It is not necessary to show, which is by no means the case, that all who come from the South asking aid for such causes are frauds, in order to give weight to our words of caution. Many of these are attempting honestly a most important work, and ought to have sympathy and material aid, but the individual to whom application is made has neither time nor facilities for making the proper investigations to establish this fact. True, the applicant has testimonials, but they need investigation no less than the applicant himself.
We know of several cases where funds have been contributed, and have been expended in the erection and maintenance of schools, which are doing honest and most valuable work, concerning which nothing but praise should be spoken, and yet nothing but the life of one man stands between this present use of these funds and an utter perversion of them. The school property is the personal property of the individual who procured the funds, and at his death will of necessity pass into the hands of others, who can do what they choose with it.
We know of one case where a wealthy man from New York, spending the winter in the South, became interested in a negro public school near his hotel. He converted the rude building into a New England school-house, supplied with first-class apparatus, and took great satisfaction in what he had done for the poor negroes. Next year the negro school was transferred to another building, and the whites made this one, with its books, globes, and philosophical apparatus, the foundation of a higher school for their own race. We believe it best for the friends of negro education to work, through some one of the various organizations which are doing this work, who are in position to do it more wisely and efficiently than they could do it; and would call attention to the following suggestions from a correspondent of the New York Tribune, as being wise and of urgent importance:
“There are associations connected with nearly every religious denomination in the country, to meet the great and terrible need of education among the millions of the emancipated and their children. These associations are under the administration of the best and most sagacious business men in our communities, and it is safe to say that the moneys committed to the custody of these associations are judiciously, desirably and economically appropriated. Of one of these associations I have personal and familiar knowledge. It has extensive colleges or universities in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, besides numerous schools scattered throughout the Southern States. Nearly $300,000 was expended by this association the past year, almost exclusively in the interest of these people, one excellent woman putting $150,000 in the treasury, to be expended in making much needed additions to colleges so utterly thronged by applicants that they were compelled to turn numbers from their doors.”
THE INDIAN PROBLEM.
GEN. S. C. ARMSTRONG.
The Indian problem is upon us as never before.
The wrongs of the Poncas, both in themselves and as illustrating our country’s mode of dealing with the red race for generations, have touched and stirred the people.
The sum of six generations of slavery has been to the negro, oppression, offset by steady progress through it all, and only injury to the white man. The sum of six generations of Indian treatment has been a succession of wrongs, offset by little real advantage, and the steady gain of the white man.