"No effort adequate to even an approximate determination statistically of the intermixture of the White and Negro races has as yet been undertaken. Mr. Patterson, quoted in an authoritative work upon 'The Resources and Population of South Carolina,' and published by the State Board of Agriculture in 1883, as one who has given much attention to the subject, says, even now there are no longer Negroes. One-third has a large infusion of white blood, another third has less, but still some, and of the other third it would be difficult to find an assured specimen of pure African blood. This, continues the report, is a startling statement; but in the absence of statistics, whoever puts it to the test among his Negro acquaintance will be surprised at the degree in which it conforms to the facts. If the lineage of those Negroes whose color and features seem most unmistakably to mark them as of purely African descent, be traced, indubitable evidence may often be obtained of white parentage more or less remote."
MISAPPLIED BENEFACTIONS.
The judicious placing of benefaction is a large part of the good of it. Is it wisely located? Will it be permanent? Will it be reproductive? Will it be in the hands of persons suitably responsible for the administration of it? Will it be under a fitting supervision? The cause appeals to sympathy; does it also carry the mark of good judgment? For lack of this double endorsement, not a little of generous giving is thrown away. It is a fine piece of romance; does it proffer a sufficient security upon the proffered investment of the Lord's money?
A worthy Christian woman brings the scheme. It is laid upon the mountains of East Tennessee, thrust up into notoriety by the writing of Charles Egbert Craddock. A lady of faith and hope and energy, proposes to build up an industrial farm-school of high quality for the neglected girls of that mountain district. She has already been teaching a common-school among them. She comes up to a city of New England. She lays her plan before some of the noble women there. They take it up without further inquiry as to the feasibility of the undertaking. With their first contributions an old worn-out farm is bought in the lady's name, and in the cheap farm-house a small school is opened. The location is in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, three or four miles from the little, old, tumble-down county seat. Now a fine building is to be secured. The lady patrons raise their offerings up to six thousand dollars. Fine architectural plans are devised at the North. Meantime, speculators on the ground, who for a few cents an acre have bought up a great quantity of land adjoining and would be glad to sell it at a dollar an acre, have donated a hundred acres, more or less, to the school. On this tract the building is located and goes forward. The frame is put up and pretty much enclosed. For want of money the enterprise comes to a stand, and now for these four years the stranded structure has been taking damage from the storms.
The place has been visited repeatedly by the superintendents of the A.M.A., to find the state of the case and to see if anything could be done to utilize the partial plant. The pastor of the lady donors became interested to save the investment through the A.M.A., or to stop the pouring of more funds into the venture, but after all his correspondence and personal conference, he found that, if the whole property were to be offered to the Association, it could not afford to accept it and undertake to carry forward the school. It already has a prosperous academy in that county and another in an adjoining county, and these, wisely located in congenial communities, are all that is needed for those and for contiguous counties. There is no way to utilize it, Alas, "Wherefore this waste?"
An Orphanage for colored children is a tempting charity. The A.M.A early undertook such work. At Wilmington, N.C., and at Atlanta, Ga., it bought lands and erected ample buildings, but the experiment satisfied the authorities that the Association was not called to that department of work. The children's god-fathers and god-mothers, in devotion to their covenant, or grand-parents from personal interest, would soon be taking them out, and others having care of them would call them out as soon as, by some growth and training, the scholars were made profitable for work, and so those properties were sold and the avails put into the ordinary educational process. Then the conclusion was reached that this was the obligation of the local communities, and not of foreign charity. According to this idea, an Orphanage in a Southern city, undertaken not by the patronage or approval of the A.M.A., though made to appear so because the originator had been under its commission there as a missionary, has been transferred to a local board and to the support of the city and county. That is as it should be. Those local authorities ought to take care of their own orphans, and not appeal to the charity of the North to relieve them of their proper burdens of humanity.
Another so-called Orphanage at still another Southern city, started as an individual venture. It was allowed for a short time to have a conditional endorsement from the A.M.A., which was soon withdrawn and the enterprise disowned. This has swallowed up thousands of dollars of the money of benevolence, and yet it has all the time been a sham and a falsehood. There was nothing of it. When a lady newspaper correspondent called to visit the institution, ten or a dozen children from a neighboring private school were borrowed and paraded as orphans, when at the time there were only two little children in the concern, and they had grandparents living near and abundantly able to take care of them. "Wherefore this waste?"
In yet another Southern city, a couple of young ladies start a school. Having once been under commission of the A.M.A., in connection with its institutions, they appear to many to have its endorsement and they make appeal to its constituents. Money comes along for a work irresponsibly begun and without supervision. Only a year goes by before they appeal by their leaflet-paper for several thousand dollars to buy land and build a home and school property. Who but they shall hold and own the property? Whose shall it be when they marry or grow weary of the work and leave? What protection is there for such misplaced benefaction?