the red race will go, to where the pale face will cease from troubling, and the weary spirit will find its rest at last.
The Chinese question is of equal insignificance, since our doors are closed and barred against the almond eyes of the Orient.
The Negro question seems to be the race riddle of our civilization and it will take much tact, patience and wisdom to solve the problem. It may be a revelation to some of you to know, that at the rate the negro race has grown since the Civil War, when the twentieth century goes out, there will be sixty millions of negroes in one black belt across the Southland. I say across the Southland because, the main body of the negro race will never leave the track of the southern sun. The South held the negro in slavery, the North set him free. We supposed at the close of the war, he would leave the South and go to live among his liberators. But after half a century, he is still clinging to the cotton and the cane, or sitting in his log house home, the "shadowed livery of the burning sun" upon his brow, the plantation song still lingering on his lips, the banjo tuned to memory's melodies on his knee, a clump of kinky-headed pickaninnies playing in the sand about his cabin door, and there he sits multiplying the Southland and problemizing the century.
I have not time to discuss at length the solution of the problems before us, but I hope to present them in such a manner as will help you to appreciate their importance and how they are linked with the destiny of the republic.
It seems to me exaltation of character, dignification of labor, material prosperity, leaving social equality to take care of itself, makes up the best solution of the negro problem. Social equality does take care of itself even among the white races. Some of you may have a white servant who is a good woman, a Christian woman, you expect to meet her in heaven (if you get there), but she is not admitted to your social set.
There is a vast difference between social rights and civil rights. Near Lexington, Ky., where I claim my home, is the country residence of J.B. Haggin, the multi-millionaire horseman. Soon after the completion of his mansion home, he gave a reception which cost thousands of dollars. The "first cut" of society came from far and near, but I was not invited, nor did I feel slighted, for I had no claim upon the millionaire magnate socially. But when I meet the great turf-king on the turnpike, he in his limozine and I in my little runabout, I say, "Mr. Haggin, give me half the road, sir." Inside his gates I have no claim, but outside, the turnpike's free, and J.B. Haggin can't run over me. So the negro has no claim on the white man for social equality, but he has a right to the key of knowledge and a chance in the world.
Slavery was not an unmixed evil. Like the famed shield it had two sides. While it had its blighting effects it had its blessings. In bondage the negro was taught to speak the English language, and in childhood had the association of white children with their southern home training. They were taught two valuable lessons, industry and obedience, without which liberty means license. The negro was compelled to work and obey, two lessons the Indian never had and never respected. Beside these valuable lessons the negro was taught the fundamental principles of Christianity and at the opening of the war nearly every negro belonged to some church. Their preachers used to get their dictionary and Bible very amusingly mixed at times. Elder Barton exhorting his hearers said: "Paul may plant and Apolinarus water, but if you keeps on tradin' off your birthright for a pot of Messapotamia you'se gwine to git lost. You may go down into de water and come up out ob de water like dat Ethiopian Unitarium, but if you keeps on ossifyin' from one saloon to another; if you keeps on breakin' the ten commandments to satisfy your appetite for chicken; if you keeps on spendin' your time playing craps, the fourteenth amendment ain't gwine to save you. Seben come elebin never took a man to Heben. I want you to understand dat." Yet from such crudeness of expression has come preaching, remarkable for thought as well as scholarship and eloquence, while out of the suffering of slavery, through the law of compensation, we have matchless melodies in negro choirs and negro concert companies.
Leaders of thought may differ as to the methods of solution, but upon one thing all must agree. The net-work of our republic is such that if one suffers all suffer, and the negro is so interwoven with the various interests of our National life, we must level the race up or it will level the white race down. The lower classes must be lifted to the tableland of a better life, where they can breathe the pure air of intelligence and morality, or they will pollute the whole body politic. They must also acquire property. Economy is a lesson the negro race needs to learn. This lesson was well presented to a drunken white man by a sober old negro. The white man spent his money for liquor, and then started for home. Reaching a river he must cross by ferry, he found he had spent his last penny for drink. Seeing an old colored man seated at a cabin door near by, he turned toward the cabin. Nearing the old man he said:
"Uncle, would you loan me three cents to cross the ferry?"