Certain Diversities of American Life

by Charles Dudley Warner

I believe that the fathers were right in making government depend upon the consent of the governed. I believe there has been as yet discovered no other basis of government so safe, so stable as popular suffrage, but the fathers never contemplated a suffrage without intelligence. It is a contradiction of terms. A proletariat without any political rights in a republic is no more dangerous than an unintelligent mob which can be used in elections by demagogues. Universal suffrage is not a universal panacea; it may be the best device attainable, but it is certain of abuse without safeguards. One of the absolutely necessary safeguards is an educational qualification. No one ought anywhere to exercise it who cannot read and write, and if I had my way, no one should cast a ballot who had not a fair conception of the effect of it, shown by a higher test of intelligence than the mere fact of ability to scrawl his name and to spell out a line or two in the Constitution. This much the State for its own protection is bound to require, for suffrage is an expediency, not a right belonging to universal humanity regardless of intelligence or of character.

The charge is, with regard to this universal suffrage, that you take the fruits of increased representation produced by it, and then deny it to a portion of the voters whose action was expected to produce a different political result. I cannot but regard it as a blunder in statesmanship to give suffrage without an educational qualification, and to deem it possible to put ignorance over intelligence. You are not, responsible for the situation, but you are none the less in an illogical position before the law. Now, would you not gain more in a rectification of your position than you would lose in other ways, by making suffrage depend upon an educational qualification? I do not mean gain party-wise, but in political morals and general prosperity. Time would certainly be gained by this, and it is possible in this shifting world, in the growth of industries and the flow of populations, that before the question of supremacy was again upon you, foreign and industrial immigration would restore the race balance.

We come now to education. The colored race being here, I assume that its education, with the probabilities this involves of its elevation, is a duty as well as a necessity. I speak both of the inherent justice there is in giving every human being the chance of bettering his condition and increasing his happiness that lies in education—unless our whole theory of modern life is wrong—and also of the political and social danger there is in a degraded class numerically strong. Granted integral membership in a body politic, education is a necessity. I am aware of the danger of half education, of that smattering of knowledge which only breeds conceit, adroitness, and a consciousness of physical power, without due responsibility and moral restraint. Education makes a race more powerful both for evil and for good. I see the danger that many apprehend. And the outlook, with any amount of education, would be hopeless, not only as regards the negro and those in neighborhood relations with him, if education should not bring with it thrift, sense of responsibility as a citizen, and virtue. What the negro race under the most favorable conditions is capable of remains to be shown; history does not help us much to determine thus far. It has always been a long pull for any race to rise out of primitive conditions; but I am sure for its own sake, and for the sake of the republic where it dwells, every thoughtful person must desire the most speedy intellectual and moral development possible of the African race. And I mean as a race.

Some distinguished English writers have suggested, with approval, that the solution of the race problem in this country is fusion, and I have even heard discouraged Southerners accept it as a possibility. The result of their observation of the amalgamation of races and colors in Egypt, in Syria, and Mexico, must be very different from mine. When races of different color mingle there is almost invariably loss of physical stamina, and the lower moral qualities of each are developed in the combination. No race that regards its own future would desire it. The absorption theory as applied to America is, it seems to me, chimerical.

But to return to education. It should always be fitted to the stage of development. It should always mean discipline, the training of the powers and capacities. The early pioneers who planted civilization on the Watauga, the Holston, the Kentucky, the Cumberland, had not much broad learning—they would not have been worse if they had had more but they had courage, they were trained in self-reliance, virile common sense, and good judgment, they had inherited the instinct and capacity of self-government, they were religious, with all their coarseness they had the fundamental elements of nobility, the domestic virtues, and the public spirit needed in the foundation of states. Their education in all the manly arts and crafts of the backwoodsman fitted them very well for the work they had to do. I should say that the education of the colored race in America should be fundamental. I have not much confidence in an ornamental top-dressing of philosophy, theology, and classic learning upon the foundation of an unformed and unstable mental and moral condition. Somehow, character must be built up, and character depends upon industry, upon thrift, upon morals, upon correct ethical perceptions. To have control of one's powers, to have skill in labor, so that work in any occupation shall be intelligent, to have self-respect, which commonly comes from trained capacity, to know how to live, to have a clean, orderly house, to be grounded in honesty and the domestic virtues,—these are the essentials of progress. I suppose that the education to produce these must be an elemental and practical one, one that fits for the duties of life and not for some imaginary sphere above them.

To put it in a word, and not denying that there must be schools for teaching the teachers, with the understanding that the teachers should be able to teach what the mass most needs to know—what the race needs for its own good today, are industrial and manual training schools, with the varied and practical discipline and arts of life which they impart.

What then? What of the 'modus vivendi' of the two races occupying the same soil? As I said before, I do not know. Providence works slowly. Time and patience only solve such enigmas. The impossible is not expected of man, only that he shall do today the duty nearest to him. It is easy, you say, for an outsider to preach waiting, patience, forbearance, sympathy, helpfulness. Well, these are the important lessons we get out of history. We struggle, and fume, and fret, and accomplish little in our brief hour, but somehow the world gets on. Fortunately for us, we cannot do today the work of tomorrow. All the gospel in the world can be boiled down into a single precept. Do right now. I have observed that the boy who starts in the morning with a determination to behave himself till bedtime, usually gets through the day without a thrashing.

But of one thing I am sure. In the rush of industries, in the race problem, it is more and more incumbent upon such institutions as the University of the South to maintain the highest standard of pure scholarship, to increase the number of men and women devoted to the intellectual life. Long ago, in the middle of the seventeenth century, John Ward of Stratford-on-Avon, clergyman and physician, wrote in his diary: "The wealth of a nation depends upon its populousness, and its populousness depends upon the liberty of conscience that is granted to it, for this calls in strangers and promotes trading." Great is the attraction of a benign climate and of a fruitful soil, but a greater attraction is an intelligent people, that values the best things in life, a society hospitable, companionable, instinct with intellectual life, awake to the great ideas that make life interesting.

As I travel through the South and become acquainted with its magnificent resources and opportunities, and know better and love more the admirable qualities of its people, I cannot but muse in a fond prophecy upon the brilliant part it is to play in the diversified life and the great future of the American Republic. But, North and South, we have a hard fight with materializing tendencies. God bless the University of the South!