"Not only is the Negro gaining in numbers, in wealth and in shallow 'culture,' and tightening his grip on the soil as the owner in fee simple of thousands of homes, churches, schools and farms, but a Negroid party has once more developed into a powerful and sinister influence on the life of this state! You and your associates are loud in your claims to represent a new South. In reality you are the direct descendants of the Reconstruction Scalawag and Carpetbagger.
"The old Scalawag was the Judas Iscariot who sold his people for thirty pieces of silver which he got by licking the feet of his conqueror and fawning on his negro allies. The Carpetbagger was a Northern adventurer who came South to prey on the misfortunes of a ruined people. A new and far more dangerous order of Scalawags has arisen—the man who boldly preaches the omnipotence of the dollar and weighs every policy of state or society by one standard only, will it pay in dollars and cents? And so you frown on any discussion of the tragic problem the negro's continued pressure on Southern society involves because it disturbs business.
"The unparalleled growth of wealth in the North has created our enormous Poor Funds, organized by generous well-meaning men for the purpose of education in the South. As a matter of fact, this new educational movement had its origin in the same soil that established negro classical schools and attempted to turn the entire black race into preachers, lawyers, and doctors just after the war. Your methods, however, are wiser, although your policies are inspired, if not directed, by the fertile brain of a notorious negro of doubtful moral character.
"The directors of your Poor Funds profess to be the only true friends of the true white man of the South. By a 'true white man of the South' you mean a man who is willing to show his breadth of vision by fraternizing occasionally with negroes.
"An army of lickspittles have begun to hang on the coat-tails of your dispensers of alms. Their methods are always the same. They attempt to attract the notice of the Northern distributors by denouncing men of my type who are earnestly, fearlessly and reverently trying to face and solve the darkest problem the centuries have presented to America. These little beggars have begun to vie with one another not only in denouncing the leaders of public opinion in the South, but in fulsome and disgusting fawning at the feet of the individual negro whose personal influence dominates these Funds."
Again the lavender socks moved uneasily.
"In which category you place the author of a certain book, I suppose?" inquired the professor.
"I paused in the hope that you might not miss my meaning," Norton replied, smiling. "The astounding power for the debasement of public opinion developing through these vast corruption funds is one of the most sinister influences which now threatens Southern society. It is the most difficult of all to meet because its protestations are so plausible and philanthropic.
"The Carpetbagger has come back to the South. This time he is not a low adventurer seeking coin and public office. He is a philanthropist who carries hundreds of millions of dollars to be distributed to the 'right' men who will teach Southern boys and girls the 'right' ideas. So far as these 'right' ideas touch the negro, they mean the ultimate complete acceptance of the black man as a social equal.
"Your chief spokesman of this New Order of Carpetbag, for example, has declared on many occasions that the one thing in his life of which he is most proud is the fact that he is the personal friend of the negro whose influence now dominates your dispensers of alms! This man positively grovels with joy when his distinguished black friend honors him by becoming his guest in New York.