectable life, they would be able in a short time to acquire homes. I have heard that the colored people are attaining homes faster than the poor whites of the South; and I suppose that is true. Pres. Gates. — What means are there of keeping money? Prof. Woodworth. — Very few. If our government would estab lish the postal-savings system, it would be a blessing to the whole country, but especially to the Negroes. Dr. Mayo. — What is the credit system ? Prof. Woodworth. — It is this. These colored people work on farms, renting thera ; and they agree to give a certain part of their crops to the raan of whom they rent the land or who furnishes them with goods. They have no money whatever. He keeps an account with them, and that runs up until the tirae when the cotton is gathered. Then they have a grand settling up ; and it very often happens, in some inscrutable way, that the cotton will exactly bal ance the account. 66 Dr. Mayo.— Is not that the condidon of the white planters also ? Prof. Woodworth. — Yes : it bears equally on the poor whites. Dr. Mayo.— Is the same remarkable result found in the accounts with the whites as with the Negroes ? Prof. Woodworth. — Yes: I would not cast reflections on any class of citizens; and yet I heard Bishop Haygood say that one of the greatest curses of the colored people was the Jew store. A large part of the trade down there is in the hands of a class of Jews who have brought the name of Jew into discredit ; and they are very hard indeed upon the poor people. .\s an illustration, one of our pupils told me this story. A man came into the store to settle with the Jew. He asked the raan how raany bales of cotton he had. " Three bales," was the reply. The Jew figured it up, and told the man that three bales of cotton would just release the account. "Are you sure?" said the man. "Just three bales of cotton?" "Yes," was the reply. " Now, then, give rae a receipt," said the man ; and the Jew did so. " Now, I ara glad that three bales of cotton settled my account," said the man ; " for I have got another bale outside ! " Pres. Hayes. — That man is getting on ! Gen. Armstrong. — About three years ago I went down to the black belt of Alabama and elsewhere to inquire of the Southerners about the Negro, and I found that every one gave a similar account of them. During the past ten years have the Negroes been improv ing ? They thought they were going from bad to worse. Then I changed the question, and asked whether the Negroes' chickens and pigs had been increasing, and they were buying more land, getting homes. Yes, they said. Is the way of the transgressor harder than it was before ? They thought it was. Are law and order better estab lished than ten years ago ? Yes, they thought so. Well, then, are they getting better or worse ? They didn't know, but they thought, on the whole, they were perhaps improving ! The habit is to say .that things with the Negroes are going badly, but my opinion is that there is a steady improveraent. The then Governor of the State and the Superintendent of Education gave me the same opinion. I went to Cotton Valley, where a colored woman, cultivated and interesting, was a shining light in that region. There were about thirty Negroes there with whom I talked. Seven were free frora debt. The rest were in debt frora $ioo to $500. They saw no way out of it. It was the result of the credit system. Three-fourths of the colored people live in the country. Almost all rent land. They are gen erally under this terrible credit system that the Southern newspapers denounce. It is too true that there is a low class of traders, Jews and mean men from the North and the South, who are doing the most cruel things, as cruel as anything in the days of slavery. The grind of these rapacious men, who raake thirty-three per cent., is a terrible thing for the colored people, and as bad for the whites. The political trouble is bad enough, but that is worse. The law favors the creditor. He has a lien on the crop, and often owns it before it is gathered. When in Tuskegee, I was introduced to a Southern banker, who told me that he had the previous year loaned money to a hundred farmers there, white and colored, all of whom had paid him back. His advances were not in kind, but in cash. The ad- 67 vance in kind in store orders tempts the poor man to extravagance. When it is in cash, it appeals to him in a different way, and makes him economical. This gentleman was wise, considerate, and helpful, 4oing a profitable business. He did not give them the money all at once, but a few dollars every month, giving also good advice to those to whora he loaned the money. In the West India Islands, a few weeks before, I found the same credit or " truck " system, as it was called, working as mischievously there as here, and bitterly com plained of by enlightened people. Gen. Eaton. — I have heard it stated that in some parts of the South the idea of organization has taken very strong hold of the colored people. There are different organizations among them, sometimes secret, sometimes open. They receive so much money from fees from every member, and these are kept for various pur poses. Sometimes they provide for burials. These societies among women are a corrective of iramorality. Sorae of these societies are directed by Miss Drexel, and aided by her money. I want to ask whether any one can give information about these societies. I also want to ask, when a colored man has leased a certain portion of land, and cultivated it one season, or worked on wages for a single planter, how far he is at liberty to engage with another man another year. Prof. Woodworth. — They frequently do that ; and they fre quently find themselves thrust out another year, if the planter finds he can make better terms with another man. One of our students lost a place in this way. He had fixed up his home, so that it was almost a model home ; but, at the end of the year, he found he had got to give it up and go away, for some one had given more for it. There is a law in Mississippi, the gist of which is that, if a raan is under contract to any farraer, or in any way under contract for his services, he cannot leave the position for a year under the penalty of imprisonment, even though he should be offered higher wages. A good many have gone to Louisiana from Mississippi because the advantages are better there. Mr. Garrett. — Can General Armstrong suggest any recommenda tions with reference to this that could be formulated ? Gen. Armstrong. — I see nothing to be done so hopeful as through intelligent agriculture, — the instruction given in schools like Tuske gee and Tougaloo, Talladega, Claflin, and like institutions. Much can be done through the influence of the raen who go out from these schools. Mr. Booker T. Washington, among the foremost of his race, in my opinion, is ahead of us all in this matter. He has sent out from Tuskegee a circular to the farmers of Alabama in his neighbjorhood, giving them good advice about their crafts and ways of living. The graduates of these schools not only teach day-schools, but they take up the Sunday-school and temperance work. The old-time Negro preacher is apt to be against the progressive work of the South ; but these young men and women, the latter as much as the former, secure the confidence and respect of both races. I have been twenty-two years in this work, and no complaint has come to me except of these old-timers. The chief remedy for many of the evils of Negro life is in industrial education. Of the Southern 6i States, I believe that only Virginia and Mississippi have done the fair thing in the distribution of agricultural college land scrip to Negro schools. South Carolina, at Claflin University, and other_ States have also recognized the necessity of this kind of work. Agriculture is at the bottom of things. The great mass of Negroes must be farmers, and they need to be taught to farm intelligently. Grass is worth three tiraes as much as cotton, and grass rather than cotton is king. Where these people raise their own meats, the cash they get for cotton is not gobbled by traders ; and they will corae out all right. Pigs and cows can do more for these people than acts of Congress. Legislation is " mighty onsartain," and is no reliance. Salvation is through a practical Christian education. We raust turn our faces that way. The more self-help, the better. The farnners everywhere are the foundation of the national prosperity. I believe that our schools can do far raore in this direction, and that the Department of Agriculture at Washington could co-operate with us to great advantage. Fifteen or twenty thousand dollars a year expended by it (not a dollar of it for land, building, or salaries) in seed and cost of sample experimental crop, chiefly grass, and the results to be spread broadcast among the Negroes in little printed leaflets, by means of Negro teachers (themselves farmers in most cases), would make an impression on Southern farming. But such common-sense, economical measures are hardly to be hoped for. All this touches the home life of the people, and home is everything. Gen. Eaton. — There could perhaps be a deliverance against the credit system by this Conference. Mr. Edward L. Pierce. — I want to ask whether or not, aside from the contract system, the relations of employers and Negroes are, on the whole, reasonably fair. I do not ask whether they are perfect, but whether they are reasonably fair. Is the Negro getting a fair share of the cotton crop? Will some one indicate what share he does get ? Pres. Woodworth. — On the whole, I should say that the thing is reasonably fair, where they are out of the grip of the credit system. If the Negro could get on a cash basis, he would get along all right. The way to get rid of the credit system is to go on a cash basis. " The way to resume is to resume." In regard to the other question, it varies in different places. Sometimes he gets one-third, sometimes one-half, on shares. As General Armstrong has said, the law is on the side of the creditor, so much so that only a little while ago a convention of white renters was held, to inquire whether they had not better move to some place out of Mississippi where the land laws bear less heavily. They bear as hard on the white renters as they do on the colored. Mississippi does give about ten thou sand dollars to the Alcorn College as part of the Agricultural Fund. Gen. Eaton. — Have you any instruction in nursing, in connection with your schools, or in any other in Mississippi ? Pres. Woodworth. — I can only say in answer to that question that I am hundng for a person to fill the posidon of teacher of nursing. Dr. Strieby. — In our school at Memphis we have that taught. Dr. Ellinwood. — I would like to ask whether there has been any 69 effort to have an association formed, representing the different schools. I ha^je been struck, in listening to these details, with the fact that, wherever there is a school, there is an oasis ; but, beyond the limited range of its influence, you corae into darkness again. This is an age of association of all sorts, — Daughters of the King, Chrisdan Endeavor Societies, political societies, labor unions, etc. As we hear of these schools, we are delighted with the results that they are accomplishing. Would it be possible for these different schools to have an association which should represent them all, which should project light into the darkness around them ? Again, could there not be some simple plan formulated which should give suggestions with reference to this credit system and interpose some barrier against the ubiquitous Jew? Dr. Strieby. — I hope Dr. Ellinwood will formulate this himself. Rev. A. W. Pitzer, D.D., Washington, D.C. — I gratefully acknowl edge the kindness of this Conference in the invitation extended to me to be present and take part in its deliberations. My voice has been heard ever since I grew to manhood in behalf of the Negro. I have spoken for him in the General Assembly South, on the floor of the Synod of Virginia, in the presbytery to which I belong, and on the platform of the churches in Washington, and through the press. I claim therefore for myself, and for myself as a representative of the South, the same earnest desire to do what is best for the Negro as a citizen, and as a man, and as a Christian, that is in the heart of my Brother Gates or of our honored President. It is well for the South and the North to come together in mutual confidence and with respect one for the other. I hail it as an auspicious omen that at this first Conference we have representatives from the North and frora the South, and that we come together with perfect confidence in each other's sincerity and in our desire to do what is best for the Negro. I thought yesterday, as I heard some of the speeches, How easy it is to be raistaken ! There were speakers here who said the Negro had but one name in the South. One gentleman said that we never christened the Negro, — baptized, I think, is a better word. In Salem, Va., there is an old family Bible with my father's name and his wife's narae in it ; and side by side with those names is the name of Abraham Watkins, and of Harriet, his wife, both of them Negroes and slaves, and the record of the baptism of their children, Elijah and Martha. These children had been baptized by our pastor and in our horae. When Mrs. Harriet Watkins presented a new daughter. Dr. Lacy, our pastor, said, when he came to baptize her, "What is the name of your daughter?" She replied, "The Virgin Mary." Of course Dr. Lacy looked much surprised. "You mean Mary, don't you ? " he asked. " No," she said, " the Virgin Mary." And so she was bapdzed; and it is entered on the old family Bible, " The Virgin Mary." What was true of the servants in ray father's family was true in scores and hundreds of other Southern households. Not only did they have two names, not only were they baptized, but hundreds and thousands of them were brought to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must remember the immense size of the Southern field, stretch ing from Maryland to Mexico. What may be true of the Negro in 70 one portion of this vast domain may not hold true of every other portion, what may be true in one coraraunity may ^ot be true of every community ; and, therefore, all general affirmations should be made with the utmost care and consideration. Habits, customs, manners, usages, are different in different localities. All the people of the South are not good people, just ready and waiting for trans lation. The kingdom has not come, nor has the New Jerusalem yet descended either on the James or the Mississippi River. There are both good and bad people in the South, and good and bad people in the North ; and the good people, the Christian people, of the two sections, must co-operate in the Christ-like work of help ing the poor and the needy. I have no doubt of the unity of the human race, that we are all one in Adam, and that God has made of one blood all the nations of raen, and hath deterrained the times and bounds of their habitation. And yet how marked, how mysterious, how iraraense, are the differ ences of the various races of the human family ! How great the gulf between the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro, or the Norman and the Indian, or the Roman and the Chinese ! Some races have raade his tory, and have become historic. Other races have no recorded his tory, and have never been factors in history. I asked two of the most accomplished members of this Conference this question : Has the Negro race at any period of time or in any country of the globe been a factor in the history-making of the world ? If so, when and where? He has no history, and- has never been a history-maker. I believe there is such a thing as entailed sin, passing down from father to son by the law of heredity ; and we are considering to-day the condition of a people on whom have come down the inherited and accumulated sins of many past generations. The Negro of to-day is the product of his sad and dismal past. The wild, naked, man eating savages of equatorial Africa are of the sarae blood and race as the Negro of this republic. We must deal with him as he is. We cannot shut our eyes to facts. They may be hard and painful things, but they are also stubborn and immovable things. It is not fair to judge him with the same standard of meas ure that we apply to the Anglo-Saxon. Here, then, is our brother, — a "brother in black," it is true, but still a brother. What can we do for him ? We must remember the darkness out of which he comes, the fact that he does not belong to our historic race, and that he is the victim of the entailed sins of many generadons of vicious, wicked, and debased ancestors. We raust have both patience and pity; and time raust be one of the factors in his elevation. His greatest need is that undefinable thing we call "character" ; and General Arrastrong was clearly right when he said, " We' must help the negro to build up character." And all character-building must be a work of time. I have no theories on the Negro problem but try each day to do all the good I can, in all the ways I can to all the Negroes I can. And yet I raake bold to assert that the seven millions of Negroes in the United States are better off to-day, in all respects, than any other equal number of Negroes have ever been at any dme, in any pordon of the earth,— better fed, better clothed, better housed, better taught 71 better educated, better treated by their fellow-men. If this assertion is denied, then point us to the better time and the better place. I did not like slavery any more than General Howard did, and I would not have it again ; and yet but for the fact that these people were compelled to labor for two hundred years they would not be as far advanced as they are to-day. Enforced labor has placed the American Negro far higher in the scale of civilization than his African brother. If called upon to point out on the missionary map of the world the most promising and fruitful field for Christian labor, I should point to the Negro of the South. You will search missionary annals in vain to find nearly two millions of people saved from heathenism, and gathered into Christian churches, as is the case among the Negroes of this land. They have their churches, their ministers, their conferences, their schools, their worship, their literature. They are raaking Christian history ; and ere long, in the providence of God, they may have a raost wonderful history in opening regions of the Dark Continent. I think I ought to say that it was under the influence of Christian men and women before the days of freedom, it was under the influence of homes where there was a Christian master or mistress, under the influence of the Christian Church where there were Christian white men to preach to white and black, that these converts were gathered. There are fourteen thousand colored Presbyterian communicants in the Assembly of which my honored friend, Dr. Allen, is secretary ; and the ancestors of these Christians were all brought to the knowledge of Christ through the labors of the Southern slave-owners years ago. The providence of God made us co-operate in the blessed work of elevating and Christianizing this people. I gratefully recognize that Northern Christians have sent to the South in these last twenty-five years something over $25,000,000. That is a great thing to have done, and that money has done a vast amount of good. If it had done nothing else than save one soul, I believe it would have been well spent. You have given a good deal, but there is a great deal left still to give. I want to say a word about Howard University. The way I got there was this. They did not have any money to pay for teaching ; and one of my good brothers carae and said, " Can't you give us a year's work ? " I thought it was my duty to go for a year. There were thirty or forty young men preparing for the ministry. After I stayed a year, the work opened and broadened ; and the pressure of duty was so strong that I said, " I will have to stay another year." And so I have continued in the work for fifteen years. You may not know that we have in Howard University seven de partments. We are a full-fledged university. In the last ten years we have had one hundred and sixty men in the theological department, and these have come frora orthodox or evangelical churches. We have a strong sort of a faculty : there are three Congregationalists, one Northern Presbyterian, a Southern Presbyterian, a Lutheran, with a side attachment of Episcopacy. We have never had a tangle in the faculty. Every man teaches what he believes the word of God teaches as the rule of faith and pracdce. 72 Of the one hundred and sixty young men who have studied there, eighty have certificates of completing the three years' course, and have gone out to all parts of the land, and one to Africa. We know where nearly all these students are and what they are doing ; and we believe that a smaller percentage has fallen out from the ranks of the min istry than in any white institution of which we have knowledge. I have been in their churches, and I believe that they are doing what good they can, as God opens the door for them. I care very litde for an education for colored people or white people that does not put Jesus Christ into it. Sorae people think education is a panacea for all ills, but education apart from morality and redemption taught in the Bible is not going to do the work that its friends think it will. I wish to express my very great pleasure at being at this Confer ence, and at what I have heard, especially the unprejudiced and able statements made by General Armstrong and Dr. Mayo. These gendemen have carefully gathered the facts and faithfully studied the subject ; and their views will commend themselves to all candid and impardal men, both North and South. And the day is not far distant when all good men and women can cordially unite in this good work on the lines so clearly indicated. I close with the statement that I shall cheerfully co-operate in all wise methods to elevate the Negro, as man, as citizen, and as child of God. The following address was made by Hon. John Jay : — NATIONAL AID TO STATE EDUCATION. by HON. JOHN JAY, OF NEW YORK. The breadth of the subject before us has been shown in the most interesting way during these debates. Last evening, it was delightful to listen to the description of the manly and American qualities ex hibited by the Negro, which afford so much hope for his advance in the future. This morning, the graceful and womanly account we have received of the devotion and successful labors of the women who, after the war, went into the black belt, into the centre of Africa, and ministered to the colored people, has been beautiful and encouraging. We have now to consider the facts and statistics in regard to the extent of illiteracy at the South, especially among the blacks ; for these show the work that confronts us, and indicate the course we must pursue to accomplish speedily their education and training. As we approach this chief branch of the subject, I regret the more the absence of Dr. Curry, whose practical experience and opportuni ties of observation in connection with the Peabody Fund give the greatest weight to his statements and counsel. I fortunately have a copy of his recent " Appeal to Southern Representatives in Congress and to the Friends of Free Schools in the Nation," to which I beg leave to ask your attention. Dr. Curry says, quoting the Census of 1880: — 73 "Of the school population of the South, nearly half are not in school. Over six and a quarter raillions of our entire population could not write their naraes. Two millions of legal voters, of whom goo,ooo were white and 1,100,000 were colored, could not write. . . The illiterate voters in the South were 1,363,884, or over one-third: 69.8 per cent, of illiterate voters were Negroes, and 30.2 per cent. whites. In North Carolina, South CaroHna, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, more than half the voters cannot read their ballots." Dr. Curry commends the Southern States for their educational efforts, observing that there is no discrimination in any of the States against Negroes. He quotes on this point Dr. Owen, of Nashville, and General Armstrong, the able principal of the Hampton School, who had remarked that, "of every $100 paid in Southern taxation, $91.50 are paid by white people"; and this fact has been supple mented by the late lamented Grady, who had said of Georgia that "the whites are assessed for $368,000,000 and the blacks for $10,- 000,000; and yet 49 per cent, of the beneficiaries are black chil dren." And Mr. Grady had added that the Negroes in the South, paying one-thirtieth of the taxes, got nearly one-half of the fund spent in education. This disproportion between the taxes paid by the colored people and the share of the taxes appropriated to their education was dwelt upon in the Senate ; and, in one of the last debates on the bill for "national aid to State education," Senator Barbour, of Virginia, addressed some remarks to the Senators frora the North which are well worthy the attention of the country. They are specially deserv ing of consideration by those who have been deluded by the shallow and sophistical arguments in defiance of reason and of history, but put forth with a pretence of high philosophy, that the true plan to secure the education of the Negro race was not by giving national aid to the comraon-school system of the South, to build up, as in the North, normal schools, school-houses, and school appliances and district libraries, awakening educational pride and spirit, and induc ing the most generous rivalry in State appropriations, but that the true plan to remove illiteracy from the Southern States would be to let them alone, to withhold all national aid, and tell them with an air of philosophic contempt for government appropriations to depend upon "self-help." Senator Barbour, after showing that both the political parties in Virginia were united in demanding the Blair bill, and exposing thfe pretence that the capacity for usefulness of the school system of the Southern States would be injured by benefac tions, and pointing to what the South was doing for the Negro, said : — " I want gendemen on the other side of this Chamber to take notice that there is a feeling getting abroad with our people that, if the National Government does not take any interest in the education and improvement of the illiterate colored children, there is no good reason why our white people should tax themselves to the extent they are doing to educate in their midst, in their own communities, a class of people who do not act with them, who are not homogeneous with the body of the Southern people, and who are more apt in the elec- 74 j tions to side against them and vote with the man from Wisconsin than the man from Virginia. . . . " We are aware that this class of people are not able to make any contribution to the tax fund of their respective States. ... Is it not expecting too much of us, is it not expecting more than the average humanity will bear, that we shall go on and tax ourselves to support unaided this colored class, this uneducated class, this, as it were, alien class to us, at our expense, and that you men of the North and West should not regard it as your duty to assist ? . . . " If you will not contribute, on part of the Federal Government, to this important subject, and the Federal Government does not care to assist in that matter, it will go .far to alienate the interest which our people feel in the improveraent of the illiterate colored race." . . . Now, what Senator Barbour raeant by the remarks which he made so gently to Northern Senators was simply this. If you of the North, after all that you have done to impose this burden of illiteracy upon the South, and after all your promises to assist us in removing it, choose to abandon the Negroes to their fate, we shall abandon them also, and let them get their education from their proportion of the taxes paid by them ; and here would be their abandonment to illiter acy, as the outcome in their case of the self-help doctrine. Dr. Curry says, and Senator Barbour's warning gives to his appeal new force, that illiteracy is to be recognized, "not as local or sectional, but as a national question of paramount importance, imperilling our repre sentative institutions. The North may be geographically and practi cally severed from contact with the Negroes ; but she cannot hope to be exempt from the industrial, social, moral, and political conse quences of their illiteracy. The North emancipated, citizenized, and enfranchised the Negroes ; and frora these three distinct, substantive facts, by no raeans logical, legal, or civil consequents of one another, there is a resulting obligation that cannot be honestly ignored or evaded to qualify them for citizenship or suffrage." Then Dr. Curry said of the South what the most distinguished educational experts have repeated again and again, that " the school demand caimot possibly be met by her resources " / and it is an alarming fact that the States having the smallest resources have the " heaviest school burdens " (p. 4). Dr. Curry says again, " The only remedy for this deplorable condition of things is national aid " (p. 6). He also reminds us that among the Southern Senators recorded or paired in favor of federal aid were Senators Brown, Call, Cfclquitt, Garland, George, Hampton, Jackson, Jonas, Jones, of Florida ; Kenna, Pugh, Ransom, Riddleberger, Gibson, Lamar, Vance, Berry, Blackburn Eustis, Jones, of Alabama; Mahone, Walthall, Daniel and Pasco. And among the historic facts cited by him in favor of national aid as the ancient, beneficial, and established policy of the government were some in regard to which the American people have been syste matically deluded and deceived, by ingenious attempts to prove that a bill for national aid would be a bill to promote mendicancy. He showed that " Aid righdy bestowed, instead of proraodng mendicancy, will develop self-exertion, self-reliance, self-raaintenance of popular e'duca- 75 tion, and prevent any relaxation of efforts in behalf of the indepen dent maintenance of school systems. From the ordinance of 1787, prior to the adoption of the Constitution, through every administra tion, by every party, by every statesman, down to the present period, national encouragement of education in sorae form has been approved and sustained. Up to 1880, the Southern States had received for school purposes 5,520,504 acres of public land; for universities, 322,560 acres ; and for agricultural and mechanical colleges, 3,270,000 acres. During the same period, the Northern States and Territories received for schools 62,273,415 acres ; for universities, 842,960 acres; and for agricultural and mechanical colleges, 6,330,000 acres. The enabling act of 22d of February, 1889, enlarged these land grants by gifts to the Dakotas, Montana, and Washington." In the face of these historic facts, showing national aid to State education to be the settled policy of the government, it was said of the bill introduced and so ably sustained by Senator Blair, that it was the bill of a crank ; that nobody else had any special interest in it ; that it had no authority in the Constitution ; that it had no historic precedent ; that it would be a novelty in American legislation ; that, if any Southern State were to accept the aid from the government, it would do it at the cost of its manhood ; that the understanding on the part of all philosophic men would be that a State accepting aid would accept the position of a beggar and mendicant, leaning on the support of the national govprnment ; and, when that aid should be withdrawn, the public schools would sink, for all State educational strength would have been emasculated and would soon die away. These opponents of the bill ignored the historic fact that from the year 1887 the amount of land given to the States for the public schools embraced an area larger than the area of Great Britain anS Ireland, that the result of those grants has been of the most mag nificent character in developing the schools of the Northern States, and that of the total grants eleven-twelfths have gone to the Northern States and only one-twelfth to the South. The concealment of those facts was certainly not a fair thing. The Southern States were told openly that they would be degrading their Statehood if they accepted that money ; while others said, more truly, that the aid offered by the Blair bill would be only a long-deferred instalment of a just debt. There are two special incidents connected with the Southern position which seem to establish an exceptional claim in their favor to na tional aid. One is the fact mendoned by Dr. Curry, that they have received only one-twelfth of the land grants already made ; and the other is the part which the nation has borne in regard to Southern illiteracy. During the continuance of the slave system, illiteracy, rightly or wrongly, was regarded as tending to the safety of the people. It was regarded as dangerous to educate them. Then came the war • and the nadon, at its close, emancipates the slaves, en franchise's them, and places them in a position of dignity, cidzenship, responsibility, and power, where their education has become a matter of absolute importance to the safety of the Southern States and to the nation at large. I do not think that these plain facts have been understood by our people, who have been misinformed ; and I think the true plan, the only plan now open, for setding this aright, is to 76 advise the American people of the situation, and their comraon sense will demand for the Negroes fair play and equal justice. In reference to the argument used so largely by the opponents of the Blair bill, of the demoralizing influence of national aid on the educational feeling of the States, Dr. Blackmar, late of Johns Hop kins and now of the University of Kansas, in a recent volume of great interest on "National and State Aid to Higher Education," shows that, apart frora the immediate practical result of national aid to State education, its chief excellence consists in the stimulation which it gives to State and local enterprise. Such was the happy result of the division of the surplus in 1838, although that was a financial rather than an educational raeasure. The money was divided among the States, New York receiving the largest share, some four millions ; and in New York, as in some seventeen or eighteen other States, it was appropriated for educational purposes. Through Governor Marcey, of New York, this money was divided araong the coramon schools, academies, and district libraries, and a part of the principal remains to the present day ; and, while a large' amount of good was directly done by the money, the greatest advan tage was in encouraging State educational pride and stimulating State educational aid. Dr. Curry, at the conclusion of his Appeal, reminds us that the common school is the basis and defence of free governraent, and warns us of the danger of allowing its place to be taken by parochial schools, and reminds us that the South, if true to free schools, can save representative government and our civil and religious liberties ; and he closes with repeating that in national aid is our only hope, and recalls the fact that in 1888 thirty-nine Sena tors sustained the raeasure. This is the important question now before this Conference, which, with its able representatives frora every section, should certainly make its mark upon the country. The deliberations of this Con ference ought to influence the opinion of the nation, and so, as we trust, secure the action of Congress. I beg leave to submit for your consideration and for reference to the committee the following pre amble and resolutions : — Whereas popular intelligence is recognized by the nation as an essential basis of popular government and a matter of national concern, to be promoted by national grant to State public schools ; And whereas the extent of illiteracy prevailing at the South is such that, of the school population, nearly one-half are not in school, and that, while in the' North western States each child receives on an average for his yearly education about $15, in the Southern States the per capita expenditure is about $3.86 • and the country is assured by experts, and notably by the Hon. J. L. M. Curry, the experi enced head of the Peabody Fund, in his recent Appeal, that in the South "the school demand cannot possibly be met by her resources," and, again, that " for the present, and for a few years to come, national aid is our only hope " • And whereas the equitable claim of the Southern States to national aid in this emergency seems to be enhanced by the two historic facts : (i) That in the distribution of national grants of land for public school which exceed in extent the land area of Great Britain and Ireland, the Northern' States had received from 1787 to 1880 62,273,415 acres, and the Southern States c 1:20- 504, — less than one-twelfth of the whole ; and ^'•' ' (2) That, while the illiteracy of the colored race in the South during the con tinuance of slavery was regarded by the Southern States as conducive to the public safet);, the emancipation and enfranchisement of the slave by the nation converted their illiteracy into a danger both for the State and the nation, and imposed uoon the honor of the nation the duty of aiding in its removal,— therefore. 77 Resolved, That we respectfully ask the President and Congress of the United States to take into immediate and earneSt consideration the subject of the existing illiteracy; to inaugurate and carry out such measures of relief as their constitu tional powers shall admit and as their wisdom shall suggest, to aid the States con senting to accept such aid in thoroughly removing the present evil, and in placing the public school system on a permanent basis, that will for the future secure to all children, native or of foreign birth, an elementary education fitted for their rights and duties as American citizens. Resolved, That the foregoing preamble and resolution be submitted by the com mittee of this Conference to the Senate and members of the House, to the Hon. William M. Evarts and the Hon. Thomas B. Reed, for presentation to those bodies, and that a printed copy of the same, attested by the officers of the Confer ence, be sent to each Senator and Representative. Resolved, That the Conference recommend the forwarding of memorials to Congress on the subject from all parts of the republic, that Congress may be advised of the concern with which the country views the continuance of the exist ing illiteracy and of its judgment that so vast a scandal and danger should be at once abated, and never permitted to recur. An address followed by Dr. W. T. Harris, Commissioner of Educa tion, Washington, D.C. NORMAL SCHOOL TRAINING FOR THE NEGROES. BY W. T. HARRIS, LL.D. The Statistics of the seventeen States in which slavery existed pre vious to the Civil War show an attendance of 1,140,405 colored chil dren in the public schools, and of 17,683 persons (colored) in private and endowed institutions, chiefly for secondary and higher education. Of these there were 5,439 in normal schools and 5,066 in colleges. Considering the small number of private and endowed schools, we see how important it is to concentrate the funds of charity on the single purpose of educating teachers in normal schools (and of relig ious teachers in colleges and seminaries). The normal training of these teachers ought to be exceptionally thorough, because it ought to fit them to lift up a people by a three fold means, — intellectual, religious, and industrial. Glancing at the statistics again, we see that for 1888 there were returned for these seventeen States 2,264,344 colored persons and 5,561,056 white persons of school age, say from six to twenty years of age. Of these the colored schools enrolled only 55.8 per cent., while the white school enrolled 62.5 per cent, of this "school population." In the State of Mississippi, of which we have heard much spoken at this Conference, out of a school population of 269,099 colored persons between the ages of five and twenty-one years, there were 143,825 in school for a longer or shorter period in the course of the year. We should not expect to find the entire population of school age in school. It is sufficient if twenty per cent, of the population attends school. But, in the seventeen States that we are considering, the enrolment is about fourteen per cent., or two-thirds what it should be. However, an attendance of even fourteen per cent, is of vast significance. 78 Something of the quality of these schools may be inferred from the salaries paid to their teachers. Alabama reports a monthly salary to colored teachers of $23.76 and of $24.26 to white teachers. Kentucky reports an average of $31.15 per month to colored teachers and only $28.41 to white teachers. North Carolina paid $21.84 to colored and $26.21 to white teachers. But Louisiana reports an average of $54.80 to colored and $65.60 to white teachers. The average length of session of colored schools is as low as sixty days in some States and as high as one hundred and eighty-five days in sorae other States. The Peabody Fund expends over $60,000 per year in stimulating the schools to higher excellence or to the profes sional training of teachers. The Slater Fund expended for the stimu lation of industrial education is about one-half as much. Education, intellectual and moral, is the only means yet discovered that is always sure to help people to help themselves : all other aid may demoralize. It raay develop a habit of dependence in the beneficiaries. But intellectual and moral education develops self- respect, self-sacrifice, fertility of resources, of knowledge of human nature, and aspiration for a better condition in life. Education produces that divine discontent with one's lot which goads on the individual, and will not let him rest. In these Conferences we have heard the praise of industrial educa tion sounded. It is right that we should make our education all-sided when we have to deal with the elevation of a lower race. There must be intellectual and religious education, and also education in industry and economics. When we hear the methods of industrial education described, we see that it is not so much industrial as economical education that is meant. The Negro, living for two hundred years in a condition of servi tude, has learned much about industry, but only a little about the accumulation of property. All civilized races have learned the Roman idea of private property. By its aid, the individual develops a degree of personal independence not otherwise attainable. He can govern hiraself and detach hiraself frora his fellow-men so much that he can enjoy the right of private judgment and think for himself. Such right of private opinion is not possible in a communistic nor in a patriarchal community. The right of the individual to his own opinion, different from that of the rest of his fellow-men, is not rec ognized where private property in land has not become established. In the condition of slavery there is not any absolute ownership, not even of one's person. The slave shares in his master's prop erty so far as his food and clothing are concerned. Not having sepa rate ownership, he does not develop a delicate sense of the rights of property, and in this respect is least prepared for the condition of freedom. Right here, therefore, the education of the colored child needs to lay its emphasis. The lesson of thrift, the lesson of hon esty, of independence, should be taught him. He should learn skilled industries; but still more should he learn to save his earn ings, and invest in what are called paying investments, such as land, houses, machinery, and stock. This is the best lesson for him on the side of practical life. 79 The two hundred years of domestic servitude brought the Negro very close to the white man, his master. So close a relation as that between master and slave is a powerful education to a lower race. It has sufficed to convert an African race, with a savage language and a religion of fetichism, to a race thinking and ^peaking in Eng lish, and Christian in its religion. The African disposition has be come Anglo-Saxon; and the Negro in this nation feels and thinks on all subjects more like a white native than does a newly arrived immi grant from France or Italy, or even Germany. But, with the abolition of slavery and the independence that comes of free suffrage and free ownership of property, there is also coming to be a segregation of the colored frora the white people. The con sequence of this is a severance of that great educative influence formerly so powerful, — the personal influence of the white raan upon his domestic servants. There is no longer that community of prop erty and consequent community of interest ; and hence there is going on an emancipation in feelings and modes of thinking. Now, this segregation of the Negro from the white man in his life will result in a reversion to the former lower stage of spiritual life, unless some other influence is invoked to take the place of the mas ter. This influence now needed is education, and especially intel lectual education. Without education, the lowest forms of supersti tion will prevail ; and Voudooism, or other forms of fetichism; will so far destroy the rationality that we find in the Negro raind that it will be impossible to live with him on equal terms of suffrage. We can not have a free government if we give the right of suffrage to people who are superstitious to the extent of fetichism. But right here we are met by the question, Does not the education in the "three R's" increase crime rather than diminish it? Does not learning how to read and write cause the lower strata of society to break away from morality and peaceable obedience to established law ? In fact, what is the meaning of these statistics which have been paraded before us recently, showing that with increasing educa tion there are increasing convictions for crime ? I reply that the study of criminal statistics proves that education — even a rudimen tary education in reading and writing — is preventive of crime. We have lately investigated at the Bureau of Education the statis tics of the penitentiaries of all the States that report the condition of their prisoners in regard to education. Comparing the number of illiterate prisoners with the number of illiterate in the population, we discover this interesting fact : the illiterate stratum of the popula tion furnishes nearly four times its quota of prisoners. Again, on investigating the much more numerous body of law-breakers confined in our houses of correction, we see that illiteracy marks its effects by sending eight times its quota to the jails. Take as an example the Detroit House of Correction, which recently summed up for us the statistics of its first twenty-five years of operation. There had been in the twenty-five years 4°,33^ com mitments. Of these, 70 per cent, could both read and write, and 30 per cent, were illiterate. At first glance, taking these numerators with out their denominators, it looks bad for the schools. Seventy per cent. of the prisoners have had some education in the schools. But when 8o we inquire further, and ascertain the denominators to these fractions, we learn that in Michigan there are less than 5 per cent, of the pop ulation over ten years of age who cannot read and write. This 5 per cent of illiterates furnished 30 per cent, of the criminals, while the 95 per cent, who could both read and write furnished 70 per cent. Measured by the standard of the 95 per cent, that could write, the illiterate 5 per cent, furnished eight times its quota. This Detroit report gives us also the information that, of the 40,338 committed, 38,089 had received some religious instruction, while 2,249, Ol" only 5 per cent., had not received any. This appears to be a worse case for religion when we first look at it than for edu cation. But a census of the people of Michigan would not discover over one-half of i per cent, who could be said to be entirely lack ing in religious educadon. That small half per cent, furnishes ten tiraes its quota of criminals. If there is any influence to be counted as against crime, it certainly is that of religion, with its doctrine of unselfish devotion to the good of others. Statistics show us, there fore, that, with the increase of jails and prisons, it is the illiterate who are from four to eight times as apt to become criminals as those who can read and write. But a further examination of the alleged increase of criminals in jails and prisons reveals to us the fact that it is not so much an in crease of crime as an increase of zeal on the part of law-abiding citi zens to repress the sources of crime, and especially intemperance. In Massachusetts, for example, there were in 1850 3,351 arrests for drunkenness, while in 1885 the number had increased to 18,701. But the crimes against person and property had been and are now stead ily decreasing, having fallen 44 per cent, in the twenty-five years from i860 to 1885. Such statistics prove, therefore, that real crime against the safety of person and property has decreased per capita, and that the in creasing refinement of the people has moved them to add to the list of crime those vices that were formerly tolerated in a good-natured manner, as evidence's of a kindly disposition or, at worst, of pardon able weakness. In the good school there goes on a twofold education, which no one can fail to see will make a better citizen. The school requires good behavior, and this includes self-restraint, politeness, and courtesy, regularity and punctuality, obedience to law and order. The intellectual training in reading, writing, and arithmetic, geog raphy, grammar, and history, fits the pupil for an age in which not kings and emperors, but Public Opinion is the supreme governing power. Public opinion had no organ adequate to its needs until the invention of the daily newspaper. To depend on oral communica tion is to depend on neighborhood gossip, full of personalities, scan dals, and prejudices. To use the printed page implies an ascent out of village gossip to world gossip, wherein we become interested in nations and national affairs instead of mere trivial personal affairs. The greatest education that is going on to-day — the education that is, in fact, making all people sympathize with each other and each nation heed the verdict of public opinion throughout the world is this education that goes on by the use of the daily newspaper. Each person at his breakfast-table or on his car-ride to the shop takes his survey of the entire world, and adjusts his mind to this oudook upon the world. Public opinion means something, when each person can read' in his morning newspaper what he knows everybody else is read ing at the same time, and when he knows how other people think and feel about it. With the printed page in the form of the newspaper, the magazine, and the book, there becomes possible a republican form of govern ment of a vast extent. In fact, there looms up before us a possible confederacy of all nations, to settle international quesdons. Each section of the country by reading keeps abreast of all the rest. Each section acts and reacts on the rest, and a unity of thought and senti ment is sure to result. But an illiterate community is impervious to this public opinion. It slowly retrogrades towards bigotry, intoler ance, and superstition. Such an element is a constant menace to a free government, and cannot be suffered to exist and hold its share in the making of laws for all. To those who are afraid of State socialism, and who think that the nation should not aid the States in their efforts to conquer the illit eracy within their borders, it is well to say that local self-government is something as different frora anarchy as it is frora socialisra. While sociaHsm would have a centralized government that does everything for its people and leaves utterly no inidative for the individual, and, on the other hand, anarchy proposes to leave everything to the indi vidual and to allow no sphere of action to the social whole, local self- government commits neither of these follies, but sustains a central power as well as a system of local powers. When you demand of it. What is it right for the nation to do ? and ask further. Is not a post- office department or a school system a step towards national social ism ? the reply is easy. Local self-government demands simply that each interested party shall be represented in the directive control of its affairs. If those affairs concern only the individual, his shall be the supreme control over them. If they concern both the individual and his neighbor, and no one else, then the two shall form a joint control. The dis trict, the township, the county, the State, each of these shall manage exclusively the affairs that are precisely coextensive with its interests. But that which transcends all these and interests all States shall be controlled by the nation, — not that the nation shall take sole and ex clusive charge of it, but that it shall see to its performance. Now, in a free government which depends upon all its citizens in all the States for its perfection, there is no question that education is a na tional interest. If there is a citizen of New York or Massachusetts, of California or Minnesota, that supposes it to be of no consequence to him whether the voters of Mississippi are illiterate and superstitious or whether they are well educated, he will perhaps decline to favor national aid to education. But I cannot do otherwise than support the resolutions just now offered by Mr. Jay in behalf of national aid to education, seeing as I do the dangers that threaten us frora illiter ate white people, and especially frora illiterate black people. 82 Dr. Lyman Abbott. — On many accounts I should have verymuch preferred to contribute to this Conference that silence which is golden rather than that speech which in my case, I fear, will not be silver, but a kind of greenback with some little promise, but no bullion behind it. So far as I can see, those that discuss the Southern problera may be divided into two classes, — those who know the facts and therefore have no theories, and those who have theories because they do not know the facts. I belong in the latter category. All I can do is to talk in a general way respecdng what seem to me to be some funda mental theories,— principles applicable to the problem before us. There is another reason — I think I will state it frankly — why I would rather have kept silence. There is an understanding that cer tain branches of the subject are to be passed in silence, probably a wise understanding. But I have been so long accustomed to writ ing for a paper which knows no limit to absolute free discussion, and to speaking in a Christian pulpit which I count the broadest platform under God's blue sky, that I do not know how to speak with any sense of limitation. If I should mix my politics and my religion, — they are always mixed, and I don't know any chemical process that will separate them, — I hope you will excuse it. I look on politics as a part of religion. Last night, when I went to bed, I wondered if there really was any Negro problem. I was buoyed up with optimisra, the inspiring op timism of the day. We; learned then that there were no laundry women like the Negro women of the South, that there were no black smiths like the Negro blacksmiths, that no carpenters could build such houses as the colored carpenters, that there were no such men to shoe horses, that the Negro race had made more progress in the last twenty-five years than any people since Adam. In fact, I began to think that the Negro was the one who marched at the head of the procession, and that the Anglo-Saxon race brought up the rear. I remember hearing a lecture from Wendell Phillips on Toussaint L'Ouverture, which he closed with a magnificent rhetorical peroration, in which he depicted history writing above the names of Napoleon Bonaparte and George Washington the narae of Toussaint L'Ouverture in letters of burning light. I went horae and slept that night. The next raorning the vision of the night had faded out; and the name of Wash ington, in the soberer light of day, appeared above the rest. So this morning I concluded that I was not altogether sorry that I belonged to the Anglo-Saxon race. I have been accustomed to think that the Negro is a tropical man, with the vices of a tropical nature wrought into his blood and fibre ; that he has excessive veneration, and not ex cessive conscience ; that he has excessive ideality and emotion, and is deficient in judgment ; that he has excessive approbativeness, and is deficient in acquisitiveness ; that he has excessive imitation, and lack of originality, — in short, with many excellent qualides, he has also many grave faults and serious defects. I have been accustomed to think that, whether it outnumbered the other races or not, the Anglo- Saxon race ruled the continent, and would continue to rule it, not by force of arms, not by fraud and violence, but by force of ideas and of manhood. And I still think so. But holding that opinion, and frankly confessing it, and acknowledging something that may be 83 regarded as akin to the prejudice that belongs to all races, even to the Anglo-Saxon race sometimes, there are three things, really one thing, which I am glad to say. First, the Negro is here to stay. Our problem is not how we can put hira into a black belt by himself, nor how we can send him off to a Western Reservation, or to Mexico, or to Central America, or .ship him back to Africa, but how shall the black man and the white raan, the African and the Anglo-Saxon, live together in the coramonwealth and under a common civilization. Next, those who live together in a commonwealth and under a com mon civilization and government should live on terms of industrial and political equality. Negroes are to remain here, and they are to have all avocations and all doors that are open to other men open to them. We cannot afford to have society in this country split up into separate factions and castes, because a republican and democratic organization cannot survive such a disorganizing process. We cannot afford to divide along lines of religion or along lines of race or along lines of industry. And this truth, it would appear from the testimony we have heard here, needs to be taught in the North no less, in deed rather more, than in the South. The beam in our own eye must be taken out before we scrutinize the mote in the eye of our Southern brethren. So long as Negroes are treated as they are in Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia, we cannot wonder if they are similarly treated in Southern States and communities. Judge Tourgee told us that the Negro is not welcome in Northern churches. I wonder whether he spoke from knowledge or from im pression. If on knowledge, I am very happy to say that I am the pastor of an exceptional church in that respect. There is not a Sunday that I do not see black faces in my congregation, and I am as likely to see them in three-hundred-dollar pews as in fifty-dollar pews. There is no place in which I have not seen them there, except in the free pews, in what is called irreverently by the boys the "peanut gallery." These prejudices are passing away from the higher circles of American society. Wellesley College and Vassar receive on equal terms, in all social and collegiate ways, the colored girls who come there. The students of Harvard College have this year uttered their protest against this prejudice by electing a Negro as their class orator. Let us cast the beam out of our own eye before we talk about the mote in our brother's eye. But industrial and political equality does not involve social equality. The State has nothing to do with the question of congeniality ; neither has the church ; neither has the Chrisdan religion. That religion requires of every man that he shall treat his fellow-men with justice, with kindness, with mercy; but it has not a word to say on the question what individual shall be con genial with another individual or what race shall be congenial with another race. Given polidcal liberty, given industrial equality, given educational opportunity, and the question of social relations may be left to dme and taste' to determine, without law from legislation or lecturing from pulpit or platform. If the Negro is to live here, he is to live on terms of fraternity and fellowship with his Southern brethren ; and nothing is gained in the solution of the Negro question by stirring up directly or indirecdy 84 animosity between whites and blacks in the Southern States. If he is to live there, he is to live on terms of mutual trust and confidence with his own neighbors, — now ray religion and polidcs are getting very close together,— and we shall do nothing to proraote that mutual confidence and esteem by undertaking to reverse the policy inaugu rated by that pacific adrainistration across the record of which history shall write, " Blessed is the peacemaker, for he shall be called the Son of God,"— that act which withdrew from the South the federal troops, and trusted the people, trusted the Christian sentiment of the whole South, that act which was inaugurated by hira who honors us here by presiding over this Conference. If the Negro is thus to live with us on terms of industrial and polit ical equality, with all avenues open before him, then all educadonal avenues are to be open before him. I do not disesteem the impor tance of primary education or the importance of industrial education. I wish myself that, when I was at school, I had been taught how to pound a nail without hammering my fingers. Nevertheless, I think that there is some danger lest we think the Negro is to be set off in aclass by hiraself, and educated for a particular function, sphere, or place. We raen have been trying, for I know not how many years, to define the sphere of womanhood, and tell her what she ought to do. Meantime, she has gone on and done as she pleased ; and we have followed on with our fears and cautions. It is not in the prov ince nor in the power of one class to determine the metes and bounds of another class, nor for one section to determine the possibilities of another section. So upon white and black let God's sunlight stream, and let every man find his own place by the measure of his own striv ing and ability. I claim, therefore, the Negroes' right to an educa tion from a, b, " ab," up to Syriac, from the multiplication table up to conic sections. Or, if there is anything higher than that, that higher thing, whatever it may be. Not that all are capable of taking the highest education, but no man can take the highest unless the highest is open to every man in the race. So the stimulation of free compe tition and the noblest prizes must come alike to all. How much longer must we go on talking about the Negro prob lem ? There is no Negro problera, — only the problem of humanity. Not the problem of red raan or black raan, or yellow raan or white man, or Jew man or Roman Catholic man, or Protestant man or infidel man, or laboring man, but Man, — man born of God, made in his image, and with an immortal future before him. With a free field and an open' race-course, let every man find his own place by his own courage, energy, and enterprise. The sooner we can ourselves reach that broad platform of faith in God and faith in huraanity, the sooner we can put it under the whole nation and inspire with the enthusiasm of humanity every heart, the sooner we shall have solved our labor ing problem, our Indian problem, our Negro problem, — all of which is only the problem of human character and huraan development. Adjourned at i p.m. Thursday Night, June 5. The Conference met at 8 p.m., ex-President Hayes in the chair. Letters were read from President Hickman, of Adanta, and Dr. J. M. L. Curry. The following communication frora Bishop Hay good was also read : — My dear Sir, — Circumstances involving duties forbid me to attend your Mo honk Conference. If it be desirable, let your Secretary read the brief statements that follow : — I. The colored population is believed to be about seven millions. The great mass is made up of pure-blood Negroes. Those who think that all Negroes are black mistake the case : the larger part are brown people. The hair more than the skin determines the race status- of these wonderful people. It is absolutely settled that the tendencies against miscegenation increase in both races. Fewer mulattoes are born each year. The moral tone of the Negroes does improve. The white man recoils from amalgamation more than in former days; and law teaches all. If one should look only for the bad, he can find facts enough to satisfy him that my views are all wrong, and my hopes all delusive. 2. The Negro race in the South makes progress upwards. The barbarous moral 'debasement of many of them may be admitted without weakening the statement that there is a real uplift. At least two millions of them can read. The American people have too much faith in education to put a light estimate upon such facts. Moreover, not less than one million of these people are now at school. There are more than sixteen thousand common schools for Negro youth in the Southern States, supported out of the public money for elementary education. These schools are taught by Negro teachers with hardly an exception, the teachers having been taught mostly in the higher institutions maintained by Northern be nevolence, largely in normal schools aided by the State governments. These are not ideal schools ; but they are as good as the conditions of the case allow, and they steadily grow better. Many of them are better than many schools for white chil- ¦dren, because their teachers are, many of them, better trained than many white teachers are trained. In law, the Negro children share equally with white children. In fact, the Negro children receive more and more benefit from the public school systems in the South. Much of whatever inequality there may be grows out of the condition of the colored people themselves. It is not strange that a race so circumstanced fails to secure the best results from their schools. The Negroes are as determined to teach their public schools as Southern white people are not to teach them. In deed, the Negroes show so marked a desire to control the colleges built for their benefit that their best friends are anxious lest the impatience of the very people they labor for should mar their best planned efforts to help them. One proof that elementary education among the Negroes grows better is this : those who apply for admission into the higher schools come better prepared each year. This should be so ; for the teachers of the primary schools each year show a larger number who have received training in the higher schools. And the higher schools, with improving material, do better work year by year. One most impor- . tant and cheering proof of the gradual betterment of the Negro population I have found in my long-continued studies of the subject : the children of parents who had training a decade or two ago begin on a higher plane. Of this there can be no doubt. 3. The present educational moveraent in the Southern States is towards longer terms for the public schools for both races. For nearly ten years the white people, who pay nearly all the taxes, have been contented to divide the school moneys according to population, without respect to race or previous conditioiis. Not every white man was content with this, but it was the universally accepted law in the case. At this time, while there is no concerted movement to change the method 86 of distribution, there is an unmistakable tendency that way. As to the causes lead ing this way, I may be mistaken ; but I believe that I state it correctly: (i) This tendency manifested itself coincidently with the talk of Congressional action as to overseeing elections. (2) During the last two years particularly some prominent Negro leaders, editors and politicians have been extremely unwise in their public utterances. It is true that the relations of the two races in the South are more strained than for years past. 4. A great work has been attempted, and great results have been achieved. In carrying on the higher schools, Northern benevolence has expended about sixteen millions of dollars, and hundreds of good men and women have expended them selves. This benevolence has been magnificent, this personal consecration sublime. In carrying on the public schools and in aiding normal schools, the Southern States have expended considerably over forty millions. This is a most creditable showing. Considering the conditions that followed the war and the poverty of the Southern people for the twenty years following the war, it is extraordinary. No poor and illiterate people ever received so much help during twenty-five years, as no such people ever made such progress before during the same length of time. Not a few worthy people seem so impatient to have done with this work that they cannot be grateful for the great results that have been achieved. As to the best method of helping them, experienced people gravely question whether direct aid — as money given without any conditions — is not mjre hurtful than beneficial. The money that most aids them is money earned. The approved method now is to give aid for work actually done. This plan secures them the money, and develops self-respect, and tends toward self-support. 5. The essential goodness of industrial training in connection with the ordinary school training is now universally admitted by experienced and practical people. In the schools aided by the Slater Fund during the school year 1889-90, as many as ten thousand young people were taught in books and in some branch of useful industries. This sort of training is vital now. Mere book-schooling with poor and illiterate people breeds wants faster than it develops the ability to provide for them The outcome is misery. Tool-craft helps to realize the aspirations that book-learn ing inspires. 6. The dangers grow out of the facts. Many white people North are unduly impatient. Many white people South are unduly anxious. Many colored people do not sufficiently realize how much has been done for them and achieved by them to be patient with conditions that cannot be changed at once, or to be happy in the hopes that are born of gratitude to the God who has led them. The following resolution, presented by ex-President Andrew D. White, of Cornell University, was referred to the Executive Com mittee : — Resolved, That, in view of the abundant proof afforded, both in Europe and America, of the advantage of blending elementary instruction of the eye and hand in the common school education, as affording opportunities for securing self-support, and as having an excellent moral influence, the Conference respectfully recommend to the Department of Public Instruction and the legislatures of the different States to consider the propriety of blending such instruction into that of the public schools. Rev. Joseph E. Roy, Secretary of the American Missionary Asso ciation, read the following paper : — THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE NEGROES NO MISTAKE. BY JOSEPH E. ROY. I. No mistake as to the capacity of the Negroes for such educa don. Why did the Creator give these people intellects, if they were not to be developed, some of them, to the full ? Did He not make thera, as all souls of raen, in his own iraage ? If so, they have all 87 mental capacity ; and this capability may be brought out. Now as to facts. In 1871, Governor Joseph E. Brown (now United States Senator from Georgia), as chairman of a board of examiners in the Atlanta University, reported and printed as follows : " The rigid tests to which the classes in algebra and in geometry, in Latin and Greek, were subjected, unequivocally demonstrated that, under judicious training and with persevering study, there are many members of the African race who can attain a high grade of intellectual culture. They proved that they can raaster intricate problems in mathematics and fully comprehend the construction of difficult passages in the classics. Many of the pupils exhibited a degree of mental culture which, considering the length of time their minds have been in train ing, would do credit to members of any race." The board also declared their opinion that the blackest of the j)upils showed them selves not a whit behind the mixed bloods in scholarship. And all this against their own predilections of opinion. And so read the reports of the successive boards of examiners, coming to Atlanta frora the same service in the ancient State university at Athens, for the fourteen years from 1874 to 1887 inclusive, when the Glenn bill episode came in. In minor matters, exceptions are taken. Praise is given to the industrial training, to the moral and religious culture, and to the neatness and order of the buildings and grounds ; but no abatement is made from that original judgment. In 1882, they say : " We have found him [the colored student] quite as much at horae in Latin, Greek, mathematics, ethics, mental and physical science, as in the more rudimentary studies." At Fisk University, that distin guished Catholic scholar from Europe, M. Capel, falling into the classical recitations, and taking them in hand hiraself, expressed his great delight at the accuracy and the soundness of the scholarship manifested. Professor A. K. Spence, of the same institution, a few days ago wrote me as follows : " The success of the work of colored education seems to me very wonderful. After twenty years of service in it, I look back on what has been done with gratitude for the past and faith for the future. I came from the University of Michigan, where I had been teaching for twelve years. I asked myself two questions only. One was this, Does the colored man need an educa tion ? To this I said. Yes. The other was. Can he take a college training? To this I said. We will try. We have tried, and he can. The working on this problem has been as delightful as a voyage of discovery. It is a daily delight for me to go to my classes. I never taught raore enthusiasdc students." Bishop Haygood, last week, at St. Louis, where he was a second time called to his high office, said to rae, " Some of the Negroes can and do take on the higher educa tion, and the next generation will do yet better." He was also very positive that the blackest were as smart as the mulattoes. But is there not danger of over-education on the part of the Negroes? No better answer can be given than this of Professor Spence : "None. The danger is just the opposite, — that of under- education. A smattering of knowledge may work conceit : thorough study makes men modest. The black man is a man : apply to hira all the rules of humanity. Good for white, good for black." Then the question is asked, with various tones of voice. What do your graduates do? And what have they accomplished since emanci pation? Colonel Patterson, recently named at Memphis by his coiinty as a candidate for governor, responding in a speech which I read in the local papers, and making boast of the white man's superiority over the black man because of the three thousand years of civilization behind the former, challenged the showing of a solitary instance of eminence attained by a black man in medicine, law, or science after these twenty-five years of universal suffrage. Though we have but slight data as to attainment in these learned profes sions by our ancestors at the end of their first quarter of a century of advancement two thousand nine hundred and seventy-five years ago, we have fortunately some basis of estimate as to progress in higher education made by the Afro-Americans under mountains of disability, during this stupendous era of twenty-five years. Professor S. D. Fowler, of the Normal Department of Howard University, at a recent educational convention of colored men in Washington, from partial statistics gained, gave something of answer to this question. Of law graduates, Howard counted 233 ; Allen University, South Carolina, 11 ; Straight University at New Orleans, well on to 200, half of whom were white ; Fisk, 5. Of these, frora Fisk I know one, Richard Morris, who began at the bar in Nashville, and is now having a fine practice in Minneapolis ; while a brother of his, whom I know in Chicago, is acknowledged by white lawyers to be a very able attorney. T. F. Sublett, another, is about to graduate from the Harvard Law Depart ment, having stood during the whole course among the best in his class, and having for these last two years by excellence of standing obtained one of the very best scholarships given in that department. Wilson, of Atlanta University, in Boston, is making himself respected among the eminent men at the bar. In Memphis a number of colored law yers are found, two of whom, T. F. Cassels and J. T. Settle, are men of prominence and of remunerative practice in* all the courts of Tennessee, both State and federal, — both of whom have served as Assistant General-Attorney of Shelby County, of which Memphis is the capital. Of medical graduates. The Mary of Nashville has 119; Howard, 108. Dr. Purvis, of the Howard, is an accomplished pro fessor and practitioner, having many white families among his patrons. Dr. Dorsett, of Montgomery, according to the law of Alabama, had to undergo an examination by a board of white physicians that lasted several days before being admitted to the profession there. It is said that the board were amazed and delighted with the result. He also is working in among white farailies. Dr. A. L. Strong, of Selraa, is said to have the largest practice of any physician in the city. True, it is among colored people; but, when it is remembered that in the old times the blacks were accustomed to have the master's family physi cian, it is a great gain that their patronage can be secured by the colored doctors. Dr. F. A. Stewart, of Fisk and of the Howard Medical, is now a very successful physician in Nashville. During the last two years of his course he held a scholarship of $200, gotten by examination for excellence of scholarship. I found a pair of colored physicians standing high at Austin, Tex., while there are 23 colored doctors in that State. In Adanta I knew a colored dentist, many of whose patrons are prominent white people. In Memphis there are 89 not less than eight colored practising physicians and two dendsts, one of whom. Dr. Burchett, is a man of rising position ; and Dr. Fields, a dentist, is a member of the regular Dental Associadon, and is held by the white dentists in high esteem as a workman. A white physician in Mobile, having occasion to secure surgical skill in behalf of his wife, telegraphed to New Orleans for the head surgeon of the city. The answer came back : " Engaged. I cannot go. Em ploy that colored surgeon in your own city." He did so ; and a splendid feat of surgery was had, that of Cesarean secdon, and two lives were saved. Of students in theology, Howard has graduated ii8; Gammon, at Adanta, 27 ; Wilberforce at Zenia, Ohio, 28 ; Talladega, 23, with over seventy in the ministry; Claflin University, South Carolina, 12 ; Fisk, 10; Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, 160; and all these besides the scores and hundreds who have gone into the ministry from these institutions without graduating. These raen are taking the impor tant pulpits of colored churches in New Haven, Washington, and in the leading cities of the land. One man from Fisk, now in Oberlin Theological Department, is said by the professor of He brew to be one of the best in that language, and to be second to none of the students there in qualification to teach Hebrew and the Old Testament literature. To take one institution alone, that of Fisk, we find that of the classical graduates, — besides the ten who are in the ministry, the five who are in the law, the two or three in medicine, — one is a college president in the Alcorn, a State insti tution in Mississippi, — four are college professors, fourteen are prin cipals of high schools, twenty-four are teachers in such schools, three are editors ; while, of the graduates of the Normal Department, thirty-six are principals of advanced schools and teachers in the same. So, by only a partial report, we find at the end of this mo mentous quarter of a century, " with universal suffrage," of colored graduates, 210 in theology, 244 in law, 225 in medicine, 26 in phar macy, and 19 in dentistry; and we also find a total of 561 classical graduates and 2,292 normal graduates. Then into such an inventory we must bring W. E. Dubois, of Fisk, who, now in Harvard, the last year obtained the second prize, and this year the first prize, in the oratorical contest, and also a scholarship of $300, upon examination for excellence in scholarship. And this, be it remembered, is at Harvard, where the contestants are the klite students of the white race in that ancient seat of learning. Then we raust bring in the 16,000 colored teachers of the South, of whom Bishop Kenner, in his response at St. Louis to the fraternal delegation of the Methodist Episcopal Conference, seeraed to be so proud. And of these it must be said that ninety-eight out of every hundred were educated in the schools supported by the Northern churches. Probably the world will never know just how soon or how long ago in the alleged three thousand years of our civilization we came up to an exhibit of liter ary attainment equal to that ; but it is not very likely that we came up to that mark in our first twenty-five years. But, lest any should reasonably fear that these institutions are crowding their students along too fast into the college course, I can state that for the present- year, by the catalogues of the American 90 Missionary Association, — leaving out Atlanta and Berea, inidated by the Association, but now independent, — the percentage of classical students is only three, while the adding of these two institutions would not more than double that and make it six. It is probable that the other classical schools would present about the same proportion. And so there can be no danger of pushing the classical course too much. The fact is that it takes a prodigious amount of grit and of temerity to pull one's self through that long course in the midst of poverty that grinds all the time. II. No mistake in ih& policy oi higher education as to the Negroes themselves. I. As a people, they need their own educated leaders: leaders in the pulpit, at the bar, in medicine ; leaders in society, in reform, in patriotic service. It would be an anomaly if a people now number ing from seven to eight raillions should not have leaders of their own race. It is observed by their friends that they are raore and more drawing offi to themselves. Indeed, in this rising spirit of self-con sciousness and self-reliance as a race, they will come to coraraand that respect and consideration which are their due frora their pale-faced fellow-citizens. For this they need disciplined leaders. Their own people come nearer to them than those of another blood. The great preacher of New Orleans told his cook that all the edu cation her daughter needed was to make her a good servant. The mother thought differently, and put her through the Normal Depart ment of the Straight University in that city. I afterwards found that same young woman down in the south-west corner of Texas, a hun dred miles frora a railroad, by her day school, her Sunday-school, her Band of Hope, and her Teraperance Society lifting a whole commu nity of colored people, herself their leader. Is it not strange that we are finding echoes of that doctor's notion up North at this late day ? 2. They need among them specimens of the higher education to stimulate the mass of their people to rise in enlightenraent. When, in a recent discussion of the Negro question at New York, it was suggested that the colored people did not need the advanced training. Dr. Price, with a facetiousness of argument, took it as quite a compli ment to his people that they did not need this sort of stimulus, when the Puritan Fathers, back in their foundation period, were planting their Harvard and Yale. It is a matter of the commonest observa tion that our plainest white boys are inspired with an ambition to get such of the higher learning as they may by the example of the other fellows who are shooting ahead. When Michel Angelo saw that Raphael, in a cathedral, was painting his heads too small, he sought his opportunity, and sketched one head large. Raphael took the hint, and followed copy. The schools of higher learning draw large, and this brings up the younger artists of knowledge to the higher ideal. 3. The higher education is no mistake as to these people, because they need it as a protection. Colonel ji M. Keating, of Memphis, Tenn., in his masterly discussion of the Negro question, said in Italics, "The right of the Negro to vote is necessary to the maintenance of his freedom." Roger A. Pryor, of Virginia, in the Forum for May, says. 91 " It was as competent to the nation to make the Negro a voter as to make him a citizen." Now, to protect his suffrage, in order to the maintenance of his freedom and of his citizenship, he needs a measure of the larger discipline of education. He needs not only to be able to read the names on the several boxes into which he is to cast his several votes, and also to read and to scratch for himself the offered dckets, but he needs leaders of his own race, well educated, to discuss questions at issue and to formulate lines of policy. He needs this to coraraand the respect of the so-called superior race. It was said in that discussion at New York that it did not raake a fair impression to bring up North educated men, such as Dr. Price, as specimens of the race. But I will warrant that any contestant with him would come to a much higher respect for the black man after he had sam pled the goods. It is the very essence of fairness to bring forward the specimens of the possibilities of the Negroes, as trained in our Southern institutions out of ignorance and moral deformity into the grace and virility of Christian manhood. Isaiah Rynders, in the old anti-slavery bout on the Tabernacle platform, carae to a higher respect for Frederick Douglass, when made to feel the prick of his lance : " Yes, Mr. Rynders, I am a half-brother to yourself." And, surely, our men of erudition, with their centuries of civilization behind them, need not be afraid of competition with these children of the tropics, with only a quarter of one century of the white man's chance behind them. III. No mistake in the higher education of the Negroes as to policy for the nation. It is too late in the history of civilization to impose any repression upon any class of people. " Only roll off the log, and see what we will do," said the philosophical old African. It will be to the advantage of the nation to have this stimulus applied to the Afro-Americans, so as to bring up the grade of general intelli gence among them, and so as to secure the power of such accreted wisdom. "This poor man by his wisdom saved the city." These poor people by their wisdom of deportment during the war saved the nation from complications frightful to be conjectured. In the New Orleans Exposition, their department, as an indication of the benefit to the nation of their rising intelligence, was worthy the position it occupied between the nation's educational exhibit and the white women's display. It was a surprise to everybody. It had its own gallery of paintings, its own gallery of inventions, not a few useful .and ornamental, with a record in the Patent Office of twenty-five patents, such as a cotton cultivator, a printing-press, a fire-escape, a shield for infantry and artillery men, a life-saving apparatus, etc. It represented extensive manufacturing establishments. It had its niche for colored authors, who presented a dozen or raore bound volumes, among them Williams's profound histories of his people. And their women had specimens of handicraft, in quality and num bers highly creditable. I have a letter from Colonel J. T. L. Preston, of Lexington, Va., the sarae who succeeded to the superintendency of Stonewall Jackson's colored Sunday-school, in which he says, " I speak advisedly, when I say that the Negro population in this local ity have raade surprising progress in raaterial, intellectual, raoral, and religious departments since their emancipation." Bishop Haygood 92 says, " No illiterate people have ever made such progress as these in the last two and a half decades." And so there is encouragement for the nation to help them on in this line of progress. At a late club meedng in Chicago, five hundred and fifty ladies and gentlemen being present, Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer, formerly the president of Wellesley, raade a powerful address in favor of the higher education of our giris at the West ; and her great argument was that a broad, healthy culture would tend to make good, sweet homes. The sarae argument, with tenfold emphasis, applies to such training for making good homes among the colored people. Nothing do they need more in order to their elevation in the social and domestic scale. And nothing among them will make them more a blessing to the nation. IV. No mistake in higher education for the Negroes, when we consider their relation to foreign lands. Langston and Fred Doug lass at Hayd were the right men in the right place. A missionary in the Gilbert Islands has begged for a colored missionary physician. But their largest missionary work will be in Africa. Just now, as God is opening the Dark Continent to the gaze of Christendom, he is setting forward this process for educating our emancipated slaves to fit thera for service there. It is a divinely ordained conjunction of affairs. They are proceeding to " spoil " us Egyptians of the best things in our Christian civilization, that they may by and by transport the same in bulk, by colonies, to the land of their fathers. The United Brethren have always run their mission in Great Africa by educated colored raen sent out from this country. These missionaries endure the climate. They are successful. Their superintendent. Rev. Mr. Gomer, is a man among men of any race. The Fisk has already sent out a half-dozen workers to that land. One of them is Rev. B. F. Ousley. Born a slave to Joseph Davis, the brother of Jefferson Davis, baptized into the Episcopal Church by requirement of his raaster, although his father was a Baptist, he was graduated at Fisk and at Oberlin Serainary, in both of which institutions he was one of the best scholars in his classes. With his wife, also a graduate of Fisk, he was sent out by the American Board to its new East Central African Mission six years ago. They endure the climate. He writes me that they have had no more of fever there than they had in Mississippi. Rev. Messrs. Tyler and Rood, who have been in South Africa for forty years, have both said to me that he was one of the most level-headed men ever sent out by that Board, so much so that the Board had made hira treasurer of that mission. More than this : he has learned and helped to reduce the language ; he has translated and published " The Story of the Gospel " and selections of the " Moody and Sankey Songs " ; he has been engaged upon a dictionary and grammar of the language ; and just now he has fin ished the translation of the first three Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles, which he has brought back to this country, and whose pub lication he is to supervise while receiving some necessary surgical treatment. And yet it is only six years since he struck , that coast. And all of this while engaged in the ordinary service as teacher and evangelist. There are more of such men now being fitted for this work in our institutions of the several denominations. But how shall 93 we so thoroughly equip such men if we deny them the higher educa tion ? How shall we meet Africa's great need if we discourage that ampler learning which is essential to the work over there. And so I conclude that the higher education ot the Negroes, in any number that we may attain, is not a mistake, but a piece of the truest wisdom. The Chairman. — We shall now have the satisfaction of seeing and hearing the most venerable delegate in attendance upon this Conference, — Mr. Samuel May, of Massachusetts. Mr. May. — I raust disclaim the honor you assign to me, sir, of being the oldest delegate present. There sits our friend, Mr. Moses Pierce, of Connecticut, an older soldier than rayself by two years, and, raore than that, earlier than I in the anti-slavery raovement. Still, I suppose, having passed the bound of eighty, I may be con sidered an old man ; and I was one of the old abolitionists. I am glad of this opportunity to testify to the noble character of the men with whom I was associated in that movement. I came into the cause from a pulpit ; and I never knew more truly Christian men than Mr. Garrison, Charles Follen, John G. Whittier, Samuel E. Sewall, Oliver Johnson, Wendell Phillips, and many more whom I might name. We thought the nation was the transgressor, — that the North was guilty along with the South, and bound, by its duty to God and man, to make amends. Mr. Jefferson reminded the men of New England of his day that, if not holders and owners of slaves them selves, they had been carriers of thera to others. The rebuke was deserved, the reproach was true ; and it carried a duty to New Eng land and the North. We endeavored to do something to atone for that wrong. I will not occupy much tirae, and I will not allude to the past except to say that this elemental warfare which is raging round us [a severe thunder-storm was in progress during Mr. May's address] may seem to some of you to typify the thunder and lightning in which the abolidonists were supposed to be living much of their time. In view of our past history, how thankful to God raust those departed spirits feel to know of such a Conference as this, made up of such men and woraen as are here now, in the spirit which has been mani fested yesterday and to-day in behalf of that hardly entreated, long abused, despised, and outcast class I And thanks be to God from every heart here. " Now let thy servants depart in peace, for we have seen thy salvation," we may well say. When such hearts, such minds, such earnest, energetic people, combine in the spirit of a gen erous huraanity, in the spirit of Christ, in behalf of those long en slaved, that jusdce raay at length be done them, a great crown has been put upon our work. As I came tO' this Conference, I read in the papers an extract frora a speech which a member of Congress from North Carolina — Mr. White — had raade recendy to his constituents in Salisbury in that State. I hope you raay see it. In a spirit such as he manifested, with a like fidelity as he showed to those whom he addressed, we should go forward to labor in this cause. From such a spirit only good results can be augured. He begged his constituents to remem- 94 ber the friendly and forbearing attitude of those colored men during the four years of the war. They knew, he said, as well as the white people, the nature of the war and the promise of freedom it held out to thera ; and yet, while, on the one hand, they never betrayed a Northern prisoner fleeing frora his prison, on the other they .never lifted up a hand against the horaes or persons of the people of the South. He told them that gratitude to that race is to be added to all other motives for giving them all their rights. The most interesting and encouraging thing, to my mind, in this Conference has been the hopefulness of Southern gentlemen, and of those who have lately resided at the South, in behalf of this race, their confidence in their future, and in the entire capability of the colored people to become good and worthy citizens of the republic. I was much interested in what Miss Emerson told us this morning. It was beginning at the proper place to begin with the homes of this people, and to influence, in such ways as she described, the women and girls. This subject is considered on all hands to be a difficult one. It is a difficult one so long as we are not willing to look at it in the divine light, to see it as God sees it, and in the spirit of the religion we pro fess. When we shall do that, when we shall recognize this people as God's equal children, our fellow-men, sharers with us in the life and destiny of huraanity, it will cease to be a " difficult problera." That is chiefly what I would say, except to thank those who had the calling of this convention that they have given me the great pleasure of attending it. Rev. Dr. James M. Buckley.— Dr. Abbott's division of this Con ference into two classes — those who have facts and no theories, and those who have theories and no facts — leaves rae out. If to be driven by hereditary tendency to pulmonary disease to riding on horseback through every State of the South before and since the war; if to have kept my eyes open, and to have observed not only the surface of things, but more deeply, will give me theories, — I cannot deny the existence of the fact of what a celebrated English man called a " conjectural hypothesis." In the darkest hours of slavery, many of the Negroes possessed such clearness of judgment, such reserve in expression, such marvel lous powers of grasping details, that they were the advisers, the prime ministers in the farailies. Many a raan who had large influence and financial success owed it to the wisdora and judgraent of some Negro whora he had brought up delicately as a servant, but who had becorae to him in a practical sense as a son or a brother. It is a mistake to assume that the Negro is a fixed character. There are Negroes and Negroes. The typical Negro is true of but two-thirds : he fails utterly in the last third. So there are Negroes, like H. H. Garnett, the Minister to Liberia, who could speak with as much concentration and logic as Senator Edmunds. Dr. Abbott proposes to ignore the Negro problera, and make it one of the common problems of humanity. If there be no such thing as a Negro problem, differing much from all other problems on the globe, we should not be here. But there is a Negro problem. Before the war there was no Negro problera. There was a slavery problera ; 95 but the slavery problem, speaking generally, is settled. Emancipa tion raade the Negro problem. There is no Irish problem in this country, no Scotch, nor German, nor Scandinavian problem, because the Scotch, the Irish, the German, the Scandinavian, assimilate imme diately with the whole population of the country. In a generation, they cease to be Irish or Scotch or Scandinavian. But the law and the sentiments of the United States prevent intermarriage between Negroes and white. And, if there be interraingling, it must be by secret intermarriage, by concubinage, and by unblushing vice. There are those who receive an admixture of Negro blood, and they are classified with the African race. There are, therefore, in the United States 7,000,000 of men, woraen, and children who are far more 'essentially and permanently isolated than the most clannish Jews. This is the problera that we have to face. Prior to the late war, slavery not only held the Negroes in domestic discipline, but it held them as a wheel of government within a wheel. The prisons were not full of Negroes except on the frontiers. There were said to be no insane Negroes in those days. There were very few, certainly, in proportion to the number now existing. They knew nothing of the struggle of life. If the statistics had been given of the large number of wandering imbeciles, a different showing would have been raade. Now the prisons of the South are full of Negroes, — twenty to one as compared with the white population. I have visited nearly all the leading prisons in the South, and there are large num bers in the prisons. The asylums are full. When slavery was abol ished, there was terrific change ; and for a time the condition of the Negro, taking the United States in a large view, was worse than it had been. As correspondent for an evening paper, I went through the South immediately after the war closed. At Memphis, I found 30,000 freedraen who had all gone to the city under the first irapulse of freedora. They did not propose to work. They had been corapelled to work. They regarded idleness as one of the chief emoluments of freedom. There they were, dying by the hundreds of small-pox. I sat down in one room where there were seven Negroes in the very worst stages of small-pox, and their condition was not much worse than that of the rest of the 30,000. I met five persons with the small-pox who had broken loose, and were walking in delirium ; and the chief of police said he had no power to enforce hygienic laws or to compel isolation. This was a terrible time, and the situadon was doleful. It may be well to observe here that the homes of the colored people in the South are not so doleful to thera as they might be. The climate does not require much shelter, and they need less food and clothing than in colder regions. The sarae amount that would support a man in a cold region would support a whole family in the Southland, and they would be better off with the simple fare. But, bad as these homes are in the black belt now, you can find hundreds and thousands as bad among the whites all through the South. I took my wife into the interior of Florida two years ago, to show her some of the " crackers " there ; and, if I were to describe in plain English what I saw, it would be deeraed a roraantic account. I have 96 never seen anything worse in the darkest parts of the South than in hundreds of these houses, so let us not charge anything particular on the Negro. As for the religion of the Negro, speaking generally, he raust be an earnest Christian or a drunken loafer. There are Negroes who are not Christians and are not drunken loafers ; but, as a rule, he must be an earnest Christian or he will be a loafer, and probably a drunkard. Reference was raade by General Armstrong to the harmful influ ence of the "Old Timer," the old preachers. I have been familiar with them for many years, and I say that the " Old Timer " has more to do with the prejudices of the colored people than any one thing that could be named. But the "Old Timer " who was sixty years old when I was young is a very different raan from the " Old Timer " who is sixty years old now. He is much modified. He still denounces education. He cannot preach as he once did. In the city of Raleigh I heard one of the " Old Timers " preach twenty-two years ago a sermon frora the text, " The Word was raade flesh, and dwelt among men." His doctrine was that the tendency of religion was to give physical health ; and, the raore pious a man, the fatter and stronger he got, for " the Word was raade flesh, and dwelt among men." Five years ago I was in Raleigh, and went into that church, and heard a raan preach who was graduated from the Lincoln University ; and his sermon would have been a credit to any raan in this assembly. I waited until the tirae of " the arouseraents." When he had made his case perfectly clear, he took an entirely different attitude ; and he very soon had the saints rising and shouting, and, to my surprise, one of them fell in that condition of catalepsy which used to be supposed in the South to be an evidence of divine power, but which has been discovered to be the result of raore emotion than the human system can endure. There is no patent recipe for solving this Negro problem. One might ask, "What will be the use of all our discussion here?" No man living can tell what the effect of such an interchange of views may produce. No one can tell what the effect will be of these remarkable statistics that we have heard from Dr. Harris. Let us fix our minds on the point that education and religious training are the two things necessary. I do not suppose Dr. Harris raeant to say that all the money should go to the education of teachers. I regard it true of the South, as of the North, that aid must be given. I would add to his suggestion that raen who are to preach as well as those who are to teach should be encouraged. I have never been perfectly clear on this matter of national education; but I will say that Mr. Jay's two points, so modestly stated, have done more to bring me to see that probably it raay be a good thing than any other arguraent I have ever heard. It raay perhaps be a good way of disposing of con siderable of our surplus. I propose to look more carefully into the matter than heretofore. It is essential that we should bring the influence of the Negro churches to increase the standard of discipline. Sorae forty colored ministers have been either tried by the State or by their own churches for immorality, dishonesty, and a variety of things. It is essential to 97 bring the influence of all these churches up in this matter. The denomination that I am connected with has 225,000 Negro members. We exercise most scrupulous discipline over them. Let us, however, wherever we have any influence, endeavor to impress the necessity, especially on those official representatives who dispense such large funds, of high regard for moral discipline. Nor must we forget prejudice. I wonder what would be the effect if about seventy-five Negro families were to be scattered through Plymouth Church. My conviction is that consternation would be the result, and that a large number of persons would pass away unless those seventy families were thrown out. Dr. L. Abbott. — Send thera along, and we will see. Dr. Buckley. — You know that I cannot do it. Therefore, you speak with great confidence. If I had a raagic wand, I would put them all there next Sunday. The prejudice against the Negro throughout the North is as strong as it is throughout the South. The denomination with which I am connected owns a publishing house in New York. We every four years elect fifteen raen to sit on the raanagement of that business. Eight years ago we elected two highly educated colored raen, one>.a mulatto, the other a full- blooded Negro. These were men of eloquence and power, one as refined a man as is in this assembly. Next to our establishment was a large hotel, one of the finest in New York. We had paid into the treasury of that hotel by annual dinners, by lodging there in large numbers, and by dining there, a very large sum ; but, when it came to receiving these two colored persons, rather than admit thera, the proprietors of the hotel were willing to sacrifice all the business that we brought to them. The only compromise that was proposed was that they would allow one of our colored members if Some white member should always be present and sit with thera at the table. A little inquiry convinced us that the sarae thing was true of all the best hotels in New York. We raust keep this prejudice of the North constantly in view, and endeavor to remove it, while trying to raise the tone of genuine sympathy. Then this great problem will solve itself, and we shall be a united country. If I have mixed my religion and politics on this occasion, I will allow Dr. Abbott to apologize for me. THE POSTAL-SAVINGS SYSTEM. BY PHILIP C. GARRETT, OF PHILADELPHIA. It is hardly necessary to say, I presume, that what is known as the postal-savings system is an adaptadon of the Post-office Department of the government to the receiving of small savings, so that the machinery of a great institudon of that kind is economized, and its utility is spread over the whole country, and savings can be received at every post-office. The raethod by which this is done in England, and which is proposed in the United States, is by the use of a small pass-book, such as is comraonly used with savings-banks, on the pages of which are raarked out spaces the size of a postage-stamp, so that the depositor can save so small a sum as one cent or any larger 98 sum of the denomination of any postage-stamp of the United States. By pasting it in these spaces, he receives credit in the post-office for that sum. When these small deposits amount to a certain sum, perhaps one dollar, he begins to receive the interest. If the interest amounts to three per cent., he is entided to receive for every dollar he so deposits three cents every year. The system is a very simple one, extremely free from machinery, and adapted to all of the coun try districts. Of course, in large cities, where savings insdtutions exist, there is no necessity for it ; but it is extremely valuable for farmers and for all those who cannot have access to the existing institutions. The rich always have the means of investing their money and earning an income from it : the poor have not. It is, therefore, of especial use to the farming population and to the poor. It is very easy to see that the Negroes of the South are among those who would be benefited by a system of this kind. The foundation of the difference between civilization and barbarism, I might say almost certainly between the acquisition of wealth and pauperism, is the desire for accumulation. As far as tbe difference between these classes of people is concerned, it begins with a desire for accumula tion. It is easy to see that a' system of this kind, which would place in the hands of the colored people the means of saving so small a sura as one cent and up to ten cents, would be of immense value to them. It is impossible for them to possess the raeans of improving their condition in any respect that we may recoraraend to thera, to iraprove their homes and abandon these wretched hovels and get furniture and house decorations and comforts, unless they can save money. There are other considerations besides that. There is the moral consideration, the stimulus to a sense of manliness, the stimu lus of self-dependence and of honesty. We scarcely think how much the virtue of honesty, upon which we dwell so ranch, is dependent upon considerations of property. I remember a story about a Rich mond Negro who said he " did not steal de turkey, he merely trans ferred it to his own stomach. De hen-roost was massa's, and he was massa's." These ideas of meum and tuum did not exist in slavery. I do not see how you can introduce them without something of this kind, offering a basis for the acquisition of wealth. Mr. Garrett then referred to the extreme destitution of the Negroes at Port Royal, S.C, up to the time when the landing of the slaves from the Congo River had not ceased on the coast, and also to the facts set forth by Judge Tourgee in his " Fool's Errand," showing the condition of the Negroes. What they needed to get thera out of their low contentment was the stimulus of the desire for a little accumulation ; and it seemed to him that nothing would furnish this so well as an institution like the postal-savings bank, in which they could be assisted by their teachers. It would be the first step, and an effective, potent step in lifting thera out of such a condition. Gen. Eaton. — May I ask Mr. Garrett to describe in this connec tion the school savings-banks so coraraon in Belgium, France and also in this country? Mr. Garrett. — I think it is alraost identical with the postal- savings bank. The children, when they have pasted in their books a sum equal to a dollar, receive interest on it, the teacher depositing 99 the aggregation of savings in a savings-bank. It is a simple systera and might easily be carried out if the postal system is not adopted ; and it can also be utilized in connection with that system. Great efforts have been made to introduce the postal-savings system. The charity organization societies, a few years ago, united in a plea to Congress to adopt it. Secretary Fairchild came down to the hall in Washington, when the National Conference of Charities met there, and made a speech in favor of it. A very serious opposition has existed to it throughout the country, more especially from the officers of the savings-banks. There is also a fear that the United States would not know how to handle the immense sum of money which some have estimated would be deposited, how to' invest it, and how to pay interest on it. I think these are bugbears. I do not think the new system would interfere with the savings institutions nor the amount deposited prove unmanageable if the rate of interest were kept below that paid by savings-banks. Dr. W. T. Harris, Commissioner of Education. — I am glad to have an opportunity to commend the plan of postal-savings banks. The fear which our private savings-banks have that it will injure their business is not well founded. The convenience of the postal- savings bank will stimulate powerfully the habit of saving among the weakling classes of the community. The government should not offer enough interest nor receive sums large enough to infringe on the business of the private savings-bank. Take the old favorite rate of interest on bonds, the seven-thirty a year, which gives two cents a day on the $100. One-half of this is $3.65, which gives one cent for each of three hundred and sixty-five days. But $3.65 should be divided again, giving $1.82. At this rate of interest, $100 would yield half a cent interest per day on the one hundred dollars ; and this is -what the government ought to pay on all sums from ten dollars up ward to one hundred dollars, which is as large a sum as it should receive from one depositor. The postal-savings bank would be everywhere accessible to the poor, and it would give that most essential training in thrift. For it is the property instinct that the colored people need, and that the poor whites need as well. To become capitalists is the best next step for them. The low rate of the government interest would also stimulate them to look for more profitable investments. To hoard money (in a stocking or in some hiding-place) is the first stage of the capitalist solution : to _ profitably invest it is the second and corapledng stage. . .„ , a Of course, the savings-banks that now exist will do a more flour ishing business when the postal-savings facilities have doubled and trebled the class of people who save their surplus earnings. For the postal-savings arrangement is strictly of an educadve character. It has been said before that the Negro needs thrift more than he needs special training in industry. His earnings in slavery did not accrue to hira as a person. He had a sort of undivided interest in his mas ter's property, just as the child has in the family property. There is no insdtution that I can think of that promises so ranch for the Negro and the poor white, in this essendal matter of thrift. North and South, as the postal savings. ioo I spoke this raorning of a mistake that is having its influence against the cause of popular education. It is the inability to under stand the statistics regarding crime and education. There is another mistake on the subject of the increase of wealth that has worked its injury. Henry George, Mr. Bellamy, and others have assumed that the assertion of Karl Marx is true ; namely, that the rich are growing richer and fewer, while the poor are growing poorer and more numerous, and the middle class are disappearing in the poor class. In very truth, if this is the actual fact, we cannot much blame the nuraerous writers who are repeating it in a hysterical manner. For it would show that something is wrong at the very foundation of our economical system. But the facts are quite different. In England, for instance, there are three or four lines of statistics that converge on this point, and show that the rich people have increased in forty years to three times the number in each thousand of the population. More than this, the middle class have increased to three and one-half tiraes the former quota ; while the poor class are a smaller proportion of the whole, and are receiving nearly twice the annual stipend they received forty years ago. I have found that the annual product of the United States for each man, woman, and child has increased since 1850 from twenty-five cents per day to forty cents per day ; and that the distri bution of it is quite as equitable as in former years is demonstrated by Edward Atkinson in his valuable book on the " Distribution of Products." But the uncritical acceptance of the alleged fact asserted by Marx has led to the proposal of extreme doctrines for the cure of the evils of crime and pauperism. If we shall adopt the socialist's theory, we must get rid of competition. If we adopt the anarchist's idea, we shall try to destroy what central authority still remains. But, if we believe in local self-government, and in the idea of private property that has descended to us from the Romans, we shall endeavor to deal with our two weakling classes, the criminal and the pauper, so as to prevent their increase, by teaching their children industry and economy. We raust never forget that these two weakling classes need nurture more than they need jusdce. Justice returns the deed on the doer. If the thief steals, we return the symbolical equivalent of his deed upon him by taking frora him his freedora. If he mur ders, we complete his deed for hira by returning it on him and taking his life. But we do not treat infants in the same way. We try to correct them, but do not treat thera as fully responsible. Our three classes of weaklings have possibilities of development into thrift and virtue, but their growth has been arrested at some point in spiritual childhood. We cannot let them alone with impu nity any more than we can let alone our children. In short it is evi dent that we must have a paternal government for insane people for paupers, and for criminals. That is just what they need, and 'that is just what the interests of society necessitate. But the recognition of this necessity of nurture does not imply what is called " State socialism"; for the principle of local self-government demands that the State shall do whatever it can do better than the individual if it at the same time helps the individual to help himself. So long as IOI what the State does conduces to the greater self-activity of the indi vidual, it is not in danger of socialism ; for socialism, as a distinctive form of government, proposes to do for the individual what will remove occasion for the higher forms of self-activity, such as involve directive power. Socialism and anarchy both have elements in com mon with local self-government, and their pecuHarities are to be found only in their extremes. Anarchy proposes to do nothing for the individual, not even protect his life and property or educate him. Hence it gives no place for nurture of self-activity, and as a fact permits it to be crushed out even in its rudiments. Socialisra, on the other hand, will do everything for the individual, and thereby remove all stimulus to self-help. It destroys competition altogether, and an ticipates all human wants. Whatever is educative of self-help is, on the other hand, neither socialism nor anarchy, properly speaking, but legitimate to local self- government. For to the true ideal of government there are both 'Centre and circumference, both centripetal and centrifugal tenden cies ; while socialism suppresses entirely the centrifugal, and anarchy suppresses as completely the centripetal tendency. The postal- savings bank, therefore, is a legitimate institution in our govern ment, which seeks to avoid both extremes of anarchy and socialism by doing only what shall aid self-help. The poor white, both North and South, will be stimulated to thrift by it. The colored man will be helped by it directly and also indirectly, because there is no use in expecting the elevation of the colored people in the midst of an illiterate population of whites, who are and always have been the worst enemies to the progress of the colored race. In this connection, I will allude to the school savings-bank, which has for many years been successful in cultivating habits of thrift in Belgium and France. In 1879, France had 10,261 schools with these banks, and a total deposit of 3,602,621 francs. Mr. J. H. Thiry, of Long Island, has collected information on this subject; and, in the next report of the Bureau of Education, we shall print his account of the present condition of the moveraent. I have been told that the experiment is in process in the public schools of Brookline, Mass., with good results. This feature of education in thrift will re-enforce the postal-savings bank. Rev. W. S. Langford, D.D. — I will state the conclusions which I wish to present at the beginning, lest I raay not reach them in the short space allowed me to speak. I hope the Conference will adopt first a recommendation of the postal-savings system ; second, a rec ommendation of national aid for elementary education; and, third, I trust that the Conference will adopt a good, strong, hearty recogni tion of what the Southern people and States of the South have done already to aid the Negroes. The paper which Dr. Mayo read yesterday, showing the Negroes' capacity for civilization, astonished me by a story of progress during the past twenty-five years which is without parallel. I was captivated by the wholesome, brave opdmism of that paper; and, even after sleeping over it, I find myself still under the spell of his influence. It seems to me that the problem is being solved with as much rapidity as the most sanguine friend of the Negro can desire. He raust be I02 a near-sighted person who cannot see the hand of Divine Providence in all that is being accomplished. We are workers together with God ; and, if that be so, then we may conclude that he is doing the principal part of the work, and he will carry it forward over obstacles in the future as in the past. It seems to me that the soludon of this problem is going to help mightily in the solution of other problems which loom up before us with portentous threatenings, that the Negro is going to be an iraportant factor in working out the highest destiny of this republic. The chariot of progress in this matter is moving rapidly, and the best place for every man is inside the chariot. It is of no use for any man to take hold of the wheels and cry. Whoa, whoa ! We raust either ride or be left behind. I well remember, two years ago, when, with some who are here, I went to London to attend a conference on the subject of for eign missions, where Bishop Crowther, then past fourscore years of age, was present also. When a lad, he was taken out of slavery in Africa, carried to England, graduated from Oxford University, and went back to his native land to preach the gospel. I recall vividly the storm of enthusiasm which greeted him when the old scarred veteran stood upon the platform in Exeter Hall, and the whole audi ence arose to its feet and welcomed him. The first Sunday in July, 1888, I was a guest in the same house with Bishop Crowther, within the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral. Monday morning, as he was going up to London early, I accorapanied him, going an hour earlier than I intended, that the old man might lean on ray arm, and that I might assist him. As we sat together, a young Englishman, sitting opposite us in the railway carriage, leaned forward, and asked me to introduce him to the Bishop of the Niger. It was Douglas McKenzie, Bishop of Zululand. He at once told Bishop Crowther that he had found his photograph and that of his son. Archdeacon Crowther, of great use in dealing with the Zulus. They were pictorial illustradons with which he pointed out to the Zulus what Christianity had done for Africans. On the Saturday night that I was at Canterbury, a recepdon was held, which was attended by many distinguished per sons. The courtesy which was shown to the black bishop was as great as that shown to the most eminent person in the drawing- rooms; and I remarked to our hostess that the perfect ease with which she treated her black guest could hardly be practised in a New York drawing-room. However we may deprecate the treatment of the race problem in the South in some of its aspects, let us exercise great patience and forbearance towards the people of the South in dealing with a prob lem which has been beset by supreme difficulties, and let us cordially recognize and acknowledge all that has been done by the people and their generous State provision for educadon, in the division of which they have been fair and just towards the Negroes. While philanthropy provides liberally for industrial education and for higher mental culture for those who are fitted to receive it, why may we not ask that the nadonal government shall extend the advan tage of elementary education to the masses of the black race, to help them to that degree of intelligence which is necessary to a popular government ? I03 The matter of the postal savings seems to me of great importance ; and one of its chief features of excellence is that the United States becomes the debtor of the peopl*, and encourages the Negroes to thrift and honest acquisition of property. Not only to the Negroes will this system be of value, but to other nationalities coming here it will be one of. the best of civilizing and Americanizing influences. It will bring the humblest into direct and sympathetic relation to the government, and stimulate self-help. When they have saved a litde capital and acquired land, their self-respect and ambition will rise, and as property-holders they will becorae conservative members of society, iraportant factors in the body politic. Opposition on the part of established savings institutions would be extremely short-sighted. A little consideration will show that they will be gainers, not losers, by the system. It will popularize small savings, and every savings- bank will find itself benefited and its deposits increased. Judge Tourgee. — It is a reraa^rkable fact that there is in this country only one "high-grade" publication in which you will find the word " Negro " spelled with a capital " N," except those published by colored men. This is a magazine of considerable literary and artistic merit. In this the colored man is treated with a considera tion and respect which is alraost lacking in most of our literature. It may be a surprise to the Conference that this is a Roman Catholic publication, the St. George Advocate, published at Baltimore. It is expressly devoted to the work of that Church among the Negroes of the South, and occupies the same position upon the color question as that recently expressed by Archbishop Ireland. It claims not only a larger percentage of gain, but an actually larger increase of membership, among the colored people during the past decade than any other Church. Both the publication itself and the account it gives of Roman Catholic work among the Negroes will, I am sure, interest and perhaps startle other merabers of the Conference as it did rae. Dr. Buckley. — I wish to call the attention of the Conference to a fact of great significance which has taken place within a few days, the election of Dr. Haygood and Dr. Fitzgerald as bishops. This is a fact of the greatest significance to the welfare of the Negro. Both of these gentlemen have taken the most advanced position. The fact that both Dr. Haygood and Dr. Fitzgerald had been elected bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, that has a membership of i,6oo,- ooo, all white except a small number scattered through the South, shows that the spirit of the people is rapidly changing. Gen. Eaton. — Dr. Fitzgerald served one term as State Superin tendent of Schools in California, and is a most earnest friend of edu cation. Adjourned at i p.m. ififtl) Session, Friday Morning, June 6. The Conference was called to order at lo a.m., ex-President Hayes in the chair. President Gates, Chairman of the Executive Com mittee, read the platform and resolutions formulated by that com mittee, and announced that action upon them would be taken at a later hour. As the platform was afterwards changed but little, it is given on another page as finally adopted. Rev. Samuel May, of Leicester, Mass., offered the following reso lution, which was referred to the Executive Committee : — Resolved, That this Conference earnestly and affectionately entreats all teachers of schools of colored children and youth, and all others engaged in any way in their education, that they give careful instruction on the subject of alcoholic •drinks ; and especially that they enforce, upon moral and religious grounds, and with reference to the future welfare and usefulness of their pupils, the duty of ¦entire abstinence from all intoxicants. Judge Albion W. Tourgee then gave the following address : — THE NEGRO'S VIEW OF THE RACE PROBLEM. BY ALBION W. TOURGEE. I trust I may be pardoned in advance if, in my remarks, my religion and my politics should become not merely " mixed," as Dr. Abbott feared that his might, but even if it should appear that my religion is mosdy polidcs; for I trust it will also become apparent that my " politics " is not altogether at odds with what we term " religion." I confess, I have never been able to distinguish between them. Without religion, politics is simply the hot-bed of iniquity, the stamp ing-ground of devilish impulse ; and, without politics, religion is as dead as "faith without works." When Christianity quits the field of political relation or polidcs discards the tenets of Christian philos ophy, I have little use for either. I have sometimes thought that the Christ I worship is not the Christ whom raany revere. I cannot look upon him as merely a weak, tender, pitying nature, who stood beside the seething tide of human life and tearfully dropped anaesthetics on its woes. My Christ is he of the knotted whipcords, who pitied human wofulness less than he hated the evil conditions from which it springs. I love to think of him as a raan, and believe in his divinity because he neither shunned the woes of humanity nor excused its evils. I love to think that he lived in a cabin not much better than those we have heard so much about at this Conference ; that he probably sat upon the floor IOS ate his food with his fingers, found his friends among the poorest poor, and would not be patronized by the rich ; who pointed out the one golden possibility of human nature and formulated the one prin ciple by which humanity may hope for betterment here or salvadon hereafter, yet would be flouted as a tramp to-day by his most respect able followers. I love to think that he knew human woe and its causes, and based upon such knowledge the remedy he prescribed for its cure. I love to think that the sandal-strings chafed his feet, that the dust and grime besmirched his body, and the salty sweat-drops crept beneath his eyelids and dropped from off his beard, while he strode along over the sun-parched hills of Judea, doing good, and implanting in the hearts of humble followers an undying zeal for humanity. I love to think that the searaless coat he wore was often in need of washing, and that, like the colored man when freed from bondage, he had not where on earth to lay his head. To my mind, the Christ was not more a savior than a politician, — studying first the facts of huraan life, tracing the causes of evil, ira- posing on every one the duty of considering the welfare of others, and making " Do unto others as ye would that they should do to you " the golden key by which alone the gate of heaven may be unlocked. I do not believe that this divine thinker, on whose heart the burden of human anguish forever rested, meant mere sympathy when he asked the weary to come unto him because his yoke was easy, and shouted down the centuries the universal and inexorable command, " Bear ye one another's burdens." He meant not pity, but healing, — the amelioration of huraan conditions, — and raade that the sole lesson of huraan duty, the universal principle on which collective as well as individual conduct is rightly based, the truest policy, the grandest selfishness, whereby the highest happiness is raade to depend on individual effort to uplift humanity. This, to my mind, is Chris tianity, the kernel of civilization, the mainspring of popular govern ment, the only "practical " politics, — no more to be fully achieved by us than the purity of the Christ-life, yet ever to be striven for as the one pearl of price in the world's social philosophy. So far as I am concerned, therefore, religion and politics cannot be separated in the consideration of the " Negro Question." The rule of duty imposed upon us as individuals, upon the American Church, upon the American Republic, upon Christian civilization, as regards the Araerican Negro, is siraply that we shall treat him as, in reversed conditions, we would desire hira to treat us. That is the sole measure of right betwixt man and man, nation and nation, race and race, class and class. It is the golden coin of righteousness, bearing the Christ- stamp, and issued frora the mint of Truth upon the Mount of Olives. All imitations or substitutes are false, hollow, spurious. So the first thing to be learned about the Negro Question by those who would solve it truly is the Negro's view of the race problem. I do not mean by this the view which an uneducated individual Negro raay entertain, nor even that which any single educated representative of the race might formulate, but the general sentiment, inherent and inevitable as the result of past events and present conditions, of the colored race in the United States, regarding their present, past, and future relations to the residue of the Araerican people. Such general ideas io6 common to races, peoples, and classes are very subtle in character, sometimes difficult to trace, always hard to formulate, and frequently almost impossible to define. They are latent forces, which are often entirely incomprehensible by other peoples who have the closest visible relations with them. No doubt Pharaoh and the more intelli gent and cultivated classes of Egypt believed they fully understood the character of the degraded tribes they had held in bondage for four hundred years ; but it is doubtful if one of them dreamed of that fierce tide of theocratic nationalism which burst from Moses' lips as he gazed upon the waves that engulfed Israel's pursuers. It is not probable that one in a thousand of the Jewish people had ever uttered such scorching maledictions as centuries afterwards fell from the Hebrew prophet's tongue, when he told again the story of the bondage in Egypt. Yet they no doubt found an echo in every Israelitish heart, and these hissing curses are unquestionably the true expression of the Jewish view of the period of the sojourn in Egypt. The Irish man's idea of the Irish question has required sorae centuries to formulate : perhaps it is not yet fully formulated ; but one can get some idea of it by tapping any average Irishman and analyzing the results. You will not find it in the words he uses, but in the spirit he manifests, — in what he tries to say rather than in what he says. So the Negro's view of the race problem must be inferred from conditions and human as well as racial proclivities, even more than from individual testimony. The testimony of observers raust always be construed, too, with regard to their bias and relation to the race. And the testimony of the race itself raust be read in the light of its own past experience. Both these facts we have alraost ignored. We . have sought testimony about the Negro from his avowed friends and confessed enemies, and think we shall obtain the truth by " splitting the difference " between them. The testimony of the Negro in regard to his past and present conditions and aspirations for the future is worth more than that of all the white observers that can be packed upon the planet. The man who wears the shoe knows better than anybody else just where it pinches. He may not know how to remedy the defect ; but the cobbler will never fix it unless the wearer tells hira just where and how it hurts. We wise white people may know more about remedies and their methods of application than he ; but the Negro owns the bunion, and his testimony is worth more than that of all the rest of raankind upon what hurts it, and his view of how and where the race question pinches him is the first prerequisite of any sensible attempt at a cure. The Southern white man almost universally asserts that he knows the colored raan better than any one else, because he and his for bears held him for a dozen generations as a bondman. Yet if his tory teaches anything, it is that the gulf between the master and the slave is the hardest of all social chasms to span, and the master's estimate of the bondman's interest, character, and rights, the farthest possible from the bondman's notion of the same. Thus we find the colored ministers of Charleston deliberately asserting in a public address, only a few years ago, that " the slave-owner knew no more about the Negro, as a man, than if he had lived on an inaccessible island in mid-ocean." With such differences, how shall I dare attempt to give the Negro view of the race problem ? 107 I have only the right to express an opinion, and have a right to have an opinion only because I have studied this question from this particular point of view for a quarter of a century, — because I first dissected, out of actual Negro lives, the spiritual elements from which were synthetically constructed "Toinette," "Nimbus," "Uncle Jerry,'' "Pactolus Prime," and half a dozen other characters, in which this very idea is the distinguishing quality. Any one who reads ray works will perceive at once that this peculiar phase of this problem has been a matter of special study with me. For instance, " Nimbus," the leading character of " Bricks without Straw," is first introduced engaged in a disquisition upon the subject of names, which has been discussed here, and in regard to which one of our friends pretty broadly intimated that my statement that the slave was not allowed to marry or have a surname was untrue, because in his father's family Bible there was a record of the births, marriages (?), and deaths of his slaves. I do not question that man's sincerity : he could not have intended to raake a false irapression on your minds; but he forgot that marriage is something more than permitted cohabi tation, and that a name is no name at all unless the bearer has a legal right to it. He knows very well, and would not dare deny, that such entries as he describes, even though made in a family Bible, had no raore the quality of a family record, so far as the slave was con cerned, than the pedigree of a thoroughbred horse. He knows that in every State of the South the marriage of the slave was an impos sibility, and that no slave could have a surname because he could not have a legal sire. Bastardy was forcibly entailed upon five millions by Christian laws. I do not say this to wound his feelings or cast any imputation on his ancestors. Every American citizen was respon sible for the sin of slavery. All shared in its advantages, and all are morally bound to aid in remedying its resultant ills. The Negro view of these things is not that of the sometime master, however; and, the farther he gets away from those conditions, the less excuse will he find for the white Christian's relation to his nameless sire, and to the mother whom our laws degraded to the status of a dam. My study of the Negro began when he was still a slave, but when the fetters were already dropping from his hands. Fleeing from a Confederate prison, I sought his aid with confidence, and tested not only his faithfulness, but his sagacity. As a soldier, I saw him shed his blood for the flag which had meant only bondage and oppression for his race, though already growing radiant with the promise of lib erty. During fifteen of the early years of his freedom (1865 to 1880), I studied him as an employer, a citizen, a lawyer, a judge. I was thoroughly familiar with his status in every portion of one of the Southern States, and since that time have studied it in every State of the South, keeping always uppermost in my mind his view of his past and his hope for the future. I have studied him, I will admit, with growing appreciation. He is a new type, a new man. He has sloughed off the African, and is first of all things an_ American,- American in instinct and aspiration as well as largely in blood. In sorae respects, he understands the white raan better than the white man understands himself. As a race he has not yet come to a full formulation of his view of the past or a complete realization of the io8 reladons of the present. But the elements are readily discernible to one who studies hira as a man, not as a raere appanage of the white race. I have not always understood him. I am not certain that any one can who has not suffered with him. I have never been so sure as many of our friends what was the very best thing to be done for the colored man ; but I have never doubted that the most exact justice and the fullest recognition of his equality of right raust be the prime elements of any successful policy which has for its purpose the eleva tion of the race and the development of his individual raanhood. Wrong is never cured by fresh injustice, and raanhood is never ennobled by being compelled to wear the brand of inferiority. I have not always been quite sure that the teaching we are giving the Negro is the very best, either for him or for ourselves. It has occurred to me that God and Mammon are queerly mixed in the ideal we commend to him. Praise God and raake money seems to me a fair paraphrase of the advice given him even here. I doubt the good results of the prescription. Remember, he may take us literally. There is danger that such an education may produce hypocrites and misers. Men are needed, I think, more than ministers ; example rather than exhortation. I may be wrong, but I have thought wise expenditure a raore important lesson for the race to-day than rigid economy. To my mind, every rich Negro is an evidence of bad teaching. No Negro has a right to be rich while so many of his people are ignorant and unformed. But what can we expect ? They are black and " inferior." Freedom did not raake them wise and perfect, as it no doubt would if they had been white. They have taken us at our word. They are better economists than we ourselves. They live with less expenditure than any equal number of white people. A larger proportion of them have become land-owners than of any equally impoverished and unprepared class of whites in a like period, a smaller proportion of them are supported by public charity, a larger number of them have become rich, and their aggregate posses sions are greater than any equal number of illiterate, landless whites without inheritance or fortuitous discovery ever accumulated in twenty- five years. Not a single white teacher who preaches the gospel of economy to the colored man can begin to live on what the majority of his hearers deem abundance. It is the lesson of wise and fruitful expenditure that should be most earnestly enforced. The race needs heroes and patriots and martyrs rather than millionaires. And they will have heroes and patriots — raen who will joyfully live and die for their fellows — when they have learned to honor devotion to the right, and when individual self-sacrifice for the collective good is accounted a better thing than successful accumulation. So far as the peaceful and Christian solution of the race problem is concerned, indeed, I am inclined to think that the only education required is that of the white race. The hate, the oppression, the injustice, are all on our side ; and every Negro who wins the honors of his class in a Northern college, becomes a cashier in a national bank at Topeka, writes a story which New England people read pub lishes a newspaper which white people are compelled to peruse' wins a merabership in the Boston Press Club, becoraes a dry-goods' clerk in Chicago, or so good a ball-player that a crack club has to secure log his services lest another should^ — each and every one of these col ored men is a missionary sent of God to the white people of the United States, to teach them the fundamental truth of Christianity. There are three elements of the race problem in the United States, — the white man of the North, the white raan of the South, and the Negro. The problem itself consists chiefly of, the views which these three elements take of the Negro and his relation to the others. The Northern white man's vievvt)f the Negro is easily stated. He regards hira either with complete indifference or as a mere object of compas sion, — one of those " weaklings " whom Dr. Harris informed us we were not required to treat with justice, — who is to be supplied with a nursing-bottle, and encouraged to suck it as peaceably as may be. He is at best only an object of charity. Such a thing as duty or a bond of reciprocal interest and obligation existing between thera is hardly thought of. Sorae go so far as to say, and sometimes, per haps, even to believe, that there is no race problem, — nothing to be done to wipe out the memory of past wrong or give assurance of future opportunity. With few exceptions, the white man of the South regards the colored man as a predestinate inferior, to be governed, controlled, and treated as such, to be educated and trained for a secondary and subordinate position. This does not necessarily imply unkindness or intended in justice. It only means the assertion of inherent superiority, and by inference the right to prescribe what constitutes justice to the Negro, what privileges shall be granted to him, and what degree of subservi ency shall be demanded of him. This was the hypothesis on which slavery rested. It is the view which colored all our past civilization. It overthrew the presumptions of the common law, and in the name of Jesus Christ pronounced, by the authority of the churches, the ban of eternal subjection against the superstitious child of Ham. Civilization is rarely heedful of the rights of those whom it can make tributary to its lusts of greed, and Christianity takes on always something of the hue of the life of which it becomes a part. Right and wrong are relative terms between the weak and the strong, but never reversible. What it is right for the strong to do, it is wrong, perhaps even sinful, for the weak to contemplate. Whitefield urged the introduction of slavery into Georgia as a Christian duty, and advocated the importation of Negroes in order that they might be Christianized with the same fervor that their deportation is now urged, — that they may be r^- heathenized. Do not let us be too ready to blame the Christianity of yesterday, either. Thus far Christian nations and races have generally treated subject peoples very much as if Christ had not taught a better way. Protestant civilizadon has been lavish of religious teaching, of Chris tian charity, but wonderfully scant of justice to peoples of dusky skin. American and English ships lay side by side to batter down the Chinese forts, in order to open a way into the Flowery Kingdora for English opium and American missionaries. We are shocked at the brutalities of the Arab slave-traders on the head-waters of the Nile ; but for every slave the followers of Mahomet steal out of the jungl'es of Africa Christian civilization, with arms and rum and rob bery, is to-day sending ten of the children of the Dark Continent no beyond the reach of hope. The Chrisdanization of Africa has only just begun ; but in two hundred years how raany millions of Africans have suffered death at white Christian hands ? Such will always be the character of our civilization as long as we try to keep our politics and our religion apart, — as long as we try to lirait the Golden Rule to individual relations and fly the skull and cross-bones at the raast-head of the Ship of State. " It is merely substituting a new measure for Christian conduct in lieu of the one Christ prescribed. Instead of treating the man of dusky skin as we know we would wish hira to treat us in like conditions, we simply make it the raeasure of our duty that we shall treat him as well as we can afford to do, with out interfering with our own comfort or prejudices, or as well as we think he ought to be treated. Even we who are raet here to discuss the Negro, to deplore his infirmities, to magnify our charity, to extol our own excellences and determine what ought to be done with and for him, do not regard his opinion about the matter as at all irapor tant. We do not ask hira what he thinks of his condition. Not one' in all this assembly has put the question, "In his condition, how would we wish the residue of the American people to treat us ? " He is the poor patient, we are told, who is shut out of the council of the wise physicians for his own sake. He is not even allowed to detail his own symptoras. Why should he ? The physician has a theory : why should he trouble hiraself about facts ? We do not promise jus tice, but are overflowing with mercy. We forget to acknowledge that every kindness done the Negro in our land has been only a scanty patch, half-hiding some hideous wrong. We congratulate ourselves on what we have contributed for his mental and religious develop ment, but quite ignore the fact that for every dollar we have given for his enlightenraent he had before given a thousand for our enrich ment. We boast of the public school system of the States of the South, in which so many colored children are being educated ; but we forget to acknowledge the fact that the public school systera was planted in every Southern State by the vote of the Negro, in direct opposition to an overwhelraing raajority of the whites, and that two white children enjoy its benefits to one colored one. We extol the public spirit which divides the public school fund of the States of the South between the schools of both races, though the Negro pays but a sraall proportion of the taxes, but are as silent as the grave in regard to the equally important fact that it is the unrequited labor of the colored man which created the major part of the valuation on which the white man pays taxes. Yet we are the friends of the Negro : we wish to aid, assist, develop, the race. This is our openly professed purpose in assembling here. Are we willing to apply the rule which Christ of the dusty gabardine prescribed, even to our charitable efforts, and proclaim a desire to undo the wrong of the past by justice in the future ? To the Negro in the United States the race question is one of color only. He is what he is, and all his conditions are what they are merely because a white Christian people have prescribed such con ditions for him because he has raore or less colored blood in his veins. That is why he was imported. That is the reason he was held to service without recompense. That is the reason he was not I II allowed to marry or have a family. Because of this he was prohibited by law frora learning to read or write. Because of this he was pre vented from taking or holding property. Because of this every obstacle was put in the way of his progress from barbarism to civili zation. We do not, we cannot, realize this fact of color. We have even been told here that " there is no race problem " ! I wonder if the raan who made the statement ever tried to apply the Christ-rule to the relation of the races in this Christian land. Did he ever think what it would mean to have in his veins even a few drops of that blood, which Christianity for centuries taught was the indelible mark of the Divine curse ? Did you ever think, sir, how much it would take to hire any one in this audience to assurae the burden of a black skin for a lifetirae ? Where would have been your career of honor, sir, if your cheek had shown a trace of African bronze ? Nay, where and what would the pastor of Plyraouth Church, who sneers at a "race question," have been if God had made him black or brown or even saddle-colored ? Did he ever think how easy it is for a white man to be good, and how much raore grace it must require to save a Negro ? If offered the choice, would he not prefer Cranmer's doom to such a fate ? Would he think there was no " race problem " then ? In all the prayers that have been offered at this Conference I have not heard one word of thankfulness that we are white. I do not suppose any man here dare utter such a prayer in public; yet, ex cepting only life and the hope of salvation, this is the most priceless blessing we enjoy. Wealth, honor, knowledge, civilization, love, — all of these are trivial things to us in comparison with the blessed fact that we are white ! What father here would not rather face a childless age than see this mark upon the brow of a son ? What mother would not becorae a murderer in heart, should she see this stain upon the cheek of her first-born ? When you realize these things, you can begin to guess how the nerves of a race raust quiver at the thought of the brand our Christian civilization puts upon them. When we can realize the horror of such a metamorphosis, we can imagine the feeling of a cultured Christian woman, who has been mentioned here as a model of devoted womanhood, when she said, " I would lie down and be flayed without a murmur if I might only rise up white I " Not that she thought the white race superior, but because the sting of imputed degradation and inferiority never ceases to thrill her nerves and wring her heart with anguish. Let us never forget to thank God that we are white, even if we are ashamed to go before hira on our knees and thank him that we are his favorite children, the pets of his mercy, and the superiors of those to whom he gave darker skins ! Especially let us never forget that this is the prime factor in the Negro's view of the race question, and will con tinue to grow more important to him as he increases in knowledge, reflnement, wealth, and sensibility, unless we make some radical im proveraent in our white Christianity. Another fact that raust continue to affect the Negro's view of the race question and of the relations he sustains to the white man in the United States is the character of his past. It is easy for us to excuse ourselves for the wrongs of slavery, but, day by day, it is growing harder for the colored man to do so; and it is simply to state a I 12 universal fact of human nature to declare that a great and lasting wrong like slavery done to a whole people because of race or creed grows blacker and darker for generations and ages as they go away frora it. The educated grandchild of the slave who looks back into the black pit of slavery will find litde excuse for the white Christian civilization which forbade raarriage, crushed aspiration, and after two centuries and a half offered the world as the fruits of Christian endeavor five raillions of bastard sons and daughters, — the product of a promiscuity enforced by law and upheld by Christian teaching f Slavery will be a more terrible thing to the Negro a hundred- years hence than it was to the calloused consciousness of his nameless father, and a more shameful horror to your grandchild's soul than it was to the aching heart of Garrison. We say — perhaps we sometimes even think — that, because slavery no longer exists as a legalized form of society, we may dismiss it from our thought, and no longer consider it as a factor of our civilization. In truth, the conditions it bequeathed are far raore difficult and delicate than those attending its existence. It is a living force in the white raan's thought and in the colored man's life. The lessons it taught to both races are ineradicable by law, and are beyond the control of mere reason. The white raan of the South thinks he would rather perish frora the earth than be accounted only the equal of the colored man ; while the Negro is fast coming to an appreciation of the fact that subordination is only a longer name for subjection. He dare not yield his claim to equality of right and opportunity, even if he would. These irrepressible conflicting tendencies are the heritage of slavery, and the American people who planted and protected this upas-tree must see to it that they do not bring a still greater evil. What ought we to do ? Let us try to imagine ourselves colored men, with dusky wives and children, and then answer with the fear of God before our eyes ! A good deal has been said here about the character and quality of the Negro's religion. I always wonder that a white Christian dare cast any imputation on the Negro's faith. For one, I am glad that he has any faith at all. To me, the fact that the American Negro is ever a Christian is the greatest of miracles that has been wrought since the grave yielded up its dead. Remember in what school he was taught Christian truth ! Look at his surroundings as he must view thera ! Think that his first religious lessons were that God had created him to serve the will of his white Christian brother ; that the earth and its fulness belonged to the white man, and that the Negro was added merely to promote his pleasure and advantage ; that the white man was allowed to own, occupy, and possess all he could acquire, but it was a sin for the colored man to assume control of his own body and brain ; that marriage was a holy ordinance to the white man, but a forbidden privilege to the Negro ; that home and faraily were sacred to his white brother, but forbidden by Christian law to the slave ; that the white man was expected to die in defence of the virtue of his wife and daughter, but that the Negro's cabin stood forever open to the ravisher ; that knowledge was the key-stone of the white man's religion, progress, and liberty, but that Christian laws forbade the colored man to learn to read the word of God ! Remem- 113 ber that, for generations, the laws of Christian American States forbade three colored men to meet together for prayer unless a white man were present to see that they did not prejudice the Almighty against "the superior race." Remember these things, and think what must he the Negro's view of them, and, when next you lift your heart in prayer, forget not to thank God that these five raillions of our brethren, born naked, fatherless, homeless, nameless, and ignorant out of the womb of slavery, came forth not vengeful savages, but peaceful believers, whom even their unprecedented wrongs did not move to strife ! Nay, if you wish a lesson in Christian devotion and self-sacrifice, read the story of the African Methodist Church, every one of the half million merabers of which is the child of a slave, — who twenty-five years ago were not worth twenty-five cents apiece outside of the clothes they wore, — and see the reported aggregate of raore than $2,000,000 paid by them for religious and charitable purposes in one year. No other church has ever begun to equal that under like con ditions of poverty and difficulty. Strike off half, and it still reraains a miracle. Halve it again, and the Christians of the Catacombs may well hail them across the intervening ages as their closest exemplars ! We have commented here, in this Conference, with that freedom which springs only from conscious rectitude on the morals of the Negro. I do not suppose that in this respect he is without fault ; but I leave to any fair-minded man or woman to answer if he is not better than we have any reason to expect to find him after the training of two centuries of Christian slavery. Reraeraber that the white man's example has bleached not only the Negro's morals, but his skin, until one of the raost prominent slave-traders of the South testified that hardly one in a thousand of the colored people in the United States is of unmixed Negro blood I But even here there is room to note something to the credit of the brother in black ; and we ought to give even the devil his due, despite "race, color, or previous condition." For two centuries. Christian civilization encouraged and compelled raere promiscuity among the slaves. As soon as they became free, this unhallowed relation became offensive to our eyes, and men and women who had pre viously " taken up with each other," as the courts phrased it, were required to register themselves as man and wife, or abandon their previous relations. For this registration they were also required to pay a good round fee. In several counties embraced in my judicial district, I investigated the proportion of those who assumed and those who renounced the old relation. The former was surprisingly large, ranging from 94 to 97 per cent, according to the estimates of the best informed parties. I suppose in the whole eight counties it would have reached 90 per cent, at least. Let the raarriage bonds be dissolved throughout the State of New York to-day, and it may be doubted if as large a proportion of her intelligent white citizens would choose again their old partners. But, before we utterly condemn the Negro for incurable immorality, let us ask where in all this republic can be found a white jury who would give above a sixpence damages for the seduction of a colored woman by a white man, or render a verdict in favor of a colored 114 woman suing a white man for breach of promise of marriage, no matter what the testimony. I must say one word in reference to what is known as the " Blair Bill," the defeat of which has been often referred to here with regret. I suppose my views in regard to national aid to education are well known. I do not think the government of the United States deserves to exist unless it makes provision for the cure of that ignorance which it fostered in whites and blacks alike at the South, in its insane desire to perpetuate slavery. One who loves the flag for which he fought can say nothing more emphatic. I believe I was the first man who proposed the appropriation of national funds to the schools of the country, in the ratio of illiteracy. Thirteen years before the " Blair Bill " was first introduced, I had presented to Congress the Memorial of the Republicans of North Carolina, asking that such aid be ex tended. "A Fool's Errand" and "Bricks without Straw" had been written with the sole purpose of calling the attention of the Araerican people to education as the only hopeful reraedy for Southern condi tions. Other volumes followed ; and I doubt not that many of those here present signed the petitions I afterwards circulated upon the subject, and which are yet preserved in bound volumes in the Con gressional Library. That I am a firm believer in national aid to State schools cannot therefore be doubted. Yet I do not hesitate, in the name and on behalf of the colored people of the United States, to express here the most profound gratitude that this measure failed to become a law. Why? Because it was the raost araazing piece of injustice which ever resulted from unwise methods linked to kindly purpose. Two-thirds of the illiterates of the South are colored : one- third of them are white. The schools for the two races are every where separate. The " Blair Bill " proposed, in effect, to pay over to each State one dollar a year for eight years for every illiterate in it. Two-thirds of the funds would therefore have been paid by the United States on account of colored illiterates. But it was required to be distributed per capita; and, the schools being separate for the two races, the colored schools of the South would have received one- third and the white schools two-thirds of the fund, though the colored schools represent two-thirds of the illiteracy. A child can see that it is precisely equivalent to the United States paying four times as much for the enlightenment of a white illiterate as for the education of a colored illiterate, besides giving the whites of the South control of even that raodicum of the national gratuity. I was forced to oppose this bill, despite its seductive tide, both because I cannot approve in justice and because I do not believe that God ever made a people good enough to be intrusted with another people's right and interests I regard the defeat of that measure as another evidence that God is on the side of the colored man, and has heard at length his Ions neglected appeal for justice, saving him in this case even from the folly of his friends. No doubt that many warm friends of the colored man and even many of the colored people themselves, were sorely hurt by the failure of this measure. It is not always easy to perceive that bad methods raay be just as harmful as bad purposes. But, if the meas ure had passed, within a year or just as soon as its' working was' "5 generally understood, every colored man would have been stirred to righteous wrath by an injustice all the more ga:lling because un intended ; and it is better — a thousand-fold better — that a people should suffer injustice for ages than welcome it for an hour. I have sought, in these remarks, not so much to define the " Negro View of the Race Question" as to show how it maybe arrived at by any candid raind. I have confidence in the future, because I believe in an overruling Providence. I ara not one of those optiraists who believe that whatever is is right, nor one of the sort of "fools" who believe that what is cannot be made better. To do justice is the highest function of civilization ; to atone for wrong, the noblest phase of Christian endeavor. When Grant lay dying on Mt. McGregor, he wrote upon the margin of one of his proofs this sen tence, "No nation can do wrong without paying the penalty." If he had done nothing more, this apothegm should have made his name immortal. It is the perfect flower of the seed planted on Olivet. God keeps account between nations and peoples as well as between man and man. History is but a record of his judgment upon them. The Negro is not only "here to stay," but is here to offer the American Christian republic a chance to atone by justice in the future for the sin of the past, and thereby escape the wrath of that God to whom a thousand years are but a day. It is all very well to look to the future ; but he who tries to separate it from the past is as foolish as one who seeks to run away from his own shadow. Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow are an eternal repetend. To-day is what it is because Yesterday was what it was, and every To-mor row must be. what all its Yesterdays shall make it. This is God's law of human evolution ; and man's will is as powerless to change it as it is to make yesterday what it was not. Prophecy is not so much a foreknowledge of what shall be as a clearer comprehension of what has been, and he who would foretell the future will look for ever in the mirror which reflects the past ! I have not wished by these remarks to give offence or disturb the harmony of this meeting ; but I could not consent that he who fought with me for the land we love should be without one to speak for him in a council where the wise men of another race have met to consider his welfare, condemn his faults, and determine what duty the white Christians of America owe to eight millions of people who served faithfully for two centuries, paying in advance the tuition of their children in the school of civilization. I believe that, if the trustful, reverent spirit of that race were here present in some perfected type, looking without malice upon the past, clearly discerning the condi tions of the present, and desiring only the common welfare in the future, it would present for your consideration not only the com- placendy admonitory "platform" your committee have reported, but resolutions something like these, as expressive of the Negro view of this raost important of all the questions confrondng American civili zation : — Resolved, That this Conference recognizes with solemn and profound convic tion the hand of an all-wise God in that mysterious chain of circumstances by which the African was brought to these shores, absorbed the rudiments of civilization, was miraculously freed from bondage, learned the way of salvation, was exalted ii6 to citizenship, given equality of right, and linked irrevocably with the destiny of the republic; that, as in all this He that seeth the end from the beginning has baffled human wisdom, overruled human greed, and made the wrath of man to praise him, we humbly invoke his guidance, and implore him to show the American people what there is for them to do in the further unfolding of his righteous purpose. Resolved, That the American nation and the Christian world have reason to be profoundly grateful that a people numbering eight millions, but recently emerging from the shadow of a wrong the wofulness of which no human mind can measure, laying aside the instincts of the savage, have crowded to the altar and the school room, asking only to be shown the way of life, and to be allowed to take a man's part in the world's great battle for human welfare. And we desire to express our profound thankfulness that he has soiled his new manhood by no vengeful acts of bloodshed or violence. Resolved, That the unrecompensed labor of the colored race during two hundred and fifty years, the proceeds of which went to swell the aggregate of our national wealth, which cleared the lands and helped to build the churches and schools of the South, enhanced the profit of Northern industries and helped to make the American republic invincible in power and unprecedented in prosperity, constitutes the American Negro an actual and meritorious creditor of American civilization, whose claim can only be discharged by recognition of his rights as a man, and the fullest and freest opportunity to gather for h mself the fair fruits ot that Christian civilization of which we boast, and which we profess to exemplify. Resolved, That we note with grateful wonder the marvellous fact that a race only twenty-five years out of bondage, from which they came naked as the child from the mother's womb, without education, without experience, without accumula tions, have so well used their new opportunity that already they pay one-twentieth of the taxes of the States in which they constitute a moiety of the population ; that more than one-fifth of their number over the age of ten years are able to read and write, and that from six to ten per cent, already sit beneath their own roof-trees ; that they pay a larger proportion of their incomes for charitable. and religious uses than any people known to history. And, when we reflect that this has been done upon a rate of wages ranging from one-third to two-fifths of that which the Northern farm laborer receive?, and has been accomplished on the hot embers of civil strife, we are constrained to admit that we see in this race, new risen to the light of man hood, a people worthy of recognition as a constituent element of American life, and rivals and worthy competitors both in the worship of God and in the service of man. Resolved, That, while we recognize the wisdom and justice of the Southern States in devoting an equal proportion of their school taxes to the education of colored youth, though the colored race pays so small a portion of the same, we perceive in it only another instance of that wise foresight by which the rich, and especially the landholder, of other States pays for the education of the poor and landless, in order that their children may be peaceful and self-supporting citizens rather than criminal and impoverished burdens upon society. And we feel bound to call to the attention of those of our Southern brethren who deem this burden onerous that a very large proportion of this tax is the result ot a valuation created by the Negro's labor during two centuries and a half of bondage. Reso'ved, That, while we heartily commend the efforts of the white people of the South for the education of the Negro, we should not forget that the white youth of the South, the American people, and the Christian world owe an immense debt to the race which, in the very hour in which it crept from the chrysalis of slavery to the new estate of citizenship, planted by their voice and votes in the fundamental law of those States the free public school system, never known there before, and then opposed by three-fourths of the white voters of those States, whose blessing and beneficence twice as many white as colored children enjoy to-day. Resolved, That the nation, whose Constitution, laws, courts, and power upheld and protected the system of African slavery, became thereby responsible for the wrongs it inflicted, and is to-day a trustee de son tort of the educational privileges denied the slave. The duty of the nation to aid in curing illiteracy is therefore not merely an obligation of policy, but one having the highest moral sanction. Yet we are constrained to congratulate the colored people of the United States on the defeat of a measure so flagrantly unjust that it gave to the white schools of the South from two to five times as much for each white illiterate as it gave to colored schools for each colored illiterate. 117 I thank you for your kind attention, and beg to say that, in my opinion, nothing would so surely and swiftly tend to the peaceful solution of the Negro problem which to-day afflicts us as the candid and unshrinking acknowledgment of the undeniable facts stated in these resolutions ; and the cheerful recognition of the first and raost needed step toward the moral, social, and religious development of the Negro which the people of the United States can take is to admit that the Negro is entitled to that first, last, simplest, grandest, and richest boon which man asks in Christ's name of his fellow-man, — justice. Hon. Andrew D. White, ex-President of Cornell University. — There is an old theory that the first thing a speaker should do is to get the sympathy of his audience. My friends, I feel that I ought to have your sympathy ; for I come forward, "no orator as Brutus is," succeeding this outburst of eloquence, of wit, of humor, of pathos, with which my distinguished friend has enchained you, and which will raake it, I fear, very difficult for me to bring you back into what seeras to rae the true line of our deliberations. Carried away, as I have been, by his eloquence, as he has depicted to us the horrors of the past, the wrongs of the black race, the crimes in which North and South have shared, I have remembered one great text, " Forgetting those things which are behind, and reach ing forth unto those things which are before, I press forward toward the mark." I trust that he will forgive me if I say that, while I rec ognize in his speech much which should incite us all to more earnest effort, I must still insist that the first and only question at a meeting like this should be, " What is to be done, and how can we do it ? " This is no time for crimination and recrimination. We know that we have been miserable sinners : let us press forward, and see if the future cannot be made to atone for the past. Last night I looked out over the landscape, and saw all that won derful display which none of us are likely to forget. Never have I known anything more sublime, — the thunder echoing and re-echo ing araong these raountain peaks, the lightning flashing along the valleys and coruscating among the forests. But, when it was over, I lighted a simple candle, and was able to read better by it than by all the lightning. So perhaps now, after this storra of oratory, sorae light more steady, if less brilliant, may be of use. I came to this Conference with a heavy heart. I believed then, and I believe now, that there is a great Negro problem. Though not a great traveller through the South, it has been ray lot at various times to go through several of the Southern States, to talk with men who are considered leaders, to visit universities, intermediate schools, primary schools, and to glean such information as could be obtained from professors, teachers, and even from the Negro scholar himself. And I have received more from the teachers than frora all others, — such teachers as are represented at this meeting ; and I have felt at times that I could kneel before them and kiss their feet for the noble work they are doing, for the self-sacrifices they are making. The main reason for the apprehensions with which I approached this discussion was that throughout the South I have constantly heard ii8 talk seeming to point toward a terrible future, a struggle between white men and black men for the supremacy. It cannot fail to strike us all that, under slavery, with all its evils, there were some beautiful relations which no longer exist. When our friend. Dr. Allen, brought tears to the eyes of all of us by the story of his childhood and of the prayer made by the old slave, we must all have felt that something had been lost. It is evident that the two races are for some time to separate raore and more : each is to stand on its own feet. The old relation between the white people and the colored is alraost entirely gone. The members of the colored race are now called upon to make good their footing as men. And the simple question which confronts us is. How shall the evolution of a better future for the colored race be secured, while the peace and prosperity of the white race shall reraain unharmed? I suppose that, if this nineteenth century is remembered for any thing, it will be, on the whole, as the century which gave to the world the idea of an evolution in human affairs. I do not mean especially Darwinism, or the theory of Lamarck, or the theory of Mivart ; but it has certainly come into the thinking of the world that all huraan progress is by a process of evolution, an unfolding of good into better. This has been borne in upon us more and more as tirae has gone on. But have you ever thought at what fearful price this evolu tion process has gone on hitherto ? There is hardly a conquest in civil liberty, there is hardly a conquest in civilization, which has not been gained by blood. What a price was paid for toleration on the continent of Europe, — the Thirty Years' War, the great religious wars of France and Gerraany ! What a price^was paid for the sira- plest principles of Anglo-Saxon liberty, — long struggles and wars extending through hundreds of years ! There is, indeed, an evolution by a siraple natural process, a proc ess which is coraparatively easy and peaceful, but there is far raore frequent evolution by catastrophe, by cataclysm ; and I feel now that we are at the parting of the ways between these two. The question is, In this evolution of a better future for the South, for the black raan, for the white man, for the whole country, for humanity, are we to have progress by growth or progress by catastrophe ? Is it to be a great cataclysm, — races projected against each other, destroying each other, with the survival of the fittest, in the worst sense in which that phrase can be brought horae to us, or a steady progress by edu cation ? There are those here who will reraeraber the proposal made by Henry Clay fifty years ago : it was a large, statesman-like plan. He proposed what we may call an evolution by growth. He urged that the slave children should be bought as they were born, and that, on reaching the age of twenty-five years, they should become free. The cost of such an effort was estimated at twenty-five raillions of dollars. From all sides there came a howl of derision. As to the North, I reraeraber eloquent speeches in which it was declared that no man ought to buy the blood of his fellow-man. In the South there were speeches similarly eloquent, declaring slavery to be sanctioned by the Bible and the Constitution, and that the very foundations of labor must in the long run rest upon slaves. Henry Clay's proposal was 119 rejected : it would have cost us twenty-five millions by peaceful evo lution, and not a single human life. In place of that plan came prog ress by revolution and catastrophe. And in this way emancipation has come. It has cost us, from first to last, nearly a million of lives, and with the sacrifices of values, both North and South, hardly less than ten thousand millions of dollars. There is an example of prog ress by catastrophe. Which sort of progress will our nation now have ? Which solution of the great problem before us shall we labor for here and now ? Here is a great question to be settled. It is not to be settled, and I trust my friend will pardon me for saying so, even by such magnif icent and thrilling denunciations as his. I believe that it is far more likely to be settled by these young women who have given us the simple story of their teaching in the South. Far more effective than all charges and counter-charges will be the work of the various Chris tian bodies in settling these questions. All peaceful agencies must be pressed into the service, individual. State, and national. What ever minor injustice raay have been involved in the Blair bill, which ray friend has so eloquently denounced, I confess to a deep regret that it or some other adequate measure did not pass. We cannot always have all that we would have ; but we can at any rate press on to something that is better. I say it deliberately. Anything is better than bringing this question to a bloody issue. My friend has said that he trusts and believes that God will bring this question to a proper issue. Doubtless he will ; but God's instruments are men, and the question is. How shall men work in carrying out the Divine purpose ? Humanly speaking. He leaves it to men : the question comes back, How shall raen discharge this duty ? History puts before us two ways, the way of peaceful growth and the way of sanguinary revolution. There is one experience of raine which gives rae much hope. It was once my lot to see what black raen have become when they have lost the traditions of slavery. I have stood in the midst of black men who never recognized themselves as inferiors of any man. I have taken them by the hand and sat with them at the table, and never for a moraent did it occur to thera that as raen they were in ferior to any others in existence. Twenty years ago I was sent as one of three commissioners to the Black Republic of Santo Dpmingo, for the purpose, as some of you will remember, of making a report with reference to the annexation proceedings then pending. For the first tirae I saw black men who had never known themselves as mem bers of an inferior race, and I then realized what a black man might become. The president of that republic, a black raan, had been educated in the best schools of Europe, spoke two or three languages fluently, and was trained as a soldier and a diplomatist. Though a Marshal of Spain, his whole carriage was that of a modest, quiet citi zen. So it was with the Ministers of State about him. Afterward I met the President of the Haytian Republic, another man of the sarae stamp. Then our Commission visited Jamaica, and there we saw in exile another president of Hayti, a man in some respects superior to either of the others, — a man of high character and high culture. There was great encouragement in this : these were raen who had 120 left slavery far behind thera. Though there were white men in Santo Domingo and in Hayti, these colored -men had at last asserted their manhood, and were the equals, if not the superiors, of the white men whora they saw about them. I do not expect this condition of things to come in a day. If it ever comes, it will be the product of long years of earnest work. All that we can do is to prepare the way for a peaceful evolution, to smooth the path toward a time when the black man shall have peace ably becorae what Providence determines that he may and ought to becorae. I am not in favor of forcing any question whatever, least of all any social question. Give the black man a fair chance, give hira simple aid where he has a right to it, and then leave him to de velop a better future. One thing more. I put it forth simply as a germinal thought : if it is good for nothing, it will wither and die ; if it is good for something, it may survive in some minds, and possibly bear fruit. I think it was Bishop Haygood, whom all of us so greatly love and respect, who put forth the idea that it would be well if the South would establish an educational test for suffrage. Such a course would doubtless disfran chise temporarily a large proportion of the colored population, and indeed a part of the white population. The South might tempo rarily lose some electoral votes, but it would gain in strength and respect throughout the Union. More than that, I believe that the results of such a course would be so good that it would eventually spread to raost, if not all, of the Northern States. I confess to the hope that the time will corae when, not only in the North, but in the South, there will be a siraple educational test for suffrage. There is no longer any excuse for ignorance of reading and writing in the North, and shortly there will be none in the South. There was a tirae when there was an excuse : that tirae has now past. I agree with ray friend, Dr. Allen, that we have treraendous ques tions at the North, quite as serious as those at the South. We have coraing in upon us a flood of people who, by all their traditions and habits, are unfitted as yet for the high duties of a republic like this. You may say that revolutions do not go backward. Granted ; but I claim that this is a revolution which goes forward : it places the re public on a higher plane. Take an example in this very State : In 1847 we sank back toward mobocracy. We elected judges on sraall salaries for short terras : we did the sarae with the governors. We have swung backward or forward, whichever you choose to call it, out of that. We now elect men for longer terras. In many ways we have returned to more conservative principles ; and I believe that such a return to enlightened conservative principles is the highest advance which we can make. Those of you who have read history know that the only republic which managed to save itself out of the ruin and chaos of the sixteenth century, in Italy, was Venice ; for she was the only republic which dared to go back to a restriction of suffrage on the basis of ascer tained fitness. All those other republics perished early in the six teenth century ; but the republic of Venice lasted two hundred and fifty years longer, and would have remained in being until our time but for the coming of Napoleon Bonaparte. 121 But I did not intend to run into a historical dissertation. I can only plead for counsels here looking toward a peaceful rather than a warlike solution of this great question, and a steady evolution, in which the main agency is intellectual, moral, and religious education, and the avoidance of everything which shall stir strife and war. Mr. Glenn, of Baltimore. — In rising to address so distinguished an audience as this, and after the eloquent addresses which it has been my pleasure and privilege to listen to, I must confess that I feel somewhat appalled. I am no orator. I ara a simple business man, and the ideas which I shall advance are only from the practical side. But first let me return ray thanks to Mr. Smiley, to whose kind courtesy, although a perfect stranger to him, I owe my presence here. Allow me also to tender my thanks to you, ladies and gentlemen, for the privilege which I have enjoyed in listening to the words of wis dom and Christian consideration which have characterized the utter ances of the last two days. These days have to me been a revela tion. It is the first time that I have ever felt that I could speak with perfect freedom with Northern men, and that, notwithstanding our divergence of views, it was possible for us to interchange ideas with that mutual consideration without which the solution of any problem would be impossible. After the course which these discussions have taken, I can say, without hesitation, that, if the mind of the North and the mind of the South can be brought together outside of this parlor as they have corae together within it, the Negro problem would be solved. With harmony, I do not believe that any problem can pre sent itself to the consideration of the Anglo-Saxon mind which will not be easy of solution. Without harmony, you have lately tried to solve a problem; and it has convulsed the life of the nation to its very centre. But, to bring about this harmony, the attitude of both the South and the North must be changed. I was brought up to believe that a man who was able to hold a slave and would refuse to do so was guilty of moral cowardice in rejecting the responsibility. This idea I cannot expect you to accept. On the other hand, you must not expect me to believe that slavery was sin, and that the slaveholder was a moral reprobate, to be saved, not by grace, but only by the uncovenanted mercies of the Almighty. You will have to learn to regard the institution as a step in the hands of Providence in the progress of the race, and to look at it, not from a sentimental, but from an historical point of view. We all know the part that the feudal system has played in the progress of civilization. We would not wish it back again. There are many things connected with it which we would not repeat to-day. But the feudal system was as far in advance of the Roman' slavery which it replaced as it was behind the liberty of the eighteenth century, which supplanted it. And so with slavery : it was a step in the civilization of the race, and as far ahead of the African barbarism, whose place it took, as it was behind the freedom for which it made way. It has been mentioned here that this race has made more progress within twenty-five years than any other race known to history. It has, and it has only because, as Dr. Harris has said, it has been for two hundred years so near to the Anglo-Saxon heart ; and it is to the civilization of the Master and its influence that this wonderful prog- 122 ress has been possible for which you admire the race and so properly coramend it. Again, what are the evils with which our civilization is struggling to-day, and which are trying its very soul ? Pauperism, insanity, drunkenness, and the great social evil. These found no place in slavery. There was at times impurity, but differing neither in degree nor kind from the impurity found among our laboring classes to-day. But the great social evil did not exist among the race, although since freedora it has grown in startling proportions. With Judge Tourgee's reraarks on this question I cannot agree. Now, Mr. President, I can only say that a civilization which could absolutely control such evils, — evils with which our civilization is to-day confessing its in ability to grapple, — such an institution, I say, could not have been entirely the creation of the devil, but must have had its place in the great Providential scheme. Again, I have heard the evils of free dom alluded to. If freedora has brought with it evils, the only cure for these evils is raore freedom. You are not applying this remedy. You are controlling the black man to-day by a slavery more tyran nous and cruel than was ever African slavery. You are placing him in a false position, for which he is to-day unfitted and unprepared ; for you are telling him that he is the social equal of the Southern raan, while you are showing hira by your practice that he is not the social equal of his brother frora the North, and you are thus antagoniz ing him against those with whora he is to live, and upon his harrao- nious association with whora depend his elevation and civilization, and the welfare, too, of those who are naturally and by situation his best friends. One raore word, and I have done ; and in this I am sure that many of you will not agree with me. This question, in my opinion, is in its essence not national, but local. The Indian question is a national one. It is a national heri tage and a national obligation. It presses upon all parts alike, and presses upon no section. This is not the case with the Negro prob lem. The responsibility of their presence has been placed upon the South, and they should manage it. I do not mean that we do not t want your help. We need your money to help us to build the schools which our insufficiency of raeans does not enable us to supply ; for on the education of the Negro depends his regeneration. For this reason I am sorry the Blair bill did not pass, although I could not indorse all of its provisions. Your system of education is more com plete than ours; and we want your noble women, who are willing to sacrifice their comfort and their lives, to help us in this best of all raissionary work. But, when you have done your best, you have only, as General Brinkerhoff says, touched us in spots ; while the Negro problera and the race are throughout our Southern country frora one end to the other. They touch us at every point, and we touch them. We understand them better than you, and to us should be left their management. The government should never interfere in behalf of the black raan where it would not and could not inter fere on behalf of the white raan, and should never interfere to protect the black raan of South Carolina when it would not interfere for the same reason to protect the white man of Ohio. The political salva- 123 tion of the South depends much upon the solution of this problem ; and the easy solution of it, in my opinion, depends upon whether this solution is or is not left to those who are the natural friends of the Negro, who best understand him, and to whom his development and education, or the contrary, mean a people's progress or a people's decay. What I would like to see would be the Northern people helping with their men, women, and money, and the Southern people having the management of this question, as they certainly understand it better. That is their only hope, and they are bound to manage it with efficiency. There is nothing else for them to do. When you bring the colored man to believe that the Southern men are his friends, and then confer upon hira the widest liberty possible, — in that way, I believe, is his salvation to corae. Gen. Brinkerhoff. — 1 have not taken part in this discussion, not because I have not considered the question, not because I have not strong convictions in regard to it, but siraply because I have felt in the presence of such an audience as this ray incapacity to deal with it with sufficient intelligence. It is an old rule with the Senate of the United States that a new raeraber shall keep silence for at least one session. In this greater senate, larger, more intellectual, with a higher range of intelligence than the Senate of the United States, how much more is it obligatory for a new member to keep still 1 I am moved, however, by some things that have been said, to add a word. The oudook this morning has been in the main from the Negro stand point. We have had during the other sessions the outlook frora the standpoint of philanthropic workers who have done so ranch in this field. It seems to me that there is a standpoint that ought to receive attention which has not yet received it, except briefly by Mr. Glenn ; and that is the standpoint of the white man of the South. I am sorry that there are not representatives of the Old South on this floor to-day. I speak from their standpoint on this question. It was my fortune to commence my career early in life in a slave State. During those early years I had a large opportunity for min gling with the Old South. I spent my days and months and years upon the great plantations of the South. I think I know the civil ization of the Old South, and in many respects there never was a grander civilization. I learned my hostility to slavery not from Northern abolitionists, but on the plantations, from the mouths of the men who were large slaveowners. I had my early and best teachings in opposition to the systera of slavery frora the owner of eight hundred slaves in Tennessee. Further on, I came in contact with the institu tion in the army of the Union on the soil of the old slave South'; and, later still, as I became interested in these questions, — and I am interested in many questions on which, if brought up here, I might be more prepared to speak; that is, in the defective, dependent, and criminal classes, — I had an opportunity, in travelling through the South to mingle and talk with white men, not simply old planters, but the highest intellectual men of all the States in the South, and with those who are workers there from the North. I have therefore studied this problem. I have looked at it with all the light that i could get ; and the more I look, and the more I study, the more puz zled I become. 124 I am delighted with the spirit of this convention. I agree in the main with all the efforts that are attempted ; but, when I look in the face of this problem, and know that there are eight millions of people in almost utter darkness, who have come up out of bondage without a moral sense, a mass of ignorance, and contrast with this the efforts we are raaking, I ara conscious how limited they are. I know that we are reaching out, and must, in the nature of things, continue to reach out, frora the North at arm's length to do this work ; but we reach only sraall spots of the darkness of this continent. Now, I want this Conference and these Northern people somehow, and in some way, to look at this question from the standpoint of the white men of the South. Let us remember that the white people of the South are a noble people, that there is nowhere in the United States a purer strain of American blood than in the Old South. Remember that the white men and women of the South are as religious apeople as we have on the American continent. More than that, they are a profoundly religious people. So far as I know them, and I know them pretty thoroughly, they believe in God, in imraortality, and in the Christian religion. In the South you find no agnosticism, no anarchism, no atheism. The Southern white people are more thoroughly Christian than any similar body of people upon the continent, in my judgment. I find to-day, for instance, wherever I go in that Southern country and on the plantations a more religious tone than I find elsewhere. It was the exception, for instance, that I did not hear grace at the table and prayers in the raorning. At Atlanta, where I have spent Sabbaths at different tiraes, the streets were full of people going to church. At least one-half of the population worshipped on the Sabbath, and a quieter observance, or what we consider a Christian observance, of the day I could not? ask. I have large charity and respect for the Southern men. I want the Northern people to reraeraber that, if this question is to be solved, it cannot be solved by us. It must, in the main, be solved by the white men and women of the South. Every interest that they have is centred on the setding of this problem. They have more interest in it than we have, by far. We must meet those people in charity and kindness. Let us remember that the Southern people are not criminals. Have we not got far enough away from the struggles of the war, and the things that entered into it, to see dimly that God's hand was in it all ? Have we not got far enough away from the great struggle to see that the Southern people were as loyal to their ideal as we were loyal to our ideal ? Was it not a truth that these Southern people believed in their side of the question as strongly as we did in ours ? Is it not true that they prayed to the God of battles with as much sincerity and faith as we did ? Was there ever known upon the earth a braver set of men than those Southern men ? When you find a whole people fighting to the death and to the last dollar, even though they were fighting for a wrong idea, as we believe they did, we may be sure that it is out of such people that nations are raade. I hope that we shall raake a deliver ance in such a tone and in such a way to these Southern people that they shall feel that we are their brothers, and look upon them as our brothers, and that another year we shall have their representatives in this Conference. I2S Gen. Howard. — I am exceedingly pleased that Mr. Glenn should so frankly state his own sentiments. But I think that he and South ern white men generally have an erroneous impression with reference to those of us in the North who are pushing the work of educadon. Certainly, there is no hostility. I know that I never have had any. Before the war I was stationed in Florida; and upon my conversion I united, temporarily, with a Methodist Church South. Between the brethren there and rayself there was the utmost sympathy and affec tion ; and at West Point I had the raost cordial relationship with Southern young men, both as a cadet and after the war as an instruc tor. There was no hostility even in the war-time. I went into it as against a conspiracy, and in the fear of God, to do ray duty and help prevent the destruction of the republic. After the war there was great opposition to the work of education araong the Southern white people. We of the North believed that education was the remedy of all ills, — I mean proper education, industrial, raental, and raoral. Before suffrage was allowed, the opposition went so far as to burn churches and school-houses in some parts of the South, probably in fear of an educational test. After suffrage, this hostile work ceased almost altogether. The teachers were sent from the North in groups, many of them from our best families. They were better fitted for that teaching than the Southern white people could be. They had the object lessons of economy and frugality brought from home. They could teach the freedmen how to live under the new circum stances, always recognizing their completeness of manhood. The Bishop of Louisiana thought I was wrong. He said that the Southern whites were the natural teachers ; and I yielded to his per suasions, and a number of schools were at one time (about 1867) instructed by Southern whites of both sexes. But the experiment did not prove a good one. There was no vital interest manifested, and no proper fitness. Those schools, were soon closed up. And how could we expect people who were brought up in slavery to acquire the habit of teaching children under such circumstances? I mean that they would have peculiar disabilities to overcome, from not having any suitable standard in their minds. Yet things have changed greatly. Not long ago, at Hampton, Va., a one-armed gov ernor, wounded in the Southern ranks, and rayself stood on the same platform, and took hold of hands as brothers. The speech he made on that occasion to the colored youth was in substance the same as those I had raade twenty five years before. In fact, there is now a strong sentiment in the South, probably involving a majority of the people, in favor of universal education, — that is, for both the black and the white children ; and teachers from the South are already doing good work. The raost successful are those who are raised up from our Southern schools of the higher grades. Gen. Brinkerhoff. — I fear General Howard misunderstood me. I am fully in sympathy with what he says in regard to extending help from the North, but we must also have the cooperation and cordial brotherly sympathy of the white men of the South in order to succeed. I givs yo^ ™y hand on that. General Howard replied that there were no points of difference between General Brinkerhoff and himself; they were agreed as to 126 friendliness and co-operation between Northern and Southern Chris tian people ; neither the one nor the other should withdraw from the work of education. Under this statement the two generals joined hands. Ex-President Hayes.— I feel like mixing in here. But all I have to say is that, when we have a Democratic general and a Republican general agreeing with each other in that way, we are all in good con dition. Mr. Glenn. — General Howard has said that he does not think that we are the proper persons to undertake this education of the Negro. Suppose we took the position that you take in your raission work. Do you not look upon the converted heathen as the best mis sionary ? Now, of course, I do not acknowledge this position ; but I cannot help looking upon the slaveholder as the best person to edu cate the Negro with whom he has been brought up. Gen. Howard. — I think we want every Southern man and woman that will work with us, but vve do not want them to exclude us frora their warm syrapathy. Mr. Glenn. — We will not exclude you. But those raen and woraen who believe that slavery was a raisfortune, who are opposed to it as much as you are, who would not have it brought back for millions, but who were brought up with it, believe that they are the best people to educate the blacks. Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney. — I carae up here with the very great hope, which has been amply fulfilled, of hearing persons of experience speak on this subject, whose opportunities had been very different from, and superior in many respects, to my own, that I might be able to rectify any views that I hold by those that would be presented here by persons from all parts of the country. Of course, I cannot have sat here three days without having a great raany thoughts in my mind. I would gladly, if tirae served, speak of many; but I shall confine myself to two or three points. A great deal has been said, and rightly said, about the prejudices of the North. I think the first thing in elevating the Negro race is to do away, as far as depends on us, with any such prejudices. The Negro is working for his own elevation. As they said to the general who asked what they were doing, " We are rising." I think the work is going on with them, whatever we poor, pale-faced white people do. But we ought to thank God for the opportunity of helping them. And the first thing is to do away with the prejudice in our own hearts and its expression in our own manners. I am afraid that very few of us can say that we are absolutely free frora it. But I believe that we must becorae so ; for the Negro is here, and is to be our companion forever and ever, so far as there is a mortal forever. We have got to live with hira on terms of amity and equality in every respect. For that, we must do away with any prejudice against him on account of his being colored and a Negro. When we have put him on an equality with us, there will still remain the problems of labor and all other political and social questions to settle. I think we are still guilty at the North. There is not a spot that is entirely free from prejudice; but, when I look back forty years, and see how almost infinitesimal is the feeling against social equality with the colored races now as com- 127 pared with what it was then, in our own section, I feel that we have nothing to do but accept the- situation and go ahead. I admired the speech of Dr. Mayo ; but there was one point in which I differed from him, and that is as to the necessity of a division of the schools. He suggests that the colored and white boys would love each other better if they were kept in separate schools. I think a little experience shows a different result. It is forty years since we had the question of separate schools settled in Massachusetts. It took Charles Sumner's eloquence to win the battle for us. It was tried in the Supreme Court and failed, taken into the legislature and carried. What is the result ? Do not the white and the black boys love each other as well as before? If you were to see their arras round each other's necks as they corae out of some of our Boston schools, you would know that there is absolutely no feeling but that of friendliness and school-boy comradeship among them. I think we have no right to dictate to our Southern friends. But we have a right to counsel with them as friends and neighbors, and say, " If we have learned anything from our own experience, we would like to help you." I believe that we are bound to brush away all barriers which sep arate the Negro from the white raan. Sorae reference was made to that question which always stirs the feelings of all deeply, — the sexual amalgamation of the races. I do not know whether it is desir able. I do not know whether it is likely to come in the future. But I do believe that every law forbidding intermarriage should be swept from the statutes. If it is a law of nature that they should not mingle, leave it to nature, and nature will work it out. But every refusal to legalize marriage is to give opportunity and encouragement to illegal and irregular unions. I would like to say one word as to the religion of the Negro. A good deal has already been said, much more might be said, but this one thing I would like to say. We have been apt to recognize the religion of the Negro as the shout, the noisy prayer-meeting, ending often in a cataleptic fit, all of which you know as well as I could tell you , and I agree with you that it is desirable to substitute for such methods much calmer and better habits of worship and of religious thought and feeling. But the religion of the Negroes, even expressed as it was in this wild excitement, was a most wonderful help for the situation in which they were as slaves, with no hope in this life, or almost none, but with a boundless future of glory open before them. It was the rising into that ecstasy where they could forget the troubles of this lite, and find themselves one with the Eternal Life, that enabled the slaves to be the patient, even the illuminated, the joyous people they were through all the dark horrors of their suffering. But underneath this religion of emotion, in the little intercourse I have had with the Southern Negroes, I have thought that I could see an other religion growing, a religion of trust and a sense of duty and right which I never appealed to in vain. I have spoken to Southern audiences of Negroes ; and, in appealing to that underlying current of the broadest, sweetest, most sacred and tender religion, I always have found an answer to it. I remember a colored woman who came into my house one day after the John Brown affair, and I never heard 128 anything raore sublime than her utterances. She said, "God's time is near." " Do you believe that God's time is near ? " I asked. "God's time is always near," she answered. "He set the north star in the heavens, and gave me the strength in my limbs : he meant I should be free." That was the way her religion had grown up in her, to a boundless trust and confidence that all would come right and true in the end, and that she was to use the means God had placed within her reach. Last night sorae one spoke of a sermon given by a poor, ignorant colored man, in which he took for his text, " The Word was made flesh." The old minister implied that, if one kept the word of God, he would grow stout and strong and well. As this instance was mentioned, I noticed that there was a laugh in the audience ; but it seeraed to me that ignorant colored man had got at a very deep truth, and that the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, which has been in the Church for all these ages, which that text expressed, was better taught than I had ever heard it by any preacher. It is the great truth that religion is for this life, that it is to make us strong and brave and able to do our part in this world, that these colored men need to-day in their upward struggle. You know the little girl was asked how she knew that she had got religion, and replied, " Because I swept under the raat this raorning." That is the religion that we want to bring to the Negro, the point that we are all anxious to have hira reach, to connect his religion with daily life. I do not think that it is for us to say that it is for the South or the North to do this work. There is a stronger party with whora the division rests, — the Negroes themselves. Mr. Bronson Alcott was once taking tea with me, when there was a lady present who was very much troubled about sorae of the " free love " deraonstrations of that tirae ; and she said, " What am I to do about it ? I wish some one [mentioning the name] would tell rae." Mr. Alcott said, " Per|iaps he would tell you to do nothing about it." She was still anxious and troubled, and Mr. Alcott quietly reraarked, " Meantime there is Providence." So I think, while we are question ing whether the Southern men and women shall take care of the . Negro or whether we Northern people shall do it, there is a Power that is solving the question for us. We ought all to do everything we can ; and we may help or hinder, but I believe he is coraing out all right. Whether we do help or hinder may affect our welfare more than his. I want to say a word about the Southern woraen. I have never heard anything frora Mr. Mayo — and I have heard many delightful things from him — so delightful as what he tells us of the way the Southern women have gone into the colored schools as teachers, ac cepting the situation and the results of the war which deprived thera of their support, feeling that education is the work to be done. They have gone into it with an earnestness and zeal which, I think, has hardly been surpassed even by our Northern teachers. I am looking forward to the union of the Northern and Southern women in the work of education as the best possible augury for the success of the future that we can have. Bishop E. G. Andrews, of New York. — I ara thankful that I am 129 here. _ I am rejoiced at the tone of courage and hopefulness which prevails in this council. I am looking forward to a better future than I have been accustomed to for some time past. Mr. Chairman, I was spoken of last night as likely to touch the topic of religion among the colored people. I do not think much needs to be said on that head. It has been implied all along that with the head-training and hand-training we have so powerfully em phasized here must go the heart-training, which alone can give them a proper direction, and can alone be the inspiration of all great char acter and of all great life. I am glad for one to believe that it does not require a great deal of knowledge to be mighty in faith toward God and large in love toward man. If I understand what the faith is which saves men and transforms society, it is not necessarily based upon some large coraprehension of God and his relation to men : it is not chiefly a comprehension of God by the intellect. It is rather the action of the whole raoral nature upon such truths as are more or less clearly apprehended by the intellect. It is the taking hold of these truths by conscience, heart, and will that constitutes faith. I sup pose, therefore, it is not a strange thing that the poor, untutored col ored man orworaan should be led into such faith as I have described, — a faith by which what they know of God has become regnant over them in all things. I suppose there has been a great deal of that religion at the South. I am sure that we intend that whatever educa tion we establish shall somehow come thoroughly under religious — I will be a little more explicit, and say under Christian — auspices and guidance. I am very thankful, for one, for whatever good comes out of mere secular education. I think great good coraes from it, and that a child secularly taught ' is likely to come to a better moral character, even if he have no religious teaching. Yet I am sure that, whatever be the effect of secular education, we need to lay the foun dations of a high and noble life for the colored man, as for all men, in religion, so that his soul shall be turned heavenward ; that this present life shall be reckoned but a small part of the whole ; that there shall be wrought in him a conviction th^t our earthly being takes hold of the eternities, and has affinities and possibilities far reaching on every side. Only so can he have a true nurture and attain a true life and a great hereafter. Well, what was the religious character of the Southern slaves at the close of the war ? I do not know except upon the testimony of others. I presume there was defect and also a great deal of good, as the last speaker has so faithfully set forth. A great deal of defect, possibly ; but I often comfort myself, in the presence of a defective Christianity, with the Epistles to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Ephesians, and by the fact that Paul could write such things to those churches, as that they must not steal any raore or lie any more or defraud any more. I am very glad of these Epistles. How they fit in with the necessities even of our current Christianity ! The cul tivation of the devotional side of our nature is a more rapid process than the cultivation of conscience. That seems indeed to be very slowly developed. A great raany years ago one of our bishops preached in the Morraon tabernacle at Salt Lake City. As his custora was Brigham Young rose to exhort, and could not but remark how I30 the brother had complimented the Father of the faithful. But the Mormons, he added, were the only people that were trying to carry out the preaching of Abraham. What are the churches doing ? I wish it had been provided that some competent person had combined the statistics of the churches, and given us in this meeting a comprehensive summary. Statistics are worth something, and I wish we had a statement as to how far the open and professed religious life of the former slave population has gone on. I could speak in some degree for the Methodist Church. I could tell of the founding of our work there, of the num ber of those we have brought into the professed church life, of the amount of money we give, of the conferences we have formed. We have seventeen annual conferences among the colored people. We have perhaps twelve hundred regular ministers, besides any quantity of the local sort, raany of them " old-timers," I doubt not, who were described so emphatically yesterday. The fact is that we did not start with an ideal sort of minister when we went South. We were content to take the poor material we found down there. Many seemed to be good men, though they could not read. They could not speak the king's English ; but, in whatever sort of English they could speak, they could tell what seemed to them to be true. I went down there to attend a conference seventeen years ago, and I re member how shocked I was at the poor style of ministerial life that was visible. There is evidence of progress. The conferences of 1890 among us Methodists are not the conferences of 1873, such as I first saw. There is a clear-eyed intelligence and a forwarding of business and an energy of purpose that we did not find in that early time. There has been a frequent development of defective religious character. This is not strange. I have heard of some white minis ters tha: did not turn out as they should. The time was when it was not easy to get a conference to take sharp action in the case of a member who was criminal. That is past. We have an admirable school of theology. I do not speak of it in contrast with other schools. I honor Howard University and all the other institutions. I only speak of this as a sample. It has a property of $100,000 and an endowment of {200,000, and seventy-one pupils and three profes sors, able and cultivated white men. There is preparing a ministerial corps which promises better and continually advancing results. But the time does not perrait me to speak of other schools, raany of them of advanced grade, and of some professional schools which look to the same results. There is only one thing for us to do, and that is to go still forward in the lines thus entered. Friday Night, June 6. The Conference was called to order at 8 p.m. by ex-President Hayes. The following platform was read by President Gates, Chairman of the Executive Committee, and after some discussion was unaniraously adopted, point by point, and finally as a whole : — PLATFORM. This meeting of persons of different opinions, from different por tions of our country, in the friendly comparison of views and of statistics, finds a body of facts which are a rational basis for the in telligent hopefulness and enthusiasm which have characterized the Conference. Carefully gathered statistics bear witness to the value and the reliability of Negro labor, skilled and unskilled. No other race ever made such industrial progress in twenty-five years. Trained for generations to forced labor, the Negro is steadily acquiring that intelligent self-control which changes the inherited habit of compul sory toil into the manly achievement of voluntary industry. A most encouraging number of the Negroes, as a race entirely landless twenty-five years ago, are now land-owners. Where fathers and mothers have received something of education, their children show most hopefully the cumulative effects of Christian education. But the light thus thrown on the question reveals a dark background still. Much remains to be done. But there is steady material and mental improvement in the race. And the growing tendency to self-help on their part gives hope and uplift to all the work done for them and with them. We believe that the Negro will remain, for the most part, where he is, and as a citizen of the United States. We believe that the welfare of our country requires that he live in relations of good will and mutual confidence with his white neighbors and fellow- citizens ; and only on principles of justice can such relations be main tained. To this end we recommend : — I. Increased facilities for industrial training, not only in the trades, but especially in improved agriculture, and for the girls in household duties that fit for home-making and housekeeping. We believe in education which by the skilled use of the hand awakens the brain, stimulates ideas, creates a dissatisfaction with the unthrifty present, that wants thus awakened may be satisfied by the steady efforts of industry acquired. And we urge all school authorities to use industrial training, not in order to make the Negro a mere toiler, but to evoke a nobler manhood and womanhood by the discipline of intelligent labor. 2. The family is God's unit of society. The Christian home is the great civilizer. Ultimately, in the homes of the colored people the problem of the colored race will be settled. The girls and the women of the Negro race must deterraine the character of the Negro 132 homes. All the influences which tend to the purity, the intelligence, and the beauty of the home and to the ennobling of the women of the Negro race should be systematically fostered. We believe that the one-roora cabin is a social curse of the Negro race, as is the reserva tion tepee that of the Indian, and the overcrowded tenement-room that of our city slums. This Conference most earnestly urges the upbuilding of the wholesome, cleanly, intelligent Christian home, and the inculcation of sound temperance principles and practice, as of the greatest present iraportance to the race ; and to the upbuilding of such horaes all friends of the Negro, in all parts of our land, are urged to use every effort. 3. We recognize most gratefully the noble work for the education of the race already done by the people of the States where live most of our colored fellow-citizens. Nearly forty raillions of dollars spent for this object by those States augurs well for the future. But this sura and the sixteen raillions spent by the North for the same work make only a good beginning. The comraon schools should be made more effective. Greater numbers of colored teachers raust be still more efficiently trained at additional normal schools. The higher education raust be open to the most capable Negroes. In the name of two hundred and fifty years of unrequited labor from which all sections of our land made profit, the people of the United States should hold it a sacred duty to educate the seven millions of Negroes, who, if uneducated, raust be a source of the gravest danger to the whole nation. In a thoroughly Christian education is our hope for this race, as for all races. 4. To develop character — true raanhood and womanhood — is the object alike of education, of a free government, and of Christian civil ization. We believe that character can be attained only by persistent self-training in morality. We especially urge it upon all who deal with the Negroes that they so deal as to proraote a self-reliant mo rality. The " credit systera," with store-pay and lien upon the crop, has so uniforraly shown itself harmful that we urge its avoidance. 5. To promote those habits of thrift and productive economy which must underlie as well as advance the acquisition of property and ownership of land in civilization, we urge the establishment by the United States government of a postal-savings system. We believe that such systems would greatly increase the general savings-bank business of the country, and would benefit the poorer people of both races. 6. For the attainment of these ends, we look to the enlightened Christian sentiment of the people of all parts of our country. The law of mastership only through the unselfish service of our fellow- men we believe to be divinely given as a law of life to all Christians. To the unselfish service of helping the Negro to help himself in education, in morality, in religion, and thus in civilization and in fitness for citizenship — we fraternally invite all our fellow-citizens of whatever race who love their country and their Saviour. On motion of Judge Tourgee, a unanimous vote of thanks was given to the Executive Comraittee for the faithful discharge of their duties. Rev. Charles H. Hall, D.D., of Brooklyn, was invited to speak. 133 He responded in a long address, of which the following is an ab stract : — Dr. Hall. — I have been assigned by the committee to speak of the religion of the colored man. I do not know that that subject was entirely exhausted by the admirable words of Bishop Andrews this morning, and I shall venture to speak of it from another point of view. It is customary with the clergymen, and I presume with the laity of this section, to represent the religion of the colored people as largely made up of sentiment and gush and emotion. We hear a variety of stories like that of the minister who preached on " The Word was made flesh." In the newspapers he is often caricatured, as he is in the abominable travesties of the Negro minstrels. And a Negro never sings in the style of your minstrels. I can speak from constant living with them, having been the pastor of one of the con gregations of the Sea Islands, where I was a slaveholder, one with the people then, and was corapelled to see them in all conditions of life. I was their judge and executive officer. I sometimes divorced them ; for, if the State allows no marriage tie, I maintain that the Church can act with advisory power, and I have seen them in all conditions. Since then, when asked by Northern people what I think of the Negro, my answer is that he has a large share of human nature in him, that he is very little different as a Christian or as a sinner from white men. His religion is not merely an emotional re ligion. All that is what the tourist sees. He does love to sing, and he sings well. He does love religious emotion. I could spend the night telling stories of him. The tie that binds you to him is some thing underneath that color of which Judge Tourgee spoke, — oneness at last of nature. You will never get near him to lift him up till you recognize, humbly accept that fact, and act on it. There is no record that I have ever heard of that shows the char acter of the colored man compared with the character of the white man that is finer than that given by Mr. Grady, when he said, " At last, when he held up his black hands to have the fetters struck from them, they were pure from the blood of raan except that shed in batde." Religion in coramon speech has a good many meanings. There is only one meaning that I care to speak of. Saint Paul speaks of the Jewish religion in our common sense of the word, and James tells us that pure religion has two qualities. He there uses a word that does not mean the other sense of religion at all. True religion, he says, consists in mercy and purity as God sees thera. The religion of the Negro, like the real religion of any raan, is at last what the raan is hiraself, as God sees him, what he shows in common life by his actions. It would be perfectly easy to show that he has gone beyond us in many of the things that are highest and sweetest and purest, — in courage, patience, self-denial, and humble duty. I remember seeing a woman suddenly falling who was in delicate health. There was a single half-second to decide. In that tirae her raaid-servant threw herself under her mistress, and met the fall. I remember seeing a planter's valet, his constant attendant, who niirsed him in his last sickness until he became so exhausted that I found him asleep three times standing up. I tried to lay him down that he might rest, but 134 it was impossible. He showed perfect devotion to his master. I bear sorae of these men in holy remembrance. In their religious services there is a certain amount of demonstra tion that you and I do not care for ; but, take them Sunday by Sun day and year by year, we cannot find fault with them. If there is any thing in me that has done good to the white man in my preaching in Washington and Brooklyn, I learned it in preaching to the Negroes. I stood before them to interpret to them the words and thoughts of Christ. I felt the tremendous responsibility of preaching to those people. Starting off with a hymn, two lines at a time, I have seen thera go on till at last the music would have a power over them that you do not know anything about, unless you have been to a South ern camp-meeting. The very genius of the art of music was created in their souls. I have known a woman who knew nothing of the art of music go fluttering up like a bird above the main current of the singing of a thousand voices with a soprano all her own. I do not know why the Holy Spirit may not touch their spirits then. After a baptism I would start a hymn, take the first person, and say a word to him or to her, and pass on to the next witness. I had then about forty deacons. I was a bishop in those days, and we called those deacons " witnesses." We would shake hands and sing, and the hand-shaking and the singing would go on until we all got to crying together. I have been with thera in times of trial. They had their weak points, as you and I have. I have never seen a perfect man, — not one man to whom I could say, " You are so entirely lovely, so altogether exactly what God wanted you to be, that you may go to the temple, and say, 'God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are ' " ; but I do say that I hope to find as many of the colored people that I have had to do with in heaven as whites, certainly in propor tion to their entire numbers. There were sixty plantations on these islands, and that raeant that my share with them was frora six to eight hundred people. No man could carry on such a parish except by captains, therefore I had these forty deacons. There was one Negro man as black as the ace of spades, or, as a Negro man of Boston said of himself, " as black as the left wing of midnight," and homely to match. He wore a bandanna handkerchief on his head. He was a carpenter to the four hundred raen on the plantation. I do not know that I ever heard that man say a foolish thing. I have known him to bring me case after case of sorrow and trouble, and I could always rely on the char coal sketch he drew of the case. He did not know a great deal that I did. He never had heard about the Nicene Creed, and I do not know that it would have helped him if he had ; but he did know the huraan heart and the grace and power of God, and, without any show of education, he always spoke the right thing in the right place. I do not care whether a raan is black or white or yellow or chocolate-col ored, if he has in himself the idea of Christ, of doing as Christ did when he sat by the well in this low world of ours. If he has time to visit the hungry and the weary and the sad, he is good enough for me. Preaching to the colored people on a Sunday, this man's — Father Frank — eyes were always open. He would see some man breathe 135 hard or some woman begin to have the tears run down. He would follow the person up assiduously. Here is a case of emotion and human nature as well. On some spring morning, when a woman had more emotion than her lungs and heart could endure in the preach ing, it was natural that she should give way to it, and, springing up, go down on the benches behind her, without the slightest care of the benches. When this old man would see that, he would take his old horse and follow that case up. Before morning he would be on his knees beside her. I wish you Christians would do the same sort of work. Dr. Hall related several instances illustrating the remarkable char acter of this colored man, which for lack of space cannot be given in full. He closed these anecdotes by saying : If I reach the kingdom of heaven, I expect that man to be the first one to meet me. With that feeling in ray heart, I say that the religion of the black man, in the truest and fullest sense of the word, is as good as any raan's relig ion. I recognize no difference. You talk about Jews. I honor them. I am half a Jew myself in feeling. Consider the hundreds of years that he has been driven to the wall, the long and bitter story of his woes. You talk about the Jew as if you thanked the Lord that you are not like him. I have preached in their synagogues. I tried to tell them' the truth there, and should be glad to do it again. I told them that they surpassed us in everything. They are at the head of every line of thought. I told them that even in rascality they beat us ! With them, as with the Negro, we have a lesson to learn ourselves. No man ever gets at the heart of another till he learns to love him and learns to humble himself, that God may exalt him. Mr. W. H. McElroy, of New York, offered the following resolu tion : — The members of this Conference hereby express to our kind hosts, Mr. and Mrs, Smiley, our sincere thanks for our most cordial reception in this their beautiful mountain home ; and we trust, in the interest of the great cause for which we have been called together, that this the first Mohonk Conference on the Negro Question may be but the beginning of a series of similar conferences that shall continue until the condition of the colored people of this country shall be so much amelio rated that there shall be no longer as now a "Negro problem" demanding the spe cial attention of the American people. Mr. McElroy. — I offer this resolution with all my heart. A news paper man's lines, as a rule, fall in the unpleasant places of dissen sion ¦ and so, when he can offer a resolution like this, back of which he knows is not only a majority, but what Mr. Conkling would have called a " halcyon and vociferous " unanimity, he naturally feels greatly encouraged. I am sure I speak for all of us in tendering Mr. and Mrs. Smiley the assurance of our cordial regard. I am sure that all will agree with me when I say we never can forget this week high up in the mountains. Mr. Smiley, I have been much puzzled this week as to how prop- erlv to apprehend you. When I think of this Conference and of the seven Indian Conferences which have preceded it, in all the aggres sive practical Christianity which they imply, I do not know whether to regard you as the proprietor of the Lake Mohonk Mountain House, 136 whose recreation is reform, or whether as Reformer Smiley, who has hotel-keeping for his recreation. Ladies and gentlemen, all the phases of the Negro question, I think, have been discussed here this week except one. I would like to glance' at that a moment. We have duly considered what the Conference could do for the Negro : let me call your attention^ to what the Negro has done for the Conference. The Negro, acting through Mr. Smiley, has taken us up from the noisy, dusty city to " the ampler ether and diviner air " of this lovely and varied mountain top. We have found here that deep, untroubled repose that comes in "a place of slumber and of drearas remote among the wooded hills." The Negro, acting through Mr. Smiley, has taken us in his gondola over the lake, in his wagon over the mountains, where we could see six States from one point, — and it was not a very good day to see States, either. At his table, he has given us the milk and the honey which recall the Scriptural times, and besides has regaled us with that sincere and conscientious cream which kings and prophets who lived in the city waited for, but died without the sight. Again, the Negro, acting through Mr. Smiley, has done something to help us mentally. Speaking through Mr. Harris, he has assured us that the rich are not growing richer every day. So that the rest of us may indulge in the hope that we, too, may have some of the flesh-pots, the fatted calves, the gilt-edged securities, which are so handy to have in the house against a rainy day. Better still, the Negro, acting through Mr. Smiley, has suraraoned us to efface the black belt of selfishness by bringing to play upon it the ineffable light that streams from the Golden Rule. He has summoned us to leave the one-room cabin of intolerance and prejudice, and to come into that House Beautiful which is the habitation of brotherly love, and that rational optimisra which enables cheerful faith to get the delegates away from sad experience. That is what the Negro has done for this Con ference. Mr. Smiley, with your permission, I will pass one criticism upon this happy week. I think some of us 'who are here for the first time would have had a better time if there had not seemed to be two of you. After I had been here a half-hour, I said to my wife, " Was not that stuff that I got at the drug store just as we started to come here ginger pop?" She said it was. "Then," I said, "how is it that I distinctly see two Mr. Smileys standing there?" Then I recalled the story of a host at a dinner where prohibition rules did not prevail. He said to a guest who had been dining a little too exuberantly, " My friend, when you go out frora here, you will see two carriages standing at the gate. Take the first one : there's only one." I suppose I ara overstepping my time ; but, remembering the tone of optimisra, of healthy optimism, that has prevailed during these deliberations, and being an optimist myself by temperament and by conviction, I would like before I sit down to repeat a few optimistic verses, written by John G. Saxe : — There is a saying of the ancient sages, — No noble human thought. However buried in the dust of ages, Can ever come to naught. 137 ¦With kindred faith, that knows no base defection. Beyond 'the horizon's scope I see afar the shining resurrection Of every glorious hope. I see, as parcel of a new creation. The beatific hour, ¦When every bud of lofty aspiration Shall blossom into flower. We are not mocked : it was not in derision God made our spirits free ; The poet's dreams are but the dim prevision Of blessings that shall be, — ¦When all who lovingly have hoped and trusted. Despite some transient fears. Shall see life's jarring elements adjusted And rounded into spheres I The resolutions were unanimously adopted. Dr. Strieby. — I move that the publication of our report and every thing related to it be put into the hands of a coraraittee consisting of Mr. H. O. Houghton and Mr. Frank Wood. Voted. A resolution offered by Dr. Magill in favor of holding future Conferences of a sirailar character was adopted. On raotion of Mr. Monroe, a unanimous vote of thanks, expressed by rising, was given to ex-President Hayes as presiding officer. Mr. Smiley replied in a few appreciative words to the vote of thanks to himself and Mrs. Smiley. He said that he did not wish the Conference to thank hira. On the contrary, he thanked the members most heartily for coraing to Mohonk. He had found the Conference most satisfactory, and he hoped that great good would result from it. The second Conference would be held in June, 1891. He moved that ex-President Hayes be made chairman for that session, and that all the present officers hold over till next year. Carried. Ex-President Hayes. — My friends, only a word in recognition of your kindness. We have had a good meeting. We shall all leave with the feeling that, even if the results of this meeting in promoting the welfare of the race we are interested in shall be sraall, neverthe less, on the whole, it was well for all of us to be here. We shall recall with pleasure our relations with Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, this in spiring and beautiful scenery, fitly emblematic of the feeling that has prevailed in this assembly during this meeting. All this will be reraerabered, and always with pleasure and gratitude. We are quite sure, I think, that what we have heard here has deepened the im pression that we had when we carae, that this race has much to hope for. Though it may be true, in a sense, that it has had no history, there is solid ground for thinking that, if all the good people of this country shall do their duty to them, they will in the future at least have a history. It is not needful that I should make a summary of what has been said to us. Take, for example, the speech of Dr. Roy, in which he tells us so satisfactorily and compactly, by the use of statistics, that a 138 higher education has been successfully received by merabers of this race until now some hundreds are scholarly men of learning, men of culture, having the highest and best results of civilization. We shall not forget either, as indicating the possibilities in respect to the future of this race, what was said to us by ex-President White, a gentleman familiar with the educated men of this country, and of the countries having the most learned men abroad, having been, as our Minister at Gerraany, familiar with the raen of that erapire and of France, Italy, and Great Britain. He told us that he found in the West India Islands, in San Doraingo and Hayti, speciraens of humanity and culture equal to any of those in the raost favored countries of the globe. That is an encouragement. If Africans, if individuals of the race, can have such ability, such culture, such accomplishments, is there not reason to hope that the numbers will increase more and more, that every year and every generation raore men and women will be lifted up to this noble stature ? It is something more than a capacity to learn the classics, that which is taught in schools, that belongs to this race. Within the last few weeks I have visited the Island of Bermuda. As we approached it, we found that the entrance to the harbor of the island was very dangerous. We spent some two or three hours passing through difficult channels between coral rocks. All the great vessels of the British navy have to pass through these channels. There was a flag ship of 6,000 tons' burden, with a crew of men numbering from 800 to 1,000, — a vessel costing some millions. This vessel and other vessels like this are passing in, with the British flag at the mast-head, week after week, month after month. We found that the pilots who take these vessels in and out, and who for the time being are responsible for all that property and those precious lives, where the most solid qualities that are supposed to belong peculiarly to our Anglo-Saxon race are needed, — courage, capacity to bear responsibility, steadiness, promptness, judgraent, all high qualities of raanhood, all the qualities that are required for the navigation of vessels on the high seas, — we found that these pilots were black raen. They told me that of the twenty-five pilots employed at Bermuda every one was a black man, whose father or grandfather was a slave. This is the stuff of which great nations and great people are made. In trying to lift them up and trying to give them a chance, — in trying to give thera what Lincoln said he wanted thera to have, " a fair start and an equal chance in the race of life," — we are trying to do a good work. God bless you all ! Good-night. Adjourned at 11 p.m. APPENDIX. The following are extracts from a few of the many letters received by Mr. Smiley : — [From General Rufus Saxton.'] The question of the relations between the white and colored races is ever present with us, and its proper solution of equal importance to both North and South. The free interchange of views between the friends of the colored race as to the best direction of efforts for their advancement cannot fail of good result. It is now twenty-eight years since the " contrabands " came by thousands into our lines at Port Royal, and greeted us as their deliverers. Their condition was abject in the extreme. The brand of slavery was burned deep into their bodies and souls. Their condition is still bad enough, but far better than it was then ; and the friends of emancipation may be encouraged by their sure progress under the sunshine of freedom. The Negro question cannot now be considered a political nor a sectional, but a national one. The fact is evident that the race shares all the virtues and vices of other races, and is elevated or depressed by its environments, with a marked ten dency to imitate their Anglo-Saxon brethren. The public sentiment needs to be enlightened as to the necessity and expediency of dealing fairly and justly with our docile black brother. Only this, and the race problem can safely be left to it's own solution. [From William Preston fohnson.] I take great interest in the moral, religious, and educational improvement of the Negroes who have their part and lot in our States and communities. It always gives me pleasure to be of any real service to them, and I look to any effort to that end as a good work. [From Bishop Whipple.'] I shall be with you in spirit. There is no nobler field of Christian labor. The colored race are naturally religious. They are improving wherever they have had the influences we all need for our better life, and in some cases their progress has been marvellous. [Frotn Rev. Samuel Longfellow.} The subject which you will discuss is one of great moment, and demands the most intelligent and careful consideration. The decision of the future of the Negro lies, of course, with tbe South. But the South has a claim upon our help to a wise and just decision, such help as we can give at the North by suggestion, by encour agement, by the pressing of moral and humane considerations, by sympathy and by patience. . ., . I would urge the point of sympathy as opposed to antagonism. It is easy to condemn, and impossible at times not to condemn injustice. But we must not overlook the difficulties in the way nor demand more than in the nature of things we have a right to expect. 'We must heartily acknowledge every effort that is making to better the condition of the Negro race at the South, mainly by educa tion ; and we must not be impatient if the progress seems slow, and if the public sentiment, the growth of a hundred years of slavery, should take more than a quarter of a century sensibly to change. LIST OF MEMBERS OF THE NEGRO CONFERENCE. Abbott, Rev. Dr. Lyman, Editor Christian Union, 148 'Willow Street, Brook lyn, N.Y. Abbott, Mrs. Lyman, 148 'Willow Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. Allen, Rev. Dr. R. H., Corresponding Secretary Board of Missions for Freed men of Presbyterian Church of U.S.A., 516 Market Street, Pittsburg, Pa. Allen, Mrs. R. H. Andrews, Bishop E. G., Methodist Book Concern, corner Fifth Avenue and Twen tieth Street, New York. Andrews, Mrs. E. G., New York. Armstrong, General S. C, Principal Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hamp ton, ¦Va. Austin, Miss Emily, the Slater Training School, Knoxville, Tenn. Austin, Miss L., 891 Prospect Street, Cleveland, Ohio. Bailey, Joshua L., Philadelphia, Pa. Barrows, Rev. Samuel J., Editor Christian Register, 141 Franklin Street, Boston, Mass. Barrows, Mrs. Isabel C, Boston, Mass. Botume, Miss Elizabeth H., Port Royal, S.C. Beard, Rev. Dr. A. F., Corresponding Secretary American Missionary Associa tion, New York. Bradford, Rev. Dr. A. H., Pastor of Congregational church, Montclair, N.J. Brinkerhoff, General R., Mansfield, Ohio. Buckley, Rev. Dr. James M., Editor Christian Advocate, Fifth Avenue and Twentieth Street, New York. Buckley, Mrs. James M., New York. Cheney, Mrs. Ed."JAH D., Jamaica Plain, Mass. Covert, Hon. John C, Editor Cleveland Leader, Cleveland, Ohio. Covert, Mrs. John C, Cleveland, Ohio. Craighead, Rev. Dr. J. G., Dean of Howard University, 'Washington, D.C. Craighead, Mrs. J. G., Washington, D.C. Dunham, Mr. Curtis, the World, New York. Eaton, General John, President Marietta CoUege, Marietta, Ohio. . Ellinwood, Rev. Dr. F. F., Secretary Board of Foreign Missions of Presbyte rian Church of U.S.A., New York. Ellinwood, Mrs. F. F., New York. Emerson, Miss D. E., Secretary Bureau of 'Woman's 'Work of American Mis sionary Society, Bible House and Ninth Avenue, New York. Ferris, Rev. Dr. John M., Editor Christian Intelligencer, New York. Fisher, Captain H. T., Society for Savings Building, Cleveland, Ohio. Fisher, Mrs. H. T., Cleveland, Ohio. Frost, Hon. Rufus S., Chelsea, Mass. Frost, Mrs. Rufus S., Chelsea, Mass. Gaines, C. C, President Eastman's College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Gaines, Mrs. C. C, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. 141 Garrison, Mr. 'Wm. Lloyd, 132 Federal Street, Boston, Mass Garrison, Mrs. 'Wm. Lloyd, Boston, Mass. Garrett, Hon. Philip C, Philadelphia, Pa. Gates, Merrill E., LL.D., L.H.D., President Rutgers College, New Bruns wick, N.J. Glenn, Hon. John, Baltimore, Md. Glenn, Mr. J. M., Baltimore, Md. Haines, Mr. Emmor, Buffalo, N.Y. Haines, Mrs. Emmor, Buffalo, N.Y. Hall, Rev. Dr. Chas. H., Rector Holy Trinity Church, Brooklyn, N.Y. Harris, Hon. W. T., United States Commissioner of Education, 'Washington, D.C. Harris, Mrs. "W. T., 'Washington, D.C. Hartshorne, Dr. Henry, Editor Friends' Review, Philadelphia, Pa. Hayes, Hon. Rutherford B., ex-President United States, Fremont, Ohio. Heredeen, Mr. Edward, Geneva, N.Y. Heredeen, Mrs. Edward, Geneva, N.Y. Herrick, Rev. Dr. Samuel E., 10 Cedar St., Boston, Mass. Herrick, Mrs. Samuel E., 10 Cedar St., Boston, Mass. Houghton, Hon. H. O., Treasurer Boston Indian Citizenship Committee, Bos ton, Mass. Houghton, Miss Alberta M., Cambridge, Mass. Howard, General O. O., Major-General U.S. Army, Governor's Island, N.Y. Howard, Mrs. O. O., Governor's Island, N.Y. Hutchison, Prof. William E., Biddle University, Charlotte, N.C. Jay, Hon. John, New York. Jay, Rev. Allen, Richmond, Ind. Jay, Mrs. Martha, Richmond, Ind. Jenkins, Rev. Howard M., Editor Friends' Intelligencer and Journal, Pciladel- phia, Pa. Kendall, Rev. Dr. H., Secretary Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church of U.S.A., 73 5th Avenue, New York. Kenaston, Prof. C. A., Howard University, Washington, D.C. Kew, George J., the World, New York. Kinney, Mr. J. C, the Hartford Courant, Hartford, Conn. Kinney, Mrs. Sara T., President Connecticut Indian Association, Hartford, Conn. Letchworth, Mr. W. P., Buffalo, N.Y. Langford, Rev. Dr. William S., Member of Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A., 22 Bible House, New York. Langford, Mrs. William S., New York. McElroy, Mr. W. H., the Tribune, New York. McElroy, Mrs. W. H., New York. Magill, Dr. Edward H., President Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa, Martin, W. C, iii John Street, New York. Martin, Miss L. R., 155 West 21st Street, New York. May, Rev. Samuel, Leicester, Mass. May, Mrs. Samuel, Leicester, Mass. Mayo, Rev. A. D., care Bureau of Education, Washington, D.C. Metcalf, Mr. Lorrettus S., Editor Forum, New York. Metcalf, Mrs. Lorrettus S., New York. Middleditch, R. I., Editor Christian Enquirer, 18 Temple Court, New York. 142 Monroe, Hon. Elbert B., Southport, Conn. Monroe, Mrs. Elbert B., Southport, Conn. Newman, Rev. Dr. S. M., Professor of Theology, Howard University, 913 Rhode Island Avenue, Washington, D.C. Newman, Mrs. S. M., Washington, D.C. Pierce, Mr. Moses, Norwich, Conn. Pierce, Mrs. Moses, Norwich, Conn. Pierce, Hon. Edward L., Milton, Mass. Pierce, Mrs. Edward L., Milton, Mass. Pitzer, Rev. Dr. A. W., Washington, D.C. Reed, Professor Frederick, Talladega College, Talladega, Ala. Roy, Rev. Dr. J. E., Secretary American Missionary Association, 151 Washing ton Street, Chicago, 111. Ryder, Rev. C. J., Secretary Araerican Missionary Association, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass. ScuDDER, Rev. Doremus, M.D., 3921 Grand Boulevarl, Chicago, III. Scudder, Mrs. Doremus, Chicago, 111. Smiley, Mr. Alfred H., Lake Minnewaska, N.Y. Smiley, Mrs. Alfred H., Lake Minnewaska, N.Y. Smiley, Hon. Albert K., Lake Mohonk, N.Y. Smiley, Mrs. Albert K., Lake Mohonk, N.Y. Smiley, Miss Sar.a.h F., Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Strieby, Rev. Dr. M. E., Corresponding Secretary American Missionary Associa tion, New York. Steele, Professor A. J., Des Moines Normal Institute, Memphis, Tenn. Stoutenburgh, Mr. Arthur T., University Park Mission, 17 Iowa Circle, Wash ington, D.C. Taber, Mr. Augustus, West Chester, N.Y. Talcott, Mrs. James, 7 West 57th Street, New York. Thomas, Mrs. Mary F., Skaneateles, N.Y. Tourgee, Hon. A. W., 309 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C, and Mayville, N.Y. Tourgee, Mrs. A. W., Washington, D.C, and Mayville, N.Y. Ward, Rev. Dr. William Hayes, Editor Independent, 351 Broadway, New York. Warner, Dr. L. C, 359 Broadway, New York. Warner, Mrs. L. C, 359 Broadway, New York. White, Hon. Andrew D., ex-President of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Whiting, Mr. Charles G., the Republican, Springfield, Mass. Whittlesey, General E., Secretary Board of Indian Commissioners, Washing ton, D.C. Whittlesey, Mrs. E., Washington, D.C. Whittlesey, Mr. Geo. P., 1410 Eleventh Street, N.W , Washington, D.C. Whittlesey, Mrs. Geo. P., Washington, D.C. Wood, Mr. Frank, Member Boston Indian Citizenship Committee, 352 Wash ington Street, Boston. Wood, Mrs. Frank, Treasurer Massachusetts Indian Association, Boston. Woodworth, Professor Frank S., President Tougaloo University, Tougaloo, Miss. INDEX OF WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. Abbott, Rev. Lyman, D.D. Allen, Rev. R. H., D.D. . Andrews, Bishop E. G. Armstrong, Gen. S. C Austin. Emily Beard, Rev. A. F., D.D. Botume, Elizabeth H. Brinkerhoff, Gen. R. Buckley, Rev. J. M., D.D. Cheney, Ednah D. Covert, Hon. J. C Eaton, Gen. John . Ellinwood, Rev. F. F., D.D. Emerson, D. E. Gaines, C. C. . . GarHett, Hon. Philip C Gates, Merrill E. Glenn, John M. . Hall, Rev. C H. Harris, Hon. W. T. Hayes, Hon. Rutherford B. Haygood, Atticus G. . Howard, Gen. O. O. Hutchison, Prof. William E. Jay, Hon. John . . Langford, Rev. W. S., D.D. Magill, Dr. E. H. . . May, Rev. Samuel Mayo, Rev. A. D. McElroy, W. H. . Pierce, Hon. Edward L. Pitzer, Rev. A. W., D.D Roy, Rev. Joseph E. Smiley, Hon. Albert K. Smiley, Sarah F. Strieby, Rev. M. E., D.D. Tourgee, Hon. A. W. . White, Hon. Andrew D. Woodworth, Rev. F. G. PAGE 82,97 15 128 12, 66, 67 SI 19 22 123. 125 94. 103 126 30 • ¦ S6, 65, 67 , 68, 98, 103 68 60 26 56, 67, 97 12, 59, 65 121, 126 133 77, 99 . . 8, 66, 126, 137 8S 54, 125, 126 29 72 IOI 33 93, 104 30, 65, 66 ' 135 51,68 69 86 7, 137 . . 21 . 57. 58, 65, 68, 69, 137 24- 54, 103, 104 86, 117 57,63 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 12, 15, 29, 86, 131 . . 60, 139 16 33 PAGE Agricultural Training, ... > 68 American Missionary Association, . 19 Baptist Educational Work, .... -33 Blair Bill . ¦ ¦ "4, "9, '22 Chester, S.C, School, . . . .... •¦ 17 Concord, N.C, Boarding-school, ' 16 Congregationalist Schools, ... 33 Committees: — Executive Committee, ... . 8, 12 Printing . . -137 Common Schools in South, . . 48 Coppin, Mrs. F. J., -56 Credit System, Evils of, . . , . 65, 132 Crime and Pauperism, . . . , . too Education and Crime, . . . . 79 Educational Institutions, ... . 34 Executive Committee, Report, . 12 Familv Life, Improvement of, . ' . 131 Fisk IJniversity . 89 Hampton Institute, . ... 13 Howard University, ... :. 7^ Industrial Education, . . Letters received, .... Mary Allen Seminary, Texas, . Methodist Schools National Aid to Education, . . 11, 72. 74, 114, 119, 122 Negro, The : — His prospects, 10; lack of order and method, 20 j lack of accuracy, 20; home life, 20, 21, 24, 60; industrial excellences, 24; absence of sur names, 26, 27, 69; present. condition, 10, 31, 70; statistics of popula tion, 31 ; desire for education, 32 ; capacity for citizenship, 39 ; amiabil ity and patience, 42 ; love of beauty, 43, 61 ; aristocracy of intelligence, 46 ; his condition in the North, 53, 83, 97 ; social prejudice against, 53, 83, 97 ; as laborer, 54, 57 ; condition in Mississippi, 63 ; number in scnools, 85; graduates in the professions, 89; classical students, 89; at New Orleans Exposition, 91 ; foreign missionaries, 92 ; " Old Timers." 67, 96; economy of, 108; religion of, 41, 112, 127, 129, 133; morals of, 64, 65, 113; progress of, 25, 27, 32, 38, 46, 131. Normal School Training, 77 Officers . . 8 Peabodv Education Fund 9. 11, 14, 34, 78 Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth, ... 56 Platform, . . . 131 Postal Savings System, ' • • 57, 65, 97, loi, 103, 132 Port Royal, S.C, Work at '22 Presbyterian Board of Missions . . 32 Reformed Episcopal Church Schools, . . .... ... 33 Resolutions Adopted: — See Platform . ijl Of Thanks, . 132, 135, 137 Salaries of Teachers 78 Scotia Seminary, N.C., . . -32 Slater Fund, ... 11,14,34,78 Slater Training School, -i Southern People and Education 29, 32, 48, 132 Southern Whites, 39, 109, 121, 124, 125' 126 Suffrage, Educational Test for, ... 120 Teachers, Salaries of '78 United Presbyterian Missions ' ^