GENERAL NOTES.
The Freedmen.
—The Trustees of the Peabody Fund have just sent $1,200 to aid schools in North Carolina. One thousand dollars of this amount is to be used in Raleigh alone—$600 for a white graded school, and $400 for the two colored graded schools. Dr. Sears, agent of the fund, said that the Trustees would have sent more money, but that the income from it had recently fallen off 40 per cent.
—The North Carolina Legislature of 1876–77 provided for two Normal schools—one for white persons and one for black persons. The latter offers continuous instruction throughout the year at Fayetteville. It is under the care of Mr. Harris, a colored man, who was prepared for the work, which he does well, in Ohio.
—The Board of Education at San José, Cal., has abolished the colored school, and the former pupils have been permitted to enter the other schools.
—At Memphis, a telegram says the colored population are acting well in the emergency, and heartily co-operating with the whites, and adds:
“A meeting has been called by prominent colored men for the purpose of organization, to assist the whites in relieving distress and guarding the property, which the people, in the panic of last week, left unguarded. Their action in the present emergency speaks volumes, and has greatly increased the confidence reposed in them by those who were their masters. Among the most efficient on the police force now are the negroes.”
—When the better people of the North come to be understood by the right-thinking people of the South, we shall have hearty co-operation in the education of the negro.—Rev. Robert West.
—To “remove the colored man from politics”—in the sense of taking him out of such an absorption in politics, and such a misuse of them as does injury to himself and to others—it is only necessary to put him into education and industry.—The Advance.
—No nation can possibly let twelve per cent. of its population grow up in ignorance, superstition and vice, without reaping a fearful harvest.
—Macaulay says: “The best remedy for the evils incident to newly-acquired freedom, is freedom.”
Africa.
From all the west coast of Africa, in 1874, there were imported 486,544 cwt. of palm oil and kernels, valued at £518,134, or over two-and-a-half million dollars; of India-rubber, 3,427 cwt. were imported, valued at £25,792; of coffee, 11,502 cwt., valued at £46,506; of spices and ginger, 8,803 cwt., valued at £20,908; and, noticeable fact to Americans, of raw cotton, 11,315 cwt., valued at £32,839.
The chief articles sent out to the islands and coasts were cottons, arms and ammunition, haberdashery, hardware and cutlery. Of these, cotton was king. The whole number of yards of cotton cloth, mostly prints, sold at these ports for that year, amounted to 47,217,966, or nearly forty-eight millions. Allowing thirty yards to a piece, and thirty pieces to a bale, there were over fifty thousand cases of calicoes, whose value was estimated at £745,179, or nearly four millions of dollars. Shall America utterly neglect so rich a field, with its hundreds of factories half idle, and not a few completely at rest?—African Repository.
—The colored Republic of Liberia has 3,500 voters, 116 officeholders, besides petty magistrates and constables, and taxes the people at the rate of twenty-nine dollars for every voter, besides the cost of maintaining schools and government buildings.
—Stanley is said to have agreed to make another exploring trip through the Continent of Africa, at the expense of the king of Belgium.
—Mr. Williams, who accompanied the Azor’s shipload of South Carolina negroes to Liberia, is unwilling to take the responsibility of advising the colored people of the United States to emigrate. It is a magnificent country, and money is to be made there; but the risks of fever and disease are great, and the climate is enervating. Thrift, patience and good management are essential to success. No emigrant should land at Monrovia without a six months’ stock of provisions, a supply of simple medicines, a little ready money, and all the bright calicoes, brass trinkets and notions he can lay his hands on. Salt is always valuable, too. In the interior, the natives lick visitors’ hands for the salty taste of the perspiration. Those who have from $200 to $300 over their passage-money will have a much better chance of becoming independent in Liberia than in America; but those who expect to find there a heaven on earth, where they will not have to work, and who are unprovided with means, will soon become disheartened, and be anxious to return to the United States.
The Indians.
—One fundamental principle in the management of the Indians should be, that they are not to be massed together, but separated in small communities, and as soon as may be, in homesteads. The more they mix with us the less they will disturb us.
—The solution of the Indian problem will be found whenever a policy founded upon justice shall be inaugurated, entrusted to a separate department of the Government, free from political or army interference, executed by men selected on account of fitness, who shall be exempt from the accursed political dogma, “that to the victors belong the spoils,” held to strictest accountability, and subject to removal only by impeachment. When this is done so that it cannot be undone, and the officers of the Department are clothed with power to protect the Indian under the civil law of the land, and the barriers to the citizenship of the Indian are removed, and he stands upon the same plane with every other man, alike responsible to law, and equally entitled to its protection, then, and not until then, may we hope for peace with our native tribes. When the army of the United States shall become what it ought ever to be, the executive servant of the people, called into requisition only when humane measures have failed, then it may fulfil its mission—never as a humane civilizing power.—Col. Meacham.
—The number of Roman Catholic missionaries and teachers among the Indian tribes in the United States is 117.
—Of the 8,000 youth of legal school age in the Indian Territory, over 5,000 are enrolled as attendants at the common schools, and an average daily attendance of over 3,000 is reported. There is a per capita expenditure upon the total school population of the Cherokees of twenty-five dollars, while New York State expends but six. The total expenditure in all the tribes is very nearly $200,000 a year. If money can make good schools, the Indians certainly ought to have them.
—The Bannock war is over, and the Snakes are scotched. If we may believe these last—though it was one of their tribe who deceived our first mother—in the division of labor, the Bannocks did the murdering, and the Snakes the stealing.
—The care of Spotted Tail agency was put into the hands of the Episcopal Church, under the administration of Secretary Delano, in the Interior Department. The present Commissioner of Indian Affairs decides that this means that no other missionary religious teachers shall go on this ground except Episcopalians. Consequently, three Catholic priests have just been banished from the Spotted Tail agency, against the wish and choice of that chief and his people. So says the Advance.
Chinese.
—The number of children in San Francisco between the ages of five and seventeen is 55,899, of whom 133 are negroes, and 4 Indians. The number under five years, of all classes, is 24,389, making a total under seventeen years, of 80,288, of whom 1,505 are Mongolians. Of the white children of school age, who have not attended any school during the past year, there are 16,147. The returns do not mention any Mongolian children as having attended school.
—The Chinese Consul, Lit-Mium Cook, who has recently arrived at the port of San Francisco, says that the Chinese Government has no desire to abrogate or modify the Burlingame Treaty, and also that it believes that the Government of the United States has both the power and the will to protect Chinamen in the enjoyment of their treaty rights in this country. Mr. Seward, United States Minister to China, who arrived at San Francisco in the same vessel, expresses himself as strongly opposed, on commercial and international grounds, to any change of the existing treaty with China. There is not the slightest danger, as he thinks, that Chinese immigration will ever be so great as to give that race any control in this country, or make it injurious to our industrial interests.
—Chinese labor is discountenanced by the Legislature of British Columbia. A resolution just passed declares that “Chinese laborers should not be employed upon the public works of the province, and that a clause should be inserted in specifications of all contracts awarded, to the effect that contractors will not be permitted to employ Chinese labor upon the works, and that, in event of their doing so, the government will not be responsible for payment of the contract.”
—Two Chinese young men are preparing themselves for the ministry of the Episcopal Church, in San Francisco, Cal.
—The Chinese Ambassador is credited with the statement that the Chinese will go to Ireland, as that is the only country that the Irish do not rule.