BEREA COLLEGE, KY.
The Berea College Commencement was held June 17-24. There was present a number of distinguished men from abroad, among whom may be mentioned Roswell Smith, of the Century Magazine, New York; Geo. W. Cable, the well-known author; Rev. Washington Gladden, D. D., Rev. Robert West, of the Chicago Advance; Hon. Cassius M. Clay, and Judge Beckner, of Kentucky. Roswell Smith made a gift of $5,000 to the institution. We make the following extract from the baccalaureate sermon of Prof. Wright, in which he ably discusses the question of caste:
"However long this state of things may continue, do not despairingly conclude that it is never to be broken down. The stars in their courses fight against injustice and folly. The very stones of the field are in league with those who are on the side of equity and fairness. Any region, small or large, that persists in a separation of races in its hotels, railroads, schools and churches, dooms itself to an inferior rank in all the departments of its life—in its business as effectively as in its intelligence and its piety.
"It costs more to keep up two sets of hotels than one. It costs more to build railroad stations with separate waiting-rooms for two races than to build them with accommodations for ladies and gentlemen without regard to race. It costs more to run trains, if separate passenger cars must be provided for two races on every train. This cost will delay the building of railroads in the first place, and this can only be met by higher rates of fare, which will impede business progress.
"It costs more to maintain a double system of public schools than to provide for all the children under a single system. This increases taxes, while at the same time the schools cannot be as efficient, and this diminishes intelligence. For in scattered farming communities, the districts must be so large under the double system that many families are out of reach of the school. And the number of towns that can have graded schools is greatly reduced by the requirement that no school shall receive pupils of more than one race. Normal schools are also made more difficult to maintain, and teachers' institutes rendered less efficient. A lower average of intelligence is as inevitable under such adverse conditions in the educational machinery of a State, as slower speed in a racehorse is inevitable when he carries heavy weight.
"Similar things may be said of churches. Any community that insists on separate churches for different races dooms itself to a lower grade of spiritual experience and a lower degree of Christian activity. How must every good work be retarded if, in addition to the separation of Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and others which we find nearly everywhere, there must also be a further separation of these by races; if in every neighborhood, however scattered the population, there must be a white Methodist church with its white Methodist preacher, and also a colored Methodist church with its colored Methodist preacher, a white Baptist church and preacher, and also a colored Baptist church and preacher, a white Presbyterian church and preacher, and so on through the list. In many cases such churches have service only once in a month, and the members attend no other in the meantime. It is plain that of two regions alike in other respects, the one that insists on race distinctions in the worship of the one God and Father of us all, and will not allow men of different races to stand side by side in doing Christian work, must maintain its religious institutions at greater cost and with less efficiency because of this race separation.
"The region that treats all men impartially in its churches will have the advantage in religion and morals. The region that knows no race distinctions in its schools will have the advantage in intelligence. The region that is color-blind on its public conveyances and in its places of business, will have the advantage in business, for it can equip and run steamboats and railroads more economically and conduct factories at lower cost, while its higher average intelligence will make it a producer of better goods. All these elements will conspire to give the impartial community precedence in wealth, in literature, in art, in social attractiveness, as well as in a high average intelligence; in orderly habits, and in both the power and the will to achieve noble things. Power is coming into the hands of those who choose righteousness. Let all the commonwealths in our broad land know that only by treating all men with impartiality can they put themselves in alliance with the silent but irresistible forces of social and political economy. There is no future for caste-practicing communities but decadence and increasing inferiority."