ATLANTIC

MONTHLY:

HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, the president of the board of trustees of the Peabody fund, said in his address, October 1, 1890, at the twenty-ninth meeting of that board: "If there be a race problem anywhere, time and education can alone supply its solution. But time without education will only render it the more insoluble. Continued ignorance is a remedy for nothing. It is itself the disease to be cured and eradicated. Free common schools with industrial, agricultural, and mechanical departments attached to them, and with all. the moral and religious influences which can be brought to bear on them, . . . these seem to me the great need, if not the one and only thing needful, for the countless masses of colored children of the South at this moment."

The religious idea at the bottom of our civilization is the missionary idea. According to our most Christian theologies, the divine Being is conceived as possessed of the spirit of this idea from all eternity. The divine decrees broke up the eternal Sabbath of blessed perfection, and created finite, imperfect beings, in order, it would seem, that there

1 This article was sent in advance of publication to several gentlemen whose position and experience especially qualify them to comment on the assertions made and the suggestions offered. Among these correspondents were Hon. Randall Lee Gibson, Senator from Louisiana; Hon. J. L. M. Curry, chairman of the Educational Committee of the John F. Slater fund; Philip A. Bruce, Esq., editor of the Richmond (Va.) Times, and author of The Plantation

should be occasion for the exercise of this missionary spirit, a spirit of divine charity. For those divine decrees ordained a supreme sacrifice, the descent into finitude on the part of the Divine, a descent to its bitterest depths. For the Eternal Word tasted of death and descended into Hades, the very nadir of the Divine, to make it possible for finite beings to ascend into participation with Him and to grow forever into His image.

That this is the deepest thought in our civilization, and to all appearances a permanent and final idea, we may be assured by a glance at all religious and other protests against the ecclesiastical forms in which this doctrine is stated and the institutions founded upon it. All religious protests that have obtained a following within Christendom have taken pains to ground their opposition on a more explicit assertion of this very doctrine of good will towards men of all conditions, the possibility of salvation for finite beings in their lowest debasement.

If we question, in the name of science or philosophy, the significance of this religious faith in the divine altruism, and endeavor to support our objections

Negro as a Freeman; and Lewis H. Blair, Esq., of Richmond, Va. The comments made by them severally appear as footnotes. Other communications were received in connection with the paper which were of the nature of general considerations, not readily reduced to the form of annotations, but indicating the profound interest taken in the subject by representative men in the South. EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

by an appeal to the results of dispassionate observation and reflection, we shall find only its confirmation. Outside of religious movements, the other activities of man in modern civilization all emphasize the same idea with the strangest unanimity. Science comes to say through Darwin that all nature in time and space is a process of nurturing individuality, the principle of survival of that which develops the most intelligence and will-power. Nature is a process for the creation of souls. It implies, of course, the supremacy of mind, since all its lower processes exist for the production of spiritual beings; they depend on mind, so to speak, and demonstrate the substantiality of mind. Mind is the final cause and purpose of nature. This again implies that mind creates nature to reflect it. God creates nature, and through nature creates spiritual beings who participate in his blessedness. Hence nature presupposes a God of grace and good will towards his

creatures.

Through Comte and Spencer Science also announces altruism as the highest law of social existence, and as the necessary condition for the most perfect development of individualism. Finally, the political and industrial activities proclaim the same thing: the former by continual approaches towards democracy; the latter by the progressive introduction of machinery to perform the drudgery of labor, and to elevate the human being to a directing power using and controlling the forces of nature. Without machinery he used his bone and sinew to obtain his livelihood, and was a "hand; " but with the aid of machinery he saves most of the severe bodily labor, and substitutes for it brain labor and directive intelligence. Hence man's wants have come to necessitate his intellectual education and the development of his individuality. All the people as people must be educated in schools, in order to secure that directive power

over nature requisite for national safety in a military as well as in an industrial

sense.

Thus religion, which states the deepest principle of our civilization, is confirmed by the scientific, political, and social movements of our age, and all agree in this supreme doctrine, that the lowest must be lifted up by the highest, lifted up into self-activity and full development of individuality.

Religion states this in sentimental forms. Science and philosophy echo, with more or less inadequacy, the dogma of religion in their account of the physical and social structure of the universe. The one lost sheep shall occupy more attention than the ninety and nine that went not astray. The return of the prodigal furnishes the chief source of blessed satisfaction and joy in the divine world.

It is evident that any problem relating to a lower race, savage or downtrodden, must be discussed in the light of this religious principle. The utterance of Mr. Winthrop, quoted above, in regard to the race problem in the South was dictated by this lofty ideal of our civilization. Fortunate it is for our age, too, that science has come to an altruistic first principle, and is in process of readjusting all its conclusions in subordinate spheres so as to harmonize with it; likewise fortunate that the political and social welfare is now seen to involve the care of the weakling classes, and their elevation into self-help by moral, industrial, and intellectual education.

I shall endeavor here to expand and apply these considerations to our race problem, and to show how this Christian solution meets the given conditions.

The negro was brought to this country as a slave almost from the date of its first settlement. Two hundred and fifty years of bondage had elapsed when the issue of civil war set him free. He had brought with him from Africa the lowest form of civilization to be found

among men, that in which the most degrading superstition furnishes the forms of public and private life. His religion was fetichism. But by contact with the Anglo-Saxon race in the very close relation of domestic servitude, living in the same family and governed by the absolute authority which characterizes all family control, the negro, after two and a half centuries, had come to possess what we may call the Anglo-Saxon For the negro of the South, with the exception of a stratum of population in the dark belt of large plantations, where he has not been brought into contact with white people through domestic servitude, but segregated as oxen and horses are, the negro of the South, with this exception, I repeat, is thoroughly imbued with nearly all the ideals and aspirations which form the conscious and unconscious motives of action with the white people among whom he lives. It would be very easy to convince one's self of this by free conversation with any specimen of the colored race, and a comparison of his thoughts with those of a newly arrived immigrant from Ireland, Italy, Germany, or Scandinavia. It would be found that the negro is in thorough sympathy, intellectually and emotionally, with our national

2 It is a matter for discussion whether the negro has come into the possession of what may be called "the Anglo-Saxon consciousness." I cannot see how, so long as the people of this race constitute a distinct and insoluble entity in our political society, it will be possible for them to acquire the characteristics which it has taken such a long period of time to develop in the Caucasian race. - R. L. G.

8 Withdrawn by force from his original physical and moral environment, the negro has adapted himself to his American surroundings, and in doing so has necessarily acquired, so far as his lower intelligence permitted, the ideals and aspirations of the people to whom he was bound so long in slavery; but he is essentially still an African in the controlling tendencies of his character. When left to an exclusive association with his own people, there is a powerful inclination on the part of the Southern negro to revert to all of the distinctive features

point of view, while the immigrant looks through the dark glass of his own national presuppositions, and misinterprets most that he sees around him here. Only in the second generation, and after association with the native population in common schools, the workshop, and the political meeting, does the European contingent of our population become assimilated.3

Of course I do not say this in disparagement of the European immigrant, for he stubbornly resists our national idea only in proportion to the value of his own. But I do insist on the practical fact that the negro of the South is not an African in his inner consciousness, but an American, who has acquired our Anglo-Saxon consciousness in its American type through seven generations of domestic servitude in the family of a white master. That this has been acquired so completely because of the inherent aptitude of the African race to imitate may be admitted as probable, and it follows from this that the national consciousness assumed by the black race is not so firmly seated as in- other races that have risen through their own activity to views of the world more advanced than fetichism. Hence we may expect that the sundering of the negro from

of his African ancestors. This is a fact of the utmost importance in the consideration of the proper means to be employed for the improvement of his character. The principal cause of the many failures which have been made in the effort to produce this improvement has been the unfortunate misconception that the Southern negro of to-day is simply an ignorant white man with a black skin. The American descendants of European immigrants are, in the second generation, thoroughly assimilated with the surrounding white population. The grandsons of an American, a German, and an Englishman differ but little, if at all, in the basis of their character. It can hardly be said that the negroes even of those Northern communities in which their race has enjoyed freedom for five generations are so assimilated with the surrounding white population that they are not to be discriminated from it in racial characteristics.-P. A. B.

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close domestic relations with the white race will be accompanied with tendencies of relapse to the old fetich-worship and belief in magic; and this would be especially the case in the dark belt where the large plantations are found. Fetichism, as the elemental or first form of religion that arises among conscious beings, — animals cannot have even fetichism, — attributes arbitrary power to inanimate things, but does not arrive at the idea of one absolute Being. It remains in some of its forms even in the most advanced of religious peoples, as a limited belief in magic, faith in charms, amulets, lucky-bones, signs and omens, sacred places and times, etc. Even the high doctrine of Special Providence, so eminently Christian, easily passes over into fetichism (as the magical control of events through prayer), and is in fact blended with it in all minds devoid of scientific education.

Here is the chief problem of the negro of the South. It is to retain the ele

4 The first step really to be taken must be by the whites about him, in letting the negro feel that he possesses inalienable rights. What he now possesses is by sufferance only. He knows that he is neither a citizen nor a man, in the full sense. - L. H. B.

5 I should prefer to define the course thus: first, religious; second, industrial; and third, intellectual. An ideal public school system for the Southern negroes for many generations to come would be a system under the operation of which each schoolhouse would be devoted to the religious instruction of the colored pupils, with a sufficient amount of industrial training to impart habits of industry, and a sufficient amount of intellectual training to facilitate the inculcation of the religious teachings. As far as possible, the public school system should be made supervisory of the moral life of the pupils; it should take the place of the parental authority, which is so much relaxed now that the watchful eye and firm support of the slaveholders have been withdrawn. - P. A. B.

6 One of the discouraging features in the character of the young Southern negro is that apparently he has inherited but a small share of the steadiness and industry which were acquired under compulsion by his fathers. I am referring now to the young negro to be

vation acquired through the long generations of domestic slavery, and to superimpose on it the sense of personal responsibility, moral dignity, and self-respect which belongs to the conscious ideal of the white race. Those acquainted with the free negro of the South, especially with the specimens at school and college, know that he is as capable of this higher form of civilization as in slavery he was capable of faithful attachment to the interests of his master.

The first step towards this higher stage which will make the negro a valued citizen is intellectual education, and the second is industrial education. By the expression "industrial education," I do not refer so much to training in habits of industry, for he has had this discipline for two hundred years, but to school instruction in arts and trades as applications of scientific principles. Nor do I refer even to manual and scientific training, valuable as it is, so much as to that fundamental training in thrift which is found in the agricultural communities. He is in a marked degree inferior to the former slave in agricultural knowledge and manipulating skill, for the very simple reason that his employer is unable to enforce the rigid attention to all the details of work which he would do if the young negro were his property. P. A. B.

Dr. Harris seems to me to overestimate the value of the slave's experience in developing the habits of punctuality and obedience in descendants who were never slaves. I fear that the result is far other; that in the descendants of the slave there is an inherited disposition to be disobedient to law as a proof of the newly acquired freedom. - ANON.

7 There is need of the inculcation and of the adoption in home life, in daily conduct, of sounder principles of economy and of consumption. What to eat, what to wear, how to cook, how to provide and preserve home conveniences and comforts, how to lay by for a rainy day, must be indoctrinated, ingrained, and become a habit. In other days the African slave was cared for from cradle to coffin, and literally took no thought for the morrow. Comparatively few negroes now living were ever slaves, but the habits of servitude have been transmitted.-J. L. M. C.

so essential to the progress of industry. The negro must teach himself to become a capitalist. There are two stages to this: first that of hoarding, second that of profitable investment. The first stage of thrift may be stimulated by adopting the postal savings device. If it be true, as is plausibly asserted, that the socalled poor white of the South is less thrifty than the negro, such adoption by our government of the postal savings institution would be a blessing to both races. We know, indeed, that the poor white in the North is chiefly in need of the thrift that has a habit of hoarding; that is, the habit of saving something from its weekly pittance, no matter how small.

The introduction of manufacturing industries throughout the South is favorable to the rise of the poor white from his poverty. In the early days of cotton manufacture in New England, the unthrifty white people, who hitherto had lived in cottages or hovels near the large farms, removed to the villages that were springing up near water privileges. They learned how to "work in the mill,” all the members of the family, from the oldest to the youngest, and the aggregate wages was wealth compared with what they had known before. In fact, they earned more than the well-todo farmers in whose service they had formerly labored. The children now earned more wages than the parents had earned before. The work on the farm was varied and intermittent, depending upon the season. Ploughing, planting, weeding, haying, harvesting, threshing, marketing, wood-cutting, etc., are regulated by the farmer's calendar. There are rainy days, when the day laborer loses his hire; and, besides these, there are intervals between the season of one

8 Until the negro learns thrift he will never be a man, no matter what his scientific or industrial education may be; therefore postal savings banks are especially desirable, indeed necessary, for him. — L. H. B.

species of work and that of the next, in which no employment is offered him by the farm proprietor. If he had thrift, he would find work of some kind for himself at home; he would save money and own his house. But thrift he does not possess. Hence what he earns in the days of the working season is prodigally expended while it lasts, and the days of idleness after harvest are days of want in the household. The children are educated in the same habits of unthrift.

The rise of manufactures and the removal of the ill-to-do families from the farm to the mill put an end to the periodic alternation of want and plenty in the house. Plenty now prevails, but does not generate thrift; for there is less occasion for it. The week's wages may be expended as fast as earned, thanks to the demoralizing institution of credit. at the grocery kept by the proprietors of the mill. But, notwithstanding this drawback, there is more self-respect on the part of the children, who now have the consciousness that they earn their living. Manufactures and commerce bring about urban life as contrasted with rural life. The village grows into the city; the railroad carries the daily newspaper from the metropolis to the suburbs and to all towns on its line, and thus extends urban life indefinitely.

The difference between these two orders of life, the urban and rural, is quite important, and its discussion affords us an insight into a process going on rapidly throughout the South. The old régime of the large farm, with its cordon of dependent families, rendered possible a sort of patriarchal constitution. The farm proprietor, in the North as well as in the South, wielded great power over the unthrifty families of day laborers.

9 It is vain to look for manufactures in the South. Manufactures flourish only in a cool climate. Manufacturing has for years been diminishing in the South, press reports to the contrary notwithstanding. - L. H. B.