^ ^ios-AHca% 
 
 % i 
 
 ,
 

 
 Wisdom's Gall 
 
 BY 
 
 Sutton E. Griggs 
 
 "Sit down before a fact as a little 
 child, be prepared to give up every 
 preconceived notion, follow humbly 
 wherever and to whatever abysses 
 nature leads, or you will learn noth- 
 ing." Thdmas H. Huxley. 
 
 To secure a copy of this book, "Wisdom's Call/' with postage prepaid, 
 
 Send 55 Cents to 
 
 The National Sentiment-Moulding Bureau, 
 658 So. Lauderdale Street Memphis, Tennessee 
 
 The Price of "Wisdom's Call" Bound in Cloth is $1.00. Add lOc Postage.
 
 COPYRIGHTED BY 
 
 SUTTON E. GRIGGS, 
 
 , TKNN. 
 1911.
 
 E 
 IL r 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 Z#<? one dear life which, in all the on going of time, I shall 
 
 be allowed to live upon this planet, came to me 
 
 within the borders of the imperial state 
 
 of Texas. Whatever others 
 
 may say, shall I not, therefore, love her ? Well, I do; and 
 
 to Texas soil which fed me, to Texas air which 
 
 fanned my cheeks, to Texas skies which 
 
 smiled upon me, to Texas stars 
 
 whose fiery orbs searched 
 
 my soul, chased out the germs of slumber and bade me come 
 to them, this volume is affectionately dedicated by 
 
 THE AUTHOR,
 
 WORKS OF SUTTON E. GRIGGS. 
 
 "IMPERIUM IN IMPERIO" 
 "OVERSHADOWED" 
 
 "UNFETTERED" 
 
 "THE HINDERED HAND" 
 
 "THE ONE GREAT QUESTION" 
 
 "POINTING THE WAY" 
 
 "WISDOM'S CALL"
 
 The skill and the courage, the daring and per- 
 sistence, the heroism, resourcefulness and mas- 
 terful genius displayed by the sons of the white 
 South during their four years of bloody travel and 
 shifting fortunes from Bull Run's battle ground, 
 by the way of Shiloh, of Gettysburg, of Antietam 
 and other fields of carnage, on and on, and on, to 
 the dreary plains of hope-ending Appomattox, 
 settled for all time to come the question of the in- 
 nate capacity of the white South for great achieve- 
 ments. 
 
 It is well that the South has had this lesson of 
 her greatness coming out of the Civil War, for, stand- 
 ing midway of the world's civic forests, with the 
 world's most stupendous sociological problem 
 strapped to her back, hedged in with briers, brambles 
 and darkness, her ears beset with the harsh tones 
 of the vicious, the false tones of the demagogues 
 and the half tones of the timid, the lesson is needed 
 that she may have the faith in her powers necessary 
 for the performance of the great task that is hers 
 and the nation's. 
 
 But there are other lessons of equal importance 
 to be drawn from the outcome of this same war. 
 The result of the war wholly unforeseen by the leaders 
 
 vii
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 of the South of that day, demonstrates that the white 
 South with all of its acuteness of judgment is not 
 by any means infallible, is not beyond the possibility 
 of making grave mistakes. The result of the war 
 also demonstrates that, with all of its power, the 
 white South is yet not able to withstand the eternal 
 drift of things, is not able to fight against the stars 
 in their courses, is not able to thwart the purposes 
 of the guiding hand of the universe however dis- 
 tasteful the pathway mapped out may be. 
 
 In view of the fact that the South can make mis- 
 takes and can be ordered by eternal forces to re- 
 trace her steps, an open ear should be ever kept at- 
 tuned to catch dear wisdom's call. Such we feel 
 our message herein given to be. Hence % the name it 
 bears. 
 
 In "Wisdom's Call" we have striven to look at 
 matters fundamentally, and feel that we have made 
 a presentation which the white South can only re- 
 ject or ignore at the cost of a silent, bloodless but 
 costly struggle with eternal forces, which through 
 the years will eat away her vitals. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 SUTTON E. GRIGGS. 
 
 Vlll
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Danger of an Unprotected Spot. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 A Luxury of Great Price. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The National Power As an Asset. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 A Better System for Making Men. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Preservation of the Two Races. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Southern Statesmanship and the Negro 
 Woman. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 How to Keep the Colored Race from 
 Being a Burden. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The White Man's Equity in Negro 
 Education. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Spirit of a People.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DANGER OF AN LNPRO- 
 TECTED SPOT. 
 
 We are living in a day in which great 
 Small importance is being attached to what 
 
 Things. was once regarded as the small, in- 
 consequential things of the universe, 
 a day in which the greatest and wisest among men 
 do not consider it beneath their dignity to take note 
 of what such lowly beings as flies, mosquitoes and 
 rats are doing. Since Pasteur unfolded to the world 
 the germ theory of disease, and demonstrated the 
 presence in the human frame of tiny creatures, too 
 small to be detected by the keenest eye when un- 
 aided, creatures that feed upon and destroy the body, 
 the minds of men have been very generally turned 
 in the direction of small things. So small, so in- 
 significant a thing as the house fly now stands 
 charged with being a source through which typhoid 
 fever germs are able to capture men and put them in 
 
 (ID
 
 12 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 jeopardy of their lives. The sneaking chinch, 
 small, timid and cowardly, daring not to leave its 
 hiding place except under the cover of darkness, 
 has at last been singled out as the agency by means 
 of which the smallpox is spread abroad. Tuber- 
 culosis, the disease that vexes the soul of man, that 
 has baffled the concentrated wisdom of the world 
 and of the ages, is but the work of tiny germs of such 
 size that hundreds of them can assemble upon the 
 point of a needle without being visible to the naked 
 eye. The discovery has been made that the bubonic 
 plague, the terror of the nations of the earth, is 
 transmitted from land to land by so humble a crea- 
 ture as a rat that hides in the hold of a ship as it sails 
 from port to port. It is now well known that the 
 epidemics of yellow fever which in times past disor- 
 ganized the business of states and nations, and con- 
 verted whole cities into one great funeral procession, 
 were organized and conducted by such tiny beings 
 as mosquitoes which flew from the swamps and 
 carried the disease from man to man. The suffering 
 yellow fever patient strained his dying eyes in search 
 of some far off mysterious providence that was 
 hurrying him to an untimely death, while just above 
 his head the mosquitoes were chanting in an unknown 
 tongue the full story of his infection and his impend- 
 ing dissolution. 
 
 There are some who seem to be of 
 Making the opinion that the complete adjust- 
 the Negro ment in the South of what is called the 
 Small. race question will immediately follow 
 
 the repeal or annulment of the Fifteenth 
 Amendment to the Constitution of the United
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 13 
 
 States. Their cry is, deprive the Negro of all politi- 
 cal power; cause him to be absolutely helpless so far 
 as affecting the situation one way or another is con- 
 cerned; reduce him to the position of a governmental 
 insect, and, they assert, our troubles will all be over. 
 But small things, we have just seen, can give trouble. 
 The fly does more harm than the eagle; the rat is 
 more dangerous than the elephant; the chinch is far 
 more to be feared than the lion. The Negro, though 
 reduced to a position of utter helplessness will be 
 the source of unending trouble to the white South 
 and to the nation. We have no reference here to 
 any possible injury the Negro might be able to in- 
 flict by means of such strength as he could muster. 
 Very little, perhaps, as matters now stand, need be 
 feared from that quarter. But it is the weakened 
 position of the Negro, not his strength, that is to be 
 feared. The putrid body of a dead man lying at 
 the bottom of a reservoir can poison the water of a 
 city and thus slay more people than if the man were 
 alive, dashing wildly through the streets of that city 
 firing on the right and on the left. 
 
 When in sixteen hundred and nine- 
 A Small teen a handful of uncivilized and help- 
 Beginning, less aliens was incorporated as slaves 
 into the economic life of Virginia, the 
 great issues bound up in that act were hidden from 
 the most astute minds of that day. Utterly weak 
 were those Negroes; a condition more abject is 
 hardly conceivable. And yet they were not without 
 the power of doing harm. The system of slavery 
 ramified the South, poured its noxious poison into
 
 14 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 its life currents, marked its fertile fields for avoidance, 
 transferred the seat of power to the northeast, north 
 and northwest and finally became the bone of con- 
 tention that provoked the most terrific war that the 
 human family has thus far waged. 
 
 "Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!" 
 
 P .. But the advocates of the repeal of 
 
 the Fifteenth Amendment hold that 
 said proposed repeal would not weaken 
 the Negro; hold that his position would 
 be the stronger if he would but rest his case upon 
 the sense of guardianship of his white neighbor, and 
 not seek to have a voice of his own in the government. 
 In fact there are some who seem fully convinced 
 that the ideal situation for the South is one in which 
 the Negro is granted protection in the matter of hold- 
 ing property, is granted the right of trial by jury, 
 but is denied all voice in the matter of conducting the 
 affairs of state. The contention is made that the 
 occupying of this position on the part of the Negro 
 is not necessarily incompatible with the according 
 to him of full protection, and as proof that an element 
 shorn of the right of participation in the government 
 can still be amply protected, the favorable treat- 
 ment of women and children, non-voting elements, 
 is cited. An instant's reflection will convince one 
 that it is quite an error to base conclusions as to what 
 can be done for the Negro upon whatever degree of 
 favorable treatment is accorded women and children. 
 The known relationship of woman to the social side 
 of man at once discloses the fact that even without 
 citizenship she occupies a position of vantage that
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 15 
 
 in the very nature of things the Negro man can never 
 occupy with relation to the white man. The mother, 
 wife, sister, potential wife or sweetheart, the co- 
 partner in the work of pro-creation these have a 
 thousand chances for protection to one that the Negro 
 has as a simple contributor to the material side of 
 civilization. The girl child is their woman in the em- 
 bryo, and the boy a citizen in the embryo, and even 
 the birds know how to protect their own eggs in pref- 
 erence to protecting the fledglings of others. In view 
 of the fact therefore, that the white woman and 
 child are intimately interwoven in the social and 
 civic life of the white man the protection that is ac- 
 corded them cannot be pointed to as an example of 
 what could be expected for the Negro placed in a 
 weakened position in the body politic. 
 Far better illustrations of what can 
 
 be expected of the sense of guardian- 
 ship, unsupported by other considera- 
 tions, are the treatment accorded 
 Negro women, who, where Negroes are disfranchised 
 have no social ties linking them to any of the sover- 
 eign voters, and the status of the Negro child, who 
 if a girl, is not a future social queen of the white 
 race, or, if a boy, is not a future citizen where Ne- 
 groes are denied the right to vote because of race. 
 It is the universal plaint of the colored woman 
 that she stands absolutely unprotected, that 
 in the great majority of cases where an alleged 
 offender against her honor is white she is laughed out 
 of court, and further, that cases which would cause 
 death were the racial connection of each party to the
 
 16 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 situation reversed, are actually denied entrance 
 into court. 
 
 As to the hold that the Negro child has upon 
 the situation, we may readily judge from the mere 
 fact that the desire in some quarters to have 
 him grow up in ignorance prevents the more rapid 
 growth in the South of a sentiment in favor of com- 
 pulsory education. In short, the Negro child is so 
 weak in reference to its enjoying its rights, that it 
 is able through that weakness to keep the white 
 child out of its rights. Here then, in the case of the 
 Negro woman and child we have clear illustrations 
 of what it means to be dependent upon a mere sense 
 of guardianship. 
 
 To prove that the Negro can safely 
 Conditions rely upon the white man's sense of 
 Have guardianship, reference is sometimes 
 
 Changed. made to the protection that was often 
 given the slave by his master. But 
 that protection was born of a deeper motive than 
 that of simple guardianship. The greatest of all mo- 
 tives, self-interest, inspired the master to protect 
 his slave. But now that the Negroes are free and 
 there are no masters to guard their own interests 
 by protecting their slaves, it is indeed poor reason- 
 ing that would expect the same activity and. the 
 same results under the changed conditions. No, 
 the protection accorded to the slave is not in any 
 sense an indication of what would be the plight of 
 the Negro resting wholly upon such sense of guard- 
 ianship as might be developed in the white race.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 17 
 
 Nature's one great remedy for all 
 Nature's situations threatening trouble is the 
 Remedy. instinct of self-preservation. That in- 
 stinct is the only thing that can be 
 relied upon to do full justice by the individual in- 
 volved, that can be depended upon to be on the alert 
 at all times and under all circumstances. Whenever 
 this instinct is forbidden to work, the element thus 
 situated is in a weakened condition in the body 
 politic. A toothless dog is certain to have more 
 stones thrown at him than is one that can growl and 
 show a gleaming row of sharp protectors when oc- 
 casion requires. Yes, the Negro, denied the right 
 to participate in the government, is in a weakened 
 position, and we shall now proceed to show the harm 
 to the whole body politic, the entire governmental 
 fabric by virtue of his occupying this position. 
 
 We shall first consider the psycho- 
 When the logical developments, the effects upon 
 State Dis- the minds of men, that result from the 
 criminates, course of the state in discriminating 
 against the Negro, in putting him in a 
 weakened condition. Where the Negro has the 
 proper influences around him to guide him, his spirit 
 will rise above and be unaffected by any course 
 deemed unjust that the state may take, but to the 
 unguided mind will come one of two conclusions. 
 The victim of discrimination because of his race, 
 will decide either that the state is right, that he is a 
 being of a lower order which conclusion robs him of 
 his self-respect, or he will feel that the state is 
 unjust, and bitterness will thereupon enter his
 
 18 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 spirit. In both cases the state has prepared a con- 
 genial soil for the development of crime; for what 
 better preparation can one have for a career of 
 wrongdoing than a full supply of disrespect for one- 
 self, or a spirit embittered through a sense of wrong 
 done by organized society? 
 
 T , But the psychological influence ema- 
 
 ii /L iv* nating from the attitude of the state 
 White Man ., XT 
 
 A t j reaches not only the Negroes, but the 
 
 whites as well, only in a different way. 
 The white citizen feels that he must uphold the laws 
 of the commonwealth and his mind begins to take 
 on such form as is necessary for upholding the 
 decrees of the state. Those who are set apart by dis- 
 criminating laws as the dominant class develop the 
 feeling of occupying a superior station. It is the na- 
 ture of a man to double his sense of being wronged 
 whenever this wrong arises from a creature pronounc- 
 edly beneath his level. Remember the groanings of the 
 lion when kicked by the ass. It was the source of the 
 kick that troubled him most. So when the state by 
 discrimination bids the white citizen to look down on 
 the Negro it is doubling the capacity of this white 
 citizen to take offense. Wherever state discrimina- 
 tion exists it will be observed that the sensitiveness 
 of the whites is quickened and that the sense of pro- 
 portion as regards offenses committed by Negroes 
 is destroyed. Here we have the philosophy of the 
 mood that has sometimes led white men to kill 
 Negroes who have seen fit to say to them yes, in- 
 stead of yes, sir. With the situation so richly ripened 
 for crime by the course of the state, the story of
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 19 
 
 the evolution that follows is very siir.ple. The white 
 men whose duty it is to arrest supposed offenders, en- 
 ter upon their duties with their minds surcharged 
 with the state's attitude. It is beneath the dignity 
 of an officer to listen to a submerged unit as in his 
 distress he seeks to harangue his way out of trouble,, 
 so, forth comes the club, and a bloody head follows, 
 It is wholly beneath the dignity of an officer to 
 chase a Negro, who is something less than a citizen, 
 so a bullet is sent after the submerged unit that dares- 
 to flee, is sent if the charge is simply that of stealing 
 a five-cent glass of milk or the failure to be at work, 
 or yet again if the charge be only that the party, 
 though unsuspected and unaccused of crime, had 
 the hardihood to run when accosted. Cases of the 
 type here mentioned could be cited until the soul 
 would grow sick. 
 
 The white citizen, now mark you, 
 Negro's is more prone to find fault with the 
 
 Troubles Negro in an atmosphere of state dis- 
 Greater. crimination, and the Negro must meet 
 
 Power Less, this increased tendency to do him 
 harm with a decreased power to ward 
 off. When a mob of whites approaches a jail for a vic- 
 tim belonging to the submerged class, the sheriff must 
 choose between serving the men before him who will 
 meet him at the polls on election day, and that class 
 that can exercise no influence whatever on his destiny. 
 Often the temptation to care for his future proves a 
 potent influence with the sheriff and the member of 
 the non-voting element is handed over to the voting 
 element with the thought uppermost in mind that,
 
 "20 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 while the voting element is able to reward, the non- 
 voting element is powerless to punish. So the sit- 
 uation logically paves the way for successful and un- 
 rebuked lynching. 
 
 The downward journey continues. 
 Down! Perhaps the white man who formed 
 
 Down! part of a mob to kill a Negro, a little 
 
 later takes the matter in hand indi- 
 vidually and seeks to have his own private killing 
 of a Negro. Perhaps he is himself killed. But the 
 right of self-defense is not one of the sacred rights 
 of the submerged class. Has not the butcher, the 
 higher animal, the full right to kill the steer? And 
 is not any steer which will not tamely submit to be 
 killed a vicious animal? Thus the Negro, who kills 
 a white man in self-defense, who kills righteously, 
 being of the submerged class, is sometimes lynched 
 or even burned at the stake for his exercise of the 
 right of self-defense . These in j ustices that inevitably 
 dog the footsteps of the submerged ones, cause heart- 
 burnings and ranklings that so operate upon their 
 spirits that the soil is the further prepared for an in- 
 creased crop of crimes. 
 
 But the evils begotten by the weak- 
 Character ened position of the Negro in the body 
 of Whites politic are not by any means confined 
 Influenced, to the Negro race. It is a matter of 
 common knowledge that it is now ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to convict a white man of murder 
 even when his victim is a white man. For, the jurors 
 that blunted their sense of the sacredness of hu-
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 21 
 
 man life when they freed the white man that murdered 
 a Negro, have had no moral grindstone on which 
 to resharpen that blunted sense in time to properly 
 avenge the death of a white man who died at the 
 hands of a white. Yes, the, character acquired in 
 dealing with the Negro is after all, character, a fixed 
 part of a man, and will manifest itself in every walk 
 of life. 
 
 The Southern white dailies are 
 White Worn- beginning to note the alarming num- 
 en Are Suf- ber of crimes of murder and vio- 
 fering. lence against white women on 
 
 the part of their husbands that are 
 being reported, and are tracing these crimes to the 
 brutality begotten in the lawlessness practiced to- 
 ward the Negroes. Hitherto the South has been her- 
 alded far and wide as the home of chivalrous regard 
 for woman-kind. Not long since in one of our South- 
 ern cities a white man killed his wife in a most 
 deliberate manner and without the semblance 
 of just provocation. The estimate of the value of 
 human life had sunk so low that the white people 
 felt it their duty to call a mass-meeting to voice a 
 demand for the punishment of the wife slayer, 
 and one of the South's greatest newspapers, located 
 in that city, began an editorial crusade calling for 
 the man's punishment. Just think of that! Mass 
 meetings and editorial proddings deemed necessary 
 to secure the proper handling of a murder charge, 
 the victim being a white woman of means and good 
 standing! In this same city, a short time previously, 
 a white man, with great deliberation, killed four un-
 
 "22 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 offending Negroes, remarking, as he cooly lighted 
 his cigarette, that he expected the affair in which 
 he had engaged would cost him a little law suit. This 
 man was adjudged insane but walks the streets 
 seemingly as sound in mind as any one needs 
 be. Perhaps the wife murderer, seeing the ease 
 with which this plea was entered and sustained, de- 
 cided to commit his murder and escape on the same 
 plea. Thus white women must live under the pro- 
 tection or lack of protection of whatever code is de- 
 veloped, even though the said code is developed in 
 connection with the treatment of a submerged class. 
 . _ . f Has it ever occurred to the white South 
 
 that the presence of the Negro in their 
 Brutality in . , , . ?.. 
 
 ^.i. i>i j midst in a weakened position has in 
 
 the Blood. ., ,, -L.-T, f , 
 
 it the possibility of introducing a pro- 
 nounced strain of brutality into the very blood of 
 the white race? Such white men as brutalize their 
 natures by their conduct toward Negroes must look 
 to the white race for wives, and their offsprings are 
 absorbed into the general body of the white race. 
 The white race furnishes guards for Negro prisoners 
 who sometimes shoot and kill their wards, and some- 
 times beat them to death. Policemen and con- 
 stables, for one cause or another, find a way to slay 
 a large number of Negroes annually. Then there is 
 that vast army of white men who take part in the 
 various lynchings. These men, as we have said, 
 have white wives, and it is to the homes presided 
 over by these white women that the husbands go, 
 straight from their feasts of blood. In due time 
 children are born unto them. Is there anything 
 more certain than, that in due time a generation will
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. .23 
 
 arrive possessing in a marked degree a strain of 
 brutality? 
 
 A Southern white man discussing the 
 Signs increasing brutality of lynchings, said 
 
 Appear. that the excesses were due to the fact 
 that the best citizens were no longer 
 present at the lynchings to hold the more violent 
 and brutal in check. Is that the case, or is it 
 true that the mobs are now composed of young 
 men and boys, as is so often asserted, who have been 
 brought into the world since the prevalence of 
 lynchings in the South? Did those fathers who took 
 part in bloody orgies a few years ago imagine that 
 when they retired to rest in the early hours of the 
 morn that their spirits shed their bloody moods as 
 readily as their bodies got rid of their woolen coats? 
 Does the extra brutality of the mobs officered by 
 the newer generation prove that the fathers got rid 
 of the bloody taint as easily as was thought? Re- 
 cently a young Southern white man deliberately 
 threw scalding hot water upon his mother's back, 
 and injured her to such an extent that her life 
 was despaired of for a while. Was the father of this 
 boy at one time a member of a mob, and was 
 this boy born during his father's career as a 
 lyncher? Who knows? 
 
 To catch a further glimpse of what may be reason- 
 ably expected of this newer generation born since the 
 beginning of the reign of the mob in the South, read 
 the following news items typical of what may be 
 found in almost any day's paper. "Thornton, Ark. 
 News has just reached here of one of the most
 
 24 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 dastardly crimes that has ever occurred in the history 
 of this county. , son of a prominent farmer of 
 Woodberry was shot and killed by his wife, to whom 
 he was married less than a year ago. She was not 
 satisfied with shooting him once but took three at 
 him, and then cut his throat. Those who saw the 
 corpse say it was the worst mangled one they had 
 ever seen." 
 
 Again: "Gainesville, Ga. Because he remonstrat- 
 ed with his son-in-law when the latter's children 
 spoke disrespectfully to their mother the Rev. - 
 was hacked to pieces and killed with an axe by his 
 son-in-law at the latter's home." Were the fathers 
 of these two slayers members of mobs that tortured 
 Negroes? 
 
 Quite recently the white people of Texas and those 
 of Georgia heard from their penitentiaries and were 
 greatly shocked over the disclosures. The brutality 
 revealed staggered them. But even now the white 
 South has no adequate conception of the terrible 
 brutality that reigns throughout the prison life of 
 the South! What the convict guards are doing is 
 illustrated by the following newspaper account of 
 an incident that can be duplicated almost anywhere 
 in the prison life of the South : "One of the convicts 
 said that he was standing close to Jamison when he 
 was fired upon, and told of the killing in the following 
 manner: 'Mr. Reasonover came down the line with 
 a stick in his hand and told Jamison to wake up. 
 Jamison told him that he was working as hard as he 
 knew how. Mr. Reasonover then struck Jamison 
 and said that he had told him to wake up. Jamison
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 25 
 
 had his shovel in his hands, but not in such position 
 that he could have struck Mr. Reasonover. Mr. 
 Reasonover backed off about eight feet and pulled 
 his pistol and shot.' It was shown that Jamison had 
 shackles OP his ankles when Reasonover shot him. 
 
 This man had absolutely no excuse for shooting 
 this convict/ said Judge Edington." 
 
 Again: "Columbia, S. C., . W- - S , 
 
 aged 22, was shot and instantly killed and Mrs. - 
 dangerously wounded in the latter's restaurant here 
 this afternoon by - , a convict guard, 
 
 following a dispute over a bowl of soup." These 
 things speak for themselves. The vast army of men 
 engaging in these practices are also engaged in pro- 
 creation and are having children born to themselves 
 daily. Cannot a blind man see that it is only a mat- 
 ter of a few years before there will be a pronounced 
 strain of brutality running through the entire life 
 blood of the South? 
 
 And will not the brutal strain once 
 Entire admitted into the life of a people, show 
 
 Life to be itself almost anywhere and everywhere? 
 Affected. If this strain ever fully comes to the 
 white South, look for signs of it in a 
 lack of reverence for aged men and women, in the 
 existence of a marked indifference with reference to 
 the welfare of children in general, in the increased 
 insolence of children toward their parents, in the 
 low estimate of the value of human life, in the re- 
 volting practices of mobs which rack their brains in 
 search of every conceivable method of torture, in 
 the failure of legislatures to provide, or officials to
 
 26 WISDOM'S CAIX. 
 
 enforce adequate laws against the crushing out of 
 child life through employment in factories, in the 
 efforts of sons and daughters in the full bloom of lite 
 to push their aged and infirm parents from the stage 
 of existence ahead of the natural hour in those hidden 
 ways made possible through the privacy of family life. 
 Yes, if through that class that brutalizes itself on the 
 Negro, the strain of brutality creeps through inter- 
 marriage into the entire life of the white South, look 
 tor the coming of the sad and shameful days here 
 forecasted. 
 
 The loveliest flower of all the South- 
 Chivalry land has not been the velvety red rose, 
 Doomed. nor the beautiful lily of the field, nor 
 yet the magnificent magnolia. No, 
 the loveliest of Southern flowers has been the flower 
 of chivalry, the tender regard for woman. When 
 the strain of brutality comes, this flower is sure to 
 die. An imitation thereof will no doubt be seen 
 abroad in the land, but the genuine flower with all 
 of its loveliness will be gone forever. Yes, yes, the 
 weakened position of the Negro in the body politic 
 causes the existence of a gap through which lawless- 
 ness and brutality enter and threaten with their 
 awful virus the actual blood of the white South. 
 
 In yet another way the weakened 
 
 Anarchy position of the Negro is threatening 
 
 Headed to poison the life of the whole South. 
 
 Southward. The pet aversion of the South is the 
 
 anarchist, and its one great boast is 
 
 that it has developed none of that brood. But is' 
 
 "this true? There are two kinds of anarchists, the
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 27 
 
 believers in a land without organized government, 
 and in violence as the proper means for the over- 
 throw of organized society, and the philosophical 
 anarchists, who, though believing in a land without 
 organized government, yet would overthrow govern- 
 ment only by changing the thinking of men. The 
 one goal at which all anarchists are aiming is a 
 condition of society in which there is no law govern- 
 ing men save the sentiment of the people as mani- 
 fested on any given occasion. The anarchists, as 
 stated, would attain this end by overturning in one 
 way or another the laws now on the statute books, 
 but is not the same end attained by the lifting of 
 the spirit above the law? Has not the South done 
 this very thing? Before you can move a race of 
 thoughtful, civilized people, such as are the Southern 
 white people, there must be formulated a satisfactory 
 philosophy of things justifying the course to be pur- 
 sued. What then is the philosophy that underlies 
 the tolerance of lynchings? Here it is: Whenever 
 the law does not meet the prevailing sentiment of 
 the people, it is perfectly correct for men to do what 
 the situation seems to them to demand. Let this 
 code of ethics, formulated under whatever circum- 
 stances may be, become firmly rooted in the minds 
 of the Southern whites, become a part of their re- 
 ligion, and it will finally be put to use by the poor 
 as against the rich, by labor as against capital, by 
 the public official who is elected to enforce the law, 
 as against an element desiring the law's enforcement. 
 The outbreak of "Night Riding" in Tennessee, 
 Kentucky and portions of Indiana are but the
 
 28 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 triumph of the feeling of lifting one's mind above 
 the law as it stands, and the substitution there-f or the 
 law of one's mind. This is anarchy, only a quicker 
 route than that being pursued by the avowed an- 
 archists. There is no killing of officials, no voting 
 to abolish governments; only the simple lifting of 
 the spirit above the law, a thing first learned in deal- 
 ing with the weakened Negro. So this is the port 
 toward which we of the South are headed, the living 
 above the law, therefore the living without law, 
 therefore anarchy. So far as the Negro is concerned 
 he feels already that he has entered that port, that 
 he is being governed largely without law. But the 
 Negro is standing upon the prow of a ship, on whose 
 stern the white man stands. If the prow of the ship 
 has entered the port of anarchy bear in mind that 
 the winds are yet blowing and the stern will soon 
 follow the prow into the port. 
 
 When, by and by, the work of long 
 Philosoph- ages in building up a sentiment of 
 ical An- reverence for law in the soul of 
 archist. the white race has been undone, 
 when the philosophy of the anarchist 
 has been generally accepted throughout the South; 
 that is, when men grow to feel that it is higher and 
 wiser to look to their own bosoms for the law rather 
 than to the statute books, when each unit has be- 
 come a law unto itself, then will these philosophical 
 anarchists, chosen as mayors, judges, legislators 
 and governors feel free to discard their oaths, ignore 
 the requirements of the law and the mandates of 
 constitutions, and govern according to their own
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 29 
 
 notions of what is right and what is best. As an 
 evidence of the fact that what is here asserted is not 
 some idle dream, but a grim reality, note the fol- 
 lowing editorial utterance from a daily newspaper 
 published in one of the South's most noted cities. 
 
 Says that journal: "The head of the (naming 
 
 its home city) municipal government it appears has 
 undertaken to designate certain classes who shall 
 be exempt from the ordinary operations of the law. 
 It is a notorious fact that he has determined what 
 laws shall be enforced, or at least what laws shall be 
 ignored and. nullified, but it is going a degree further 
 when he makes a discrimination in those who shall be 
 amenable to the laws restraints. 
 
 That the Mayor should issue individuals of cer- 
 tain classes exemptions from police control is a high 
 handed and entirely unwarranted procedure, to say 
 nothing of the immorality it involves or the purpose 
 that probably induced it." 
 
 A law may be passed against gambling but a philo- 
 sophical anarchist in the mayor's chair will allow the 
 dens to flourish all around. Saloons may be abolished 
 by law, but officials who are philosophical anar- 
 chists will permit the existence of a greater number 
 than before they were voted out. In the day when 
 the philosophical anarchist is holding sway, contracts 
 will be let, not to the highest bidders but to favorites. 
 The results of white primaries, even, will be 
 announced in keeping with the desires of election 
 officers and not in keeping with the ballots cast. 
 
 That the treatment accorded the Negro is to bear 
 fruit in the direction of disorganizing the life of 
 the whites of the South by means of the philosophy
 
 30 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 developed is strikingly illustrated by the turmoil 
 existing in the state of Tennessee. For months 
 the daily newspapers cried out that a condition 
 of political anarchy, unparalleled in the history 
 of the state, existed. In the course of an ar- 
 ticle explaining the situation a newspaper corre- 
 spondent of one of Tennessee's leading dailies 
 said: "The fact is each faction is mortally afraid 
 of the other. It must therefore be shown very 
 clearly that there will be a square deal before 
 anything will be done." The Memphis News- 
 Scimitar one of the strongest and most ably edited 
 journals in the state, speaking of this same turmoil, 
 says editorially: "It might all be set at rest by agree- 
 ing that honesty shall be the rule of public life, and 
 that our elections shall be held honestly, and the 
 will of the people as expressed at the polls shall be 
 the court of last resort. 
 
 But we must confess that we are a long way off 
 from this." 
 
 A white man, the president of a college in the 
 state, in speaking of the Tennessee situation said : 
 "The trouble with us is that we are afraid to trust 
 each other. We are suffering with a case of broken 
 down conscience. We broke down our consciences 
 in dealing with Negroes and now we fear to trust one 
 another because we know each other." 
 
 There is only one way of escape for 
 Only the South. It must lift the Negro 
 
 One Way from his submerged position; there 
 of Escape, must be no points of necessary weak- 
 ness. It was the undipped spot in 
 the heel of the great Achilles through which he met his
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 31 
 
 death. Weakness anywhere in the body politic will 
 assuredly invite aggression. Placing the Negro where 
 it is the natural thing to mistreat him, simply means 
 that he will be mistreated, and that there will come 
 a disorganizing of the souls of those who do the mis- 
 treating. The suggestion that the Fifteenth Amend- 
 ment be repealed is worse than idle. It would but fur- 
 ther and inevitably invite the aggression that de- 
 moralizes. What the South needs is not a weaker 
 spot, but a wall of uniform strength, with not a 
 single gap through which lawlessness may spring 
 unhindered, and begin to work havoc with every- 
 thing in sight, attacking with equal vigor the things 
 that invited it and those that did not. 
 
 Whenever an effort is made to in- 
 A Sup- duce the dominant element of the 
 posed white South to revise its attitude to- 
 
 Impedi- ward the Negro with regard to the 
 ment. suffrage the one retort of the past has 
 
 been that political recognition for the 
 Negro will mean that social intermingling between 
 the two races will certainly follow. We have 
 demonstrated, we think, how the weakness of the 
 Negro in the body politic invites disease for the 
 whole body, and any argument intended to influence 
 the South to maintain, increase and perpetuate 
 the weakness of this spot should certainly be subject- 
 ed to the most careful scrutiny. How is this alleged 
 breaking down of the social walls to happen? The 
 white people have their churches, schools, newspapers, 
 books and the fireside, agencies for the propaga- 
 tion of the doctrine of racial integrity. Does any
 
 32 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 one pretend to say that the white people of the 
 South with all these agencies in their hands are so 
 constituted that the Negro race can vote its way 
 into their social circles? But we need not theorize 
 on these matters, for there are states in which the 
 Negroes are accorded political rights where results 
 may be studied. Maryland, West Virginia, Missouri 
 and Kentucky have large Negro populations, accord 
 the Negroes the suffrage on terms of equality with 
 the whites, and, though the political party accredited 
 with traditional friendship for the Negroes has from 
 time to time been given control of those states, 
 there has been no more breaking down of social lines 
 than has been the case in Mississippi. The men 
 who have come to the front as a result of the one 
 party system that has obtained in the South, but 
 who might not fare so well if the strenuous political 
 conditions obtaining everywhere else in the English- 
 speaking world were introduced, may continue to 
 shout that the ballot in the hands of the Negro will 
 mean a passport to the white man's parlor, but we 
 are of the opinion that many of those who make 
 this assertion for political effect are firmly of the 
 opinion that all the voters of the world would not 
 be able to vote the Negro into the Southern white 
 man's parlor. The social life of the Southern white 
 people is projected upon a plane far out of reach of 
 the mere ballot. 
 
 Ex-President Eliot, of Harvard Uni- 
 
 The Two versity, is of that political faith that 
 
 Are Distinct, now holds sway in the South, is highly 
 
 esteemed in the South, and is the 
 
 known sympathizer with it in its struggles. Hear
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 33 
 
 a word from him: "As to the ballot, it seems to me 
 reasonable that an educational qualification should 
 be required, and that the payment of the poll tax is 
 also an expedient condition for exercising the suffrage; 
 but whatever qualifications apply to the Negro should 
 also apply to the white man. Political equality 
 seems to me to have nothing whatever to do with 
 what is called social equality; but I recognize that 
 the Southern whites are not of this opinion. They 
 believe that political equality may lead to social 
 admixture, or at any rate, to an assertion on the 
 part of Negroes of a right to social intercourse with 
 white people. So far as I know, this belief among 
 Southern whites finds no support in the practice of 
 any nation, or part of a nation, in which a broad 
 suffrage now obtains, and I regret its prevalence 
 among Southern whites." In all candor, cannot 
 the thought of social involvements be eliminated as 
 a factor in this matter? Cannot the great race that 
 overcame its belief in witches, ghosts and hobgob- 
 lins, grow to see that the Negro's ballot is not a 
 magician's wand that will work the wonders ascribed 
 to it, the wonder of establishing him in the social 
 circles of the whites? 
 
 Permit a final word. A physician 
 A Final has an operation to perform on a person 
 Word. that has poison in his system. On 
 
 the physician's hand there is one 
 slight abrasion. Without gloves he goes about the 
 work of operating. Poison from the body of the 
 patient comes into contact with the physician's 
 blood at the point of the abrasion on his hand.
 
 34 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 Blood poisoning sets in and the physician dies. He 
 was sound at every point but one. The better 
 South may continue its heroic struggles to rear men 
 of courage and honor, may continue to send forth 
 into life its quota of pure and noble women, but all 
 these will not be able to prevent the lawlessness, 
 which enters the life of the South bv way of the un- 
 protected Negro from eventually permeating all its 
 veins and arteries, to the death of its fair name in 
 the earth. Its brooks will babble on; its flowers 
 will bloom on ; its skies will beam down as beautifully 
 as of old, as of old; the chirp of the. happy cricket 
 and the song of the mocking bird will be heard as 
 in the past, but with all this it will be a new South. 
 Anarchy, robed in a thin disguise, will sit upon the 
 throne of government, and the eloquent, the bril- 
 liant, and the famous will lie wounded and dying in 
 the gutters of the streets of the cities of the South, 
 and men of high degree will be seen swinging in the 
 dawn of beautiful mornings on the borders of fresh 
 made lakes, much after the order of the weakened 
 Negro, the unarmed picket whom Anarchy easily 
 thrusts aside in her march to her Southern kingdom. 
 
 Let there be a uniform citizenship. 
 The True Let all men have all rights needed for 
 Solution. self -protection. The sacred right of 
 self-defense is as necessary to the moral 
 health of a community as is the punishment for mur- 
 der, and no one will or can be as alert for a man's 
 protection as that man will be for himself. There- 
 fore, let the Negro have the ballot as a means of 
 defense against negligent officials. Only through
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 35 
 
 the Negro's ability to protect himself in the way 
 common to civilized society, will he be removed from 
 the situation as a harm-inviting point of weakness. 
 Strengthening the Negro's position in the body 
 politic is a far better policy for the final good of the 
 South than is the proposed policy of having him a 
 permanent point of weakness. Let all political 
 parties North and South throw open their doors to 
 qualified Negro voters as to all other citizens. Let 
 the Negroes enter the several parties, each according 
 to his conviction on questions presented. With the 
 importance, prestige and power that will come with 
 his being a factor in the government, the Negro will 
 no longer be the point of weakness inviting assault, 
 .and the South, the nation and the cause of humanity 
 will all be the gainers thereby.
 
 II. A LUXURY OF GREAT PRICE.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A LUXURY OF GREAT PRICE. 
 
 T , It is very evident that large numbers 
 
 . of white people in the South yet esteem 
 
 it a high privilege, a sort of civic luxury 
 to be permitted to thrust the law aside, dangle the 
 body of a Negro from the end of a rope and fill 
 the swaying form full of bullets. While they 
 realize that the duly appointed administrators of 
 the law can be relied upon to take the life of any 
 Negro condemned to die, the simple death of the Ne- 
 gro is not what is wanted. They desire to have the 
 supreme satisfaction of knowing that they had a 
 direct, immediate, personal hand in the taking of 
 the Negro's life. Demonstrate to those who feel 
 thus, as much as you may, that lynching is not a 
 necessity, you are met with the thought that it is a 
 luxury and is to be indulged in as in the case of other 
 luxuries. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin gave to the 
 The Price American people many little sayings 
 Paid for this which have helped them wonderfully, 
 Luxury. and one of his exhortations is that a 
 
 man be careful not to pay too dear a 
 price for his whistle. Let us now take up the price 
 
 (39)
 
 40 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 that the South is paying for the luxury of lynching 
 and see if it is not going contrary to Franklin's ad- 
 vice, see if it is not paying a million fold more for this 
 alleged luxury than it is getting out of it. The state 
 of South Carolina has ever been noted for her spirit 
 of independence and her sense of strength. She it 
 was who threatened nullification in the days of 
 Andrew Jackson, and she the first a few years later 
 to lead off in the experiment of walking out of the 
 federal union. In the course of a speech delivered 
 not long since upon the floor of the United States 
 Senate the present senior Senator from that proud 
 state asserted the utter helplessness of his state and 
 section in matters of controversy with the rest of 
 the nation, due to the fact that the South in point 
 of population now constitutes but one-third of the 
 government. He called attention to the fact that 
 immigration was building up the population of the 
 North and West at the rate of a million a year, 
 causing the augmenting of the congressional strength 
 of those sections equal to an annual gain of five 
 congressmen from this source alone, a source from 
 which the South is drawing practically no strength 
 whatever. With the North and the West already 
 constituting two-thirds of the national strength, 
 and going forward by leaps and bounds through 
 births and the influx of foreigners, while the South's 
 increase is limited in the main to births within its 
 borders, this Senator foresaw the constant and rapid 
 dwindling of the relative strength of his section. 
 The white people of the South have from time to 
 time felicitated themselves upon the fact that they
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 41 
 
 have not been afflicted with the undesirable class 
 of immigrants, but there has been immigration of 
 millions of sober, thrifty, industrious foreigners 
 who would have brought strength to the South in 
 every way, immigrants fully able to purchase the 
 cheaper lands of the South and enter upon self-sus- 
 taining careers. But why this avoidance of the 
 South on the part of persons whose coming would be 
 mutually advantageous? It has been due in large 
 measure to the fact that the reputation of the mob 
 has gone to the uttermost parts of the earth, and has 
 created the impression that the southern section of 
 the United States is nothing more nor less than a huge 
 spot of blood; that red-handed murder walks our 
 streets and promenades upon our highways, while 
 justice, terror-stricken, has hidden herself in the 
 deep recesses of some mountain cave. Whether 
 justly or unjustly such is the reputation that the mob 
 has given our bonnie Southland. Of course our 
 editors and statesmen can explain that things 
 are not so bad as they seem, but the news of blood- 
 shed is telegraphed to many more places than are 
 the carefully worded explanations as to what the 
 killings did not mean. 
 
 Another form of damage done the 
 False Im- South by the undue advertisement 
 pressions. brought about by the actions of the mob 
 is the conveying of the erroneous im- 
 pression that the white women of the South are in 
 constant danger of assault. It has been demon- 
 strated by statistics that the white women of the 
 South are relatively safer from such attacks than are
 
 42 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 the white women of Chicago from the attacks 
 of white men. The overwhelming mass of 
 Negro men accord the white women of the 
 South the utmost deference and respect, and the 
 Negroes on the whole are every whit as ready to 
 shield the women from harm as are the white men. 
 They are the sons of their fathers. They are the 
 sons of the men to whom the departing soldiers in 
 the days of civil strife committed the care of their 
 wives and daughters; the men who in every instance 
 proved true to the sacred trust; who would have 
 died to keep safe from harm the loved ones left in 
 their charge. Here and there vile whiskey and a life 
 of debauchery have evolved a Negro that has fallen 
 so far from the common instincts of his race as to be 
 guilty of the nameless crime, but he no more typifies 
 his race, no more represents their overwhelmingly 
 prevailing tendencies than Benedict Arnold can be 
 said to be the normal type of the American revolu- 
 tionist. The dust of the mob hides from view the 
 sober faces of the ninety and nine faithful Negroes, 
 while the flames of the burning pyre paint upon the 
 sky the vicious likeness of the offending one; so that, 
 men with wives and daughters, misjudging the 
 situation, hesitate about turning their faces south- 
 ward. Thus do false notions of the relative safety 
 of the Southern white women check the growth of 
 the South. 
 
 Let not any one deceive himself 
 Evils with the thought that the mob can be 
 
 Travel. maintained as an institution that af- 
 
 fects Negroes and Negroes only. As 
 to whether the South is at all to have a civilization
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 43 
 
 of law and order, even among its white citizens, de- 
 pends upon its ability to give the Negro the pro- 
 tection of the law. No chain is stronger than its 
 weakest link. The dog of lawlessness unleashed to 
 torment and devour the Negro will not return to his 
 kennel until he has also throttled the master of the 
 house. There is a unity to the social consciousness. 
 The public mind cannot tolerate a given state of 
 things with regard to one segment of the population 
 without having a growth, perhaps silent and unob- 
 served, of a similar line of thinking with regard to 
 things far removed from that which first called forth 
 the line of action tolerated. 
 
 The men who invented the mob to 
 Cabin and deal with the Negro little dreamed, 
 Hotel perhaps, that it would erelong be sum- 
 
 Connected . moned to service to regulate the affairs 
 of a Reelf oot Lake. Let us recount a 
 bit of history. 'Tis night; we hear the tramp of horses. 
 Their riders, silent and masked, reverence for 
 law overtoppled in the soul are piloting them 
 to a lonely log cabin in which a Negro resides. 
 A few moments later they silently ride away 
 leaving the swinging corpse of the black man 
 that they have slain. Time wears on. The 
 principle of adjusting grievances or fancied griev- 
 ances by the methods of the midnight band is estab- 
 lished, is tingling in their brains, is living in the 
 thought of the social body ready for emergencies not 
 originally placed on the programme. Time wears 
 on. 'Tis night; we hear the tramp of horses. Their 
 riders silent and masked, reverence for law over- 
 toppled in the soul, are piloting them to a lonely
 
 44 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 log cabin no, we are mistaken this time it is to a 
 prominent hotel. When, on the following morning, 
 the state of Tennessee awoke it could hardly believe 
 its eyes when it saw the bullet-pierced body of one 
 of its first citizens, Capt. Quentin Rankin, dangling 
 from the end of a rope after the order of an humble 
 Negro. 
 
 To those who think that hiding behind logs, 
 dodging bullets, fleeing through forests, wading 
 through bogs and swamps, suffering the pangs of 
 hunger and thirst, dreading the sight of man, are 
 luxuries, the enjoyment of which can be wholly con- 
 fined to friendless Negroes, we would say, "Ask the 
 distinguished white man, the partner of Captain 
 Rankin, Colonel Taylor, who made his escape 
 from the banks of Reelfoot." Note how vig- 
 orously he shakes his head to let you know em- 
 phatically that the luxuries mentioned cannot be so 
 confined, that they will eventually pass around. 
 
 The night rider, troubling the white people of the 
 tobacco-growing regions of Kentucky and Tennessee 
 and threatening the cotton growers of the South are 
 but the reincarnation of the Ku Klux Klan, which 
 was devised to handle the Negro. And note the 
 fact that they made their appearance immediately 
 upon the heels of the recent general laudation of the 
 work and methods of the Klan. 
 
 Yes, in one way or another, the 
 Whole So- social body in its entirety is certain 
 cial Body to feel the effects of poison that it ad- 
 Affected, mits into any part of the body, be that 
 part the sole of the foot or the crown 
 of the head. It is of the highest importance that
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 45 
 
 those who shape the thought and policy of the South 
 should hold ever and clearly in mind this fact of the 
 unity of the social consciousness, the assured disposi- 
 tion on the part of society to use a faculty when 
 once acquired upon whatever comes its way, regard- 
 less as to how far the matter in hand is removed 
 from those things that gave rise to the development 
 of the faculty. In the hope of illustrating still more 
 fully this great truth we offer the examples that fol- 
 low. 
 
 .A few years ago many sincere 
 Negro friends of the Negro who planned 
 
 Shapes for him the broadest Americanism 
 
 Education, and desired that his education paral- 
 lel that of other Americans, grew 
 somewhat alarmed at a kind of education which 
 they feared would tend to set the colored man 
 in a class apart from other Americans. To-day 
 the Negro is not receiving a special brand of 
 education, an education different to what other 
 Americans are receiving, but it is due to the fact that 
 the American mind, having acquired the habit of 
 thinking in the groove in which the Negro was being 
 educated, finally decided that what was good 
 education for the Negro was likewise good for the 
 white man, so that now the schools of the character 
 discussed, that are operated for whites are far more 
 numerous than those conducted for Negroes, who 
 were the occasion of the inauguration of the system.
 
 46 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 It is the very irony of fate that 
 White the Southern Negro, unwittingly 
 
 Woman enough, of course, blocks the path- 
 Barred by way of the Southern white woman 
 Negro. to the ballot box. Of all Anglo- 
 
 Saxon self-governing commonwealths 
 the Southern states constitute the only section 
 where women are wholly denied the right to 
 vote, where not a breath of sentiment seems 
 stirring in that direction. In Australia, New Zea- 
 land and several of the Northwestern states of the 
 United States women have the full right of suffrage. 
 In some of our Northern and Eastern states they 
 have the suffrage to a limited extent, while in Eng- 
 land they enjoy the right to vote in all elections save 
 those involving seats in Parliament, and there are 
 powerful influences at work to remove this one lim- 
 itation. In Finland, a province of Russia, there are 
 female members of the legislative body. In the 
 sections of the world named the woman's suffrage 
 movement has come forward upon the broad plea 
 of the membership of women in the human family, 
 holding that said membership constituted them the 
 equals in point of rights of all other members. Claims 
 for the political rights of the Negro have been pro- 
 jected upon this same basis of equal membership in 
 the human family. In closing its ears to this plea 
 made in behalf of the Negro, the dominant element 
 of the white South attained that frame of mind that 
 has created the peculiar phenomenon of one great 
 English-speaking section existing in the twentieth
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 47 
 
 century with no woman's suffrage question with 
 which to grapple. So here we have the attitude 
 of the Southern white man toward the Negro so 
 grooving his thoughts that it never occurs to him to 
 enter save in a fixed, dogmatic way, upon the con- 
 sideration of this question, which, more and more 
 is engrossing the serious thought of the civilized 
 world. 
 
 Thus do matters spread. Industrial 
 The Spread education, devised as a special need 
 Is Certain. for the colored youth, in a few years 
 becomes the national fad for the white 
 youth. The view of human rights adopted to re- 
 strain the Negro casts its shadow in such a manner 
 that the Anglo-Saxon women of the world find no 
 word of cheer coming from their Southern sisters as 
 they carry on their world- wide struggle for the ballot. 
 It is true that the dominant Southern thought may 
 hold that such a state of affairs is ideal. Our only 
 contention just here is that a wholly foreign matter, 
 or the line of thought engendered by a wholly foreign 
 matter, is the controlling influence in the situation. 
 And so will the virus of the mob spread. It may 
 take the form of night riding, as in the case of Cap- 
 tain Rankin, or it may distill its poisonous contempt 
 for the forms of law into the hearts of individuals 
 to such an extent that the street duel will be sub- 
 stituted for criminal and chancery courts by the men 
 of eminence of the South. Laws against the manu- 
 facture and sale of liquor have been passed in the 
 South over the strenuous opposition of thousands. 
 This work can be largely nullified by the mob spirit,
 
 48 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 the spirit of ignoring the recorded statute as the 
 master, the regulator of the citizen's conduct. 
 
 As Americans we are optimistic; 
 Looking we believe in the future. Yet we do 
 Ahead. not know what she has in store for us. 
 
 The rich may grow richer, and the 
 poor, poorer. Financial depression, such as we have 
 never before known, may come. The pang of hunger 
 may be felt in the land. Normal processes may be 
 slow in setting matters aright. The distress cry of 
 wife and babe may ring in the ears of the man al- 
 ready mad from gnawing hunger. We have no 
 great standing army. In that dark hour, if the mob 
 spirit is still in the air, woe be unto this nation. How 
 easy it will be for a maddened shout to rally 
 a host, if the spirit of lawlessness be present. As 
 the hunger-crazed hordes sweep through the 
 streets, with no reverence for law in their hearts, 
 no gleaming bayonets to inspire them with dread, 
 well may those who have plenty in that day turn 
 pale with fear. If there is riot and pillage and a 
 total obliteration of all regard for what the law has 
 to say, there need be no surprise, for the seeds of such 
 behavior were sown when the mob was permitted to 
 trample the law under foot and wreak its vengeance 
 on the Negro. England but recently entered upon 
 such times of want and hunger as we have here 
 pictured, and the deep ingrained reverence for law 
 for which she has long been noted stood her in good 
 stead.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 49 
 
 In view of the fact that what- 
 Treatment ever trend of thought, whatever 
 of the warping of the spirit, whatever bent 
 
 Negro of character are developed in deal- 
 
 the Pivot, ing with the Negro, are to become 
 integral parts of the life of the South, 
 well may it be held that after all the crucial, the 
 testing point in Southern civilization, the pivot 
 around which all else will turn will be its treatment 
 of this weak element of its population. The lesson 
 of the Bible account of the fall of man is not without 
 force in this connection. The weal or woe of the 
 whole human family is made to hinge upon the matter 
 of eating or not eating an apple. This concept is 
 true to life. A small soulless stone can derail a long 
 line of passenger cars and send without warning 
 hundreds of human beings, including the president 
 of the road, into the presence of the Great Unknown. 
 And so can the Negro, even in an inert state, be 
 come a determining factor In the life of the South. 
 Will the future find the South with a well or- 
 dered civilization, affording soil and atmos- 
 phere for its highest self to unfold and expand? 
 Has the South the ability, the strength in its soul 
 to suppress the lynching of Negroes? The answer 
 to the first question is summed up in, and dependent 
 upon, the answer to the second. Ere it is too late, 
 ere the habit of lawlessness becomes an ingrained 
 racial trait to be handed down from sire to sen, ere 
 we behold the ugly fangs of the mob, grown sharp 
 from gnawing the Negro, buried in the vitals of our 
 civilization, having reached this goal in ways un-
 
 50 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 dreamed of, ere, we say, it is too late, let the South 
 rallying to the cry of pulpit and press, bench and 
 bar, jurymen and sheriff, grapple resolutely with the 
 mob even when its victim is a Negro. The com- 
 plete dethronement of the mob is a crying need of 
 the South. 
 
 Permit us to relate just here a dream 
 A Dream, that came to us in our waking hours. 
 It was the last day of the argument 
 of the cases of those accused of killing ex-Senator 
 Carmack, of Tennessee, and the Attorney General 
 had just spoken the closing word for the prose- 
 cution. 
 
 All eyes in the crowded court-room now sought 
 the face of the Judge, who, through his charge to the 
 jury, was to take the next important step in the great 
 trial. 
 
 Suddenly there was seen standing midway between 
 the lawyers for the prosecution and defense a young 
 man who at once began to address the Judge in a 
 firm, clear, resonant voice, vibrant with deep emotion. 
 
 All eyes now turned toward this young man. 
 "Who is he? When did he enter? I did not see 
 him until he was standing where he is now. Where 
 is his chair? He must have been sitting, else I 
 would have seen him. What does he want?" 
 
 Such was the line of questioning and comment 
 that ran through every mind in the court-room. 
 
 "May it please your honor, I have a word which 
 I would like to offer before this case finally passes 
 from before the people of this state," said the 
 young man.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 51 
 
 The Judge bent forward and looked intently at 
 the stranger, feeling that it was no ordinary personage 
 before him, and yet unable to account for the strange 
 procedure. 
 
 "Which side of this case do you represent?" asked 
 the Judge. 
 
 "May it please your honor, I wish it to be clearly 
 understood that I am not to touch one way or another 
 the merits of the case before you." 
 
 "Well," said the Judge, haltingly, "your remarks 
 would hardly be pertinent at this stage of the pro- 
 ceedings, I fear." 
 
 "You, honored Judge, represent the state of Ten- 
 nessee, a post of great honor and importance, but as 
 between your judgment and mine you will have to 
 surrender to me, for my post is more exalted than 
 yours, and represents a superior jurisdiction. 
 
 "I am the attorney of the Cosmic forces, the 
 forces that preside over the destinies of stars, of 
 worlds, of men and things, the forces that determine 
 the paths of storms, the outbursts of volcanoes, the 
 rise and fall of nations, the forces that can crumple 
 your proud state with as much ease as you can an 
 empty egg shell." 
 
 The Judge and the whole audience were so thrilled 
 with the young man's eloquence that they were 
 most eager for him to proceed. 
 
 Turning to the audience, the young man continued : 
 "He, into the manner of whose death you are assem- 
 bled here to inquire, was called by you a great man, 
 and, independent of the manner in which he met 
 his death, you regard his going as a great loss.
 
 52 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 "Without expressing my approval or disapproval 
 of the manner in which his life was taken, leaving 
 that matter wholly and absolutely with the jury, I 
 have come simply to say that some one of his rank 
 and station simply had to suffer violence, or else the 
 whole system of jurisprudence of the Cosmic forces 
 would have been upset, as I will presently make 
 plain. 
 
 "There are two lines of procedure along which 
 the Cosmic forces deal with the affairs of men. We 
 allow those who constitute the governing forces of 
 the earth to choose their own procedure, but after 
 the choice is made we take charge of affairs and see 
 to it that whatever happens to the lowly shall happen 
 to the high. 
 
 "He who thinks that the great creative force which 
 fashioned the universe, which, with infinite pains, 
 put under the reign of law all matter ranging from the 
 humble atom to the largest of the distant stars he 
 who thinks that this force upon reaching human 
 society grew careless and failed to arrange laws by 
 which society is to live, and through the violation 
 of which it must suffer or die, is vastly mistaken. 
 For, whether men find it out early or late, there is a 
 law of human conduct as exacting as any law in the 
 realm of matter, and every deed that is wrong 
 whether committed by a man singly, or by a group 
 of men acting in concert, or by organized society, 
 carries along with it a penalty that follows with as 
 much certainty as a man's shadow follows the man. 
 Wrong and retribution are twin sisters, and wher- 
 ever you see the former, know that somewhere near 
 stands the latter.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 53 
 
 "The Bible, which we have given you as your 
 earthly guide states the matter thus: "Be not de- 
 cieved; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap." 
 
 "Our eyes have been upon your Athens of the 
 South for lo these many years. We saw and mur- 
 mured not, when over yon bridge in lawless fashion 
 you flung the form of a Negro and took from him his. 
 life. 
 
 "We saw, and murmured not, when officers of the 
 law in your city chased a Negro youth into yon river,, 
 where in easy reach of men and boats you allowed 
 him to drown as you would a common rat. We saw 
 this, and as is our custom, said nothing. 
 
 "We recall the fact that one day a Negro, who had 
 been fined five dollars for vagrancy, was trying to 
 improve what he regarded as a good chance to get 
 away, when one of your guards shot and killed him 
 for which offense your guard was never tried. 
 
 "On numerous other occasions your officers have 
 killed Negroes who were accused of no crime what- 
 ever, and said officers have not even been required to 
 swear that they were telling the truth when they 
 said they thought their victims were reaching for 
 pistols. 
 
 "All of this we saw and murmured not, because 
 it is our habit to allow men and nations to sow 
 exactly as they please. But we take charge of the 
 seed sown, and with all the exactness of omnipotence, 
 we render back in our own way, what is sown. 
 
 "Thus, it was only a matter of time when the 
 reaping of the great among you was to begin. And
 
 54 
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 the end is not yet. Remember the banks of Reel- 
 foot where your Rankin so bravely met his end. 
 
 "Oh, bonnie Southland, home of birds and ever- 
 blooming flowers, where the winds blow softly and 
 the sun in peculiar beauty rolls to rest in the evening 
 sky, surrender yourself if you will to the pastime of 
 lynching a helpless, perhaps a depraved and besotted 
 Negro, but know that through this one unprotected 
 spot in your armor will come that insidious poison, 
 disregard for the orderly processes of the law, which 
 will ultimately send your noble Rankins and your 
 brilliant Carmacks to untimely graves." 
 
 As suddenly as he had appeared the attorney of 
 the Cosmic forces vanished from the court- room 
 and the great case was resumed. But the lesson 
 that he taught upon the occasion of his brief visit 
 is with us yet.
 
 III. THE NATIONAL POWER AS 
 
 AN ASSET.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE NATIONAL POWER AS AN ASSET. 
 
 Some few years ago a Southern white 
 Individual man was called into the service of the 
 Effort. national government to render aid to 
 
 the cause of his country in a matter, 
 international in its scope and of the most far-reach- 
 ing importance. As he argued his nation's cause 
 before one of the most eminent tribunals the earth 
 has ever known, his ready flashes of wit, his erudition 
 and cogent reasoning made a most favorable impres- 
 sion upon the world's highest circles of thought. 
 Upon his return to his Southern home with his in- 
 ternational honors fresh upon him, he was duly 
 banqueted by his fellow citizens who were keenly 
 alive to the novelty of having one of their number 
 attain unto international fame. In the course 
 of his speech at this banquet he remarked that 
 Southern men had all along been accomplishing all 
 that might be reasonably expected of individuals, 
 but conditions had been' such that they could not 
 harness the national power to their gifts, which at- 
 tainment would have immeasurably increased their 
 opportunities for usefulness. 
 
 (57)
 
 58 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 What a carnal weapon is to a man en- 
 Roosevelt gaged in physical combat, high official 
 Had a station is to the man who would 
 
 Lever. bring great things to pass. As 
 
 matters now stand no citizen of 
 the state of Georgia is handed the national 
 power with which to demonstrate his use- 
 fulness to the world. Hence, had President Roose- 
 velt, whose mother was a Georgian, been born and 
 reared in that state he would, perhaps, have gone 
 through life without the presidency of the United 
 States as an instrument with which to demonstrate 
 his great powers. Strong in himself, the exhibition 
 of that strength so powerfully wielding the strength 
 of the ninety millions of souls comprising the nation, 
 will give him a place in history that would have been 
 denied him had he lived and died the mere individual 
 unpossessed of the national power. One of old 
 asserted that he could move the world if but given 
 a place where he might stand. Theodore Roose- 
 velt was given as a lever the place of primacy in the 
 world's greatest nation. The prestige of the presi- 
 dency gave him the limelight of the world in which 
 to stand. Standing in this limelight, using his offi- 
 cial position as a lever, he moved the world ; moved it 
 to applause when he brought the Russo-Japanese 
 war to a close; moved it when through diplomacy 
 he performed that modern miracle of converting 
 the potential Americo-Japanese war-cloud that hung 
 brooding in our western sky into a beautiful white 
 dove of peace. Without the national power, Mr. 
 Roosevelt's work would have been that of an in-
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 59 
 
 dividual of large capacity; with it, what he has 
 achieved will stand out as the work of a mighty 
 nation, speaking, thundering, toiling through him. 
 
 It would indeed make for the uplift, 
 An Inspir- the inspiration, the glory of the South 
 ing Force, could its sons and daughters be given 
 the boon of dreaming hopefully that 
 it is within the realm of possibilities for them some 
 day to have the national power as an asset in 
 revealing to the world and leaving on record for 
 coming generations, the full fruitage of their souls. 
 Desirous of knowing how many of the boys of her 
 class were cherishing the hope of some day being 
 President of the United States, a teacher took a 
 vote on the question. All the boys save one testified 
 by lifted hands that such a hope inspired them. The 
 lad who had not so voted was asked why he did 
 not cherish the ambition. The little fellow replied: 
 "It ain't no use; I'm a Democrat." 
 
 In his heart the Southern lad of to-day is saying: 
 "It ain't no use; I'm a Southerner." It would be 
 a tonic, a stimulus indeed to have the hope of national 
 and international fame revived in the South. It 
 would serve to summon into the public service the 
 master minds, the geniuses that wait only for suitable 
 conditions to call them into full bloom. Washington, 
 Jefferson, Marshall, Jackson and Calhoun are all 
 products of the South, but they are of the past. 
 The present day South has need of the quickening 
 touch of men of to-day who are given the national 
 power with which to do great things upon the earth. 
 In this question is bound up the larger glory of the
 
 60 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 South. It can but dwarf the spirits of its citizens 
 to feel ever that they are in a sort of outlying prov- 
 ince, doomed to serve in a nation whose larger 
 glories and rewards are denied to them. 
 
 In turning its thoughts to the matter 
 What is in of bringing its period of isolation, 
 the Way. its condition of political exile to a close 
 it is well for the South to meet squarely 
 the question as to how far its attitude toward the 
 Negro contributes to this state of affairs, and what, 
 if any, modifications of that attitude can be safely 
 and honorably made. Surely the prize is sufficiently 
 great to warrant a patient consideration of the ob- 
 stacles in the way. There are several factors which 
 operate to withhold from the Southerner the national 
 power as an asset. The one-party system of the 
 South, the absence of real, genuine testing political 
 battles, the comparative ease with which men of 
 mediocre talents get and stay in the lead, cause the 
 front ranks of Southern statesmanship (barring an 
 accidental giant here and there) to be composed of 
 men lacking in those qualities that can compel the 
 admiration of the nation. The Negro is a factor in 
 the situation. There are certain states in which 
 the white population has been in the past almost 
 evenly divided politically, and the South has had 
 about an even chance to have those states vote with 
 it. Dissatisfied with some conditions in the South 
 the Negroes have gone in large numbers into some of 
 these pivotal states and have lifted them clearly 
 out of the doubtful column. Reference is here made 
 to such states as Indiana, West Virginia and New
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 61 
 
 Jersey. Even states that were at one time certain 
 to cast their votes with the South have been rendered 
 debatable by the influx of Negro voters from further 
 South. Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky are in 
 this latter class. 
 
 The influences causing many colored people 
 to leave the South are the fear of mob violence, 
 lack of faith in the courts as the dispensers 
 of even-handed justice, inadequate school facilities, 
 laws aimed at disfranchisement unequally applied 
 and the discomforts encountered in travel upon public 
 conveyances. It would be a profitable investment 
 for the South to study this exodus and remove every 
 just cause of complaint. This would aid in keeping 
 the Negroes in the South, and would cause such as 
 did leave to carry with them a ground-work of 
 sympathy for Southern aspirations. 
 
 The attitude of the South toward 
 Unprepared the Negro is* a factor in still another 
 for World way. Our nation has become a world 
 Duties. power, and must deal with men of 
 
 every shade of complexion. There are 
 the black Haytian, Liberian and Abyssinian; the 
 brown Filipino and Japanese, and the yellow China- 
 man. The Southerner who does not hesitate to 
 proclaim his contempt for all complexions save the 
 white, is deemed by the rest of the nation as spiritu- 
 ally unprepared to have charge of its foreign affairs as 
 would be the case with a President. In sending 
 men to the Philippines, to Cuba, to Panama, to 
 handle delicate situations, it is regarded as a prime 
 requisite for the envoy to be able in dealing with
 
 62 WISDOM'S CAIX. 
 
 questions of state to forget the complexions of the 
 men with whom he has to deal. 
 
 Let us take the case of Congressman Hobson of 
 Alabama. His contempt for the black man has spread 
 until it now likewise embraces the brown man of 
 Japan. Should our nation be inclined to go South in 
 quest of a young man to whom to lend the national 
 arm with which to display his soul, and its choice 
 should fall upon the famous young Alabamian, we 
 have no guarantee that he would not, when made 
 President, bawl to the Haytian minister to go to the 
 back door; no guarantee that he would not kick 
 the Chinese minister down the steps and box the 
 ears of the ambassador from Japan. 
 
 The rest of the nation, which, with 
 What is the help of the Negro, now shuts the 
 Asked. South out of the national accord, which 
 
 denies the national power as an asset 
 for the Southern white man, asks, not that the South 
 turn itself over to the control of an ignorant electorate, 
 not that it lose its racial connection through amalga- 
 mation, but simply that, in matters pertaining to 
 citizenship rights it deal with every man according to 
 his individual merit and not according tothe color of 
 his skin. The potential glory of the South, imprisoned 
 in the halls of the future, restlessly walking to and 
 fro, anxious to be emancipated that it may fill the 
 earth in behalf of the section it craves to serve, 
 awaits with deep concern the final verdict of the 
 South upon the proposition to have one law and one 
 governmental practice for all men regardless of race 
 or color or previous condition of servitude.
 
 IV. A BETTER SYSTEM FOR 
 MAKING MEN.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A BETTER SYSTEM FOR MAKING MEN. 
 
 Survival 
 of the 
 Fittest. 
 
 The scientists tell us that through- 
 out the realm of nature there has been 
 one long, continuous struggle for ex- 
 istence, that in this struggle the weak 
 have gone to the wall, leaving the 
 earth to those that proved to be the fittest to meet 
 the conditions that arose in the struggling. The 
 species which now exist were made strong by means 
 of this crucial struggle for existence through which 
 they have passed. The necessity for traveling upon 
 the water gave to the duck its webbed feet ; burrowing 
 beneath the surface of the soil gave unto the mole its 
 nose of peculiar strength. The greatness of the 
 United States is due in large measure to the fact that 
 here, class distinctions have been abolished and the 
 republic has been operated as a mammoth field 
 whereon each individual has been made to battle 
 against all comers, if he would enjoy the distinction 
 of occupying first place. "Not by inheritance, nor 
 yet by favor, but by prevailing over the best of his 
 fellows shall a man wear the victor's crown," is 
 the decree of America to her sons. 
 
 (65)
 
 66 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 The game of football typifies the genius of the 
 American nation. The team that would have itself 
 proclaimed the champion of the football world must 
 be the one that has arisen through a series of vic- 
 tories to the point where it gives successful battle 
 to the team which has come up to meet it from the 
 other side of the mount of struggle. Striving, 
 battling in desperate contests with forces wholly 
 unfettered and sent upon him to test his mettle to 
 the uttermost, is the native air of the young col- 
 legian, as it is of his father also, toiling in the sterner 
 realities of life. 
 
 The value of such an atmosphere of 
 Well of struggle is at once apparent. There is 
 Reserve in man a reserve force that is only 
 Energy. called forth by the strangely quicken- 
 ing power of a crisis. A psychologist 
 has advanced the theory that every man carries 
 within himself a well of reserve energy which he can 
 only tap in times of dire extremity. All men who 
 have been called upon to struggle supremely, who 
 have encountered crises of overwhelming force can 
 testify that there is strength to which the soul falls 
 heir only in the time of peril. In the supreme 
 moment of struggle, every atom of power is mustered 
 into service, and verily it seems that a new being is 
 on the scene in every way outclassing the old. 
 
 Preparation for battle demands the careful 
 strengthening of weak points, the careful development 
 of one's powers, the thorough discipline of one's self, 
 the close study of an opponent, the eager search for 
 possible weaknesses, eternal vigilance against sur-
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 67 
 
 prise from any quarter. Thus is the full man called 
 into service. 
 
 The political life of the North and 
 Elim- West is projected on the plane here in- 
 
 itiating dicated. "Sure, I must fight if I would 
 Weaklings, reign," must be the refrain of the man 
 who would go to the front in those re- 
 gions. He must win out in a contest within his own 
 party and must then face the people, leading his 
 party into battle against a strong opposing party. 
 Thus must a man fight for his political life up to the 
 last moment. It can readily be seen what splendid 
 chances society has to get rid of weaklings that offer 
 themselves for the public service. 
 
 Time was when like conditions pre- 
 South vailed in the South, when two strong 
 
 Declining, parties vied with each other for the 
 mastery, and there were giants in those 
 days. That the present one-party system of the 
 South is not yielding as large a crop of able men as 
 was formerly the case scarcely admits of doubt. 
 Thoughtful men in the South are seeing as much and 
 are beginning boldly to proclaim what they see. One 
 of the most eminent thinkers among present day 
 Southerners, the Hon. Hannis Taylor, says: "While 
 the South still has many very able men at Wash- 
 ington, the comment is general that the one-party 
 system is thinning their ranks every year." Presi- 
 dent Alderman of the University of Virginia, verily 
 a leader of the intellectual life of the New South 
 has given it as his opinion also that the South of 
 to-day is not producing men of the calibre sent 
 forth by her in former days.
 
 68 WISDOM'S CALI . 
 
 In a wholly incidental way, yet with 
 Striking startling clearness, the progressive 
 Evidence, movement going on within the ranks 
 of the Republican party has empha- 
 sized the truth of what these eminent Southerners 
 have said. While the men from the South con- 
 stitute the bulk of the opposition party whose 
 function it is to lay bare the weak points in the policy 
 of the party in control, yet it has been left to men 
 within the Republican party to make the great, 
 illuminating, convincing speeches that have caused 
 the nation to open its eyes and think. Why did not 
 Southern men gather up these arguments and hurl 
 them with dynamic force into the ranks of the 
 American people, compelling attention? The facts, 
 the arguments were all there awaiting the master 
 hand to gather them up. But this task was left to 
 La Follette, Cummins, Dolliver, Beveridge, all mem- 
 bers of the party in power, whereas such service 
 was due from the opposition party, recruited mainly 
 from the South. 
 
 Not only is the statesmanship at 
 Decline Washington being dwarfed, but the 
 General. same tendency toward enfeeblement 
 is seen in the brand of statesmanship 
 that is being called into service at home. In com- 
 menting upon a Tennessee legislative body some- 
 what recently in session, The Nashville American 
 in the course of a carefully argued editorial, had the 
 following to say: 
 
 "The weekly press is almost unanimous in its 
 condemnation of the late legislature. * * * As-
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 69 
 
 we have said before, the general littleness of the body, 
 its petty conduct in many instances, its trades and 
 combinations, the autocratic methods of self-seeking 
 members, the quarrels, the cheap declamations and 
 intemperate and undignified and unwarrantable pub- 
 lic denunciations by members who should have shown 
 a better sense of dignity and decency, the dishonesty 
 in juggling with bills, the unreliability of promises 
 the general record and conduct of the body marked 
 it as unworthy of the state or the approval of the 
 people. What man of established reputation would 
 care to be known as a member of the legislature just 
 adjourned?" 
 
 When the Hon. Wm. H. Taft was a 
 The Old younger man he was called to the South 
 Order vs. by his official duties, and while so- 
 the New. journing there he came into intimate 
 contact with many of the South's 
 giant minds which were bred in the great days pre- 
 ceding our Civil War and were the further quickened 
 by those stirring times which tried men's souls. 
 In later years Mr. Taft as a cabinet official was again 
 brought in touch with the leadership of the South, 
 and he could not but note the marked shrinkage in 
 the brand of mentality that the South was putting 
 forward. As from time to time Mr. Taft sat and 
 conversed with some of the newer lights which the 
 South had sent to Washington, his mind ran back to 
 the days of her giants. Being a man of broad 
 sympathies whose regard had been won by the many 
 splendid social and mental qualities which he found 
 the Southerners to possess, it gave him personal
 
 70 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 sorrow to note the falling off in the mental equip- 
 ment of the statesmanship being produced in the 
 South. It was Mr. Taft's opinion that it was the 
 change from the two-party system of the past to the 
 one-party system of to-day that had dwarfed the 
 political genius of the South and was substituting 
 men of mediocre talents for the great minds of 
 former days. Feeling thus with regard to the 
 South and fearing that a solid South would be 
 answered by a solid North until one of the political 
 parties of the North might die and leave that section 
 also in the hands of this same dwarfing one-party' 
 system, Mr. Taft decided that he would so conduct 
 his presidential office as to secure, if possible, two 
 strong political parties North and South, vieing 
 with each other for the control of affairs. He 
 realized that in days of strenuous conflict there 
 would be a premium on strong men, that both sides 
 would seek for such, and that the result would be the 
 pushing to the front of all that was great from all 
 sections of the nation. 
 
 "But what about our white pri- 
 Nature's maries? Do they not furnish ample 
 Habits. room for our men to engage in the 
 contests that breed great statesmen?" 
 Such are the questions which the white South will 
 naturally ask, and we shall now proceed to demon- 
 strate beyond the shadow of a doubt that the white 
 primary system does not meet the demands of the 
 Anglo-Saxon political genius. In view of the im- 
 portance of this matter let us view it fundamentally. 
 The tendency of nature everywhere is toward a
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 71 
 
 varied expression of the heart of things. Out 
 yonder in the open field where the hand of man 
 has done no planting we find the flower and the 
 fern; among the fowls of the air we have the beautiful 
 bird of song and the solemn, hooting owl; in the 
 matter of the seasons, there is the summer's heat, 
 and there is the winter's cold; in the realm of the 
 emotions we have joy and sorrow; in literature, the 
 realist and romantic; in philosophy, the epicurean 
 and the stoic; in the constitution of the human 
 family, the male and the female. The minds of men 
 are not all cast in the same mould and they do not, 
 therefore, approach subjects in the same way. Even 
 when they have the same ends to attain they must 
 approach them in different ways. Charles Lamb says 
 that he can accept as true, the story to the effect 
 that two men, who had never seen or heard of each 
 other before, who had no grievances, real or fancied, 
 against each other, met and proceeded instantly to 
 pummel one another, each having perceived at the 
 very first glance that the other was his born 
 antagonist. 
 
 In order that the human family may 
 The Two be sure to move forward, nature grants 
 Types. unto it men of a progressive turn of 
 
 mind, men eager to press forward. It 
 is this type that we behold instituting reforms 
 and inaugurating revolutions. But the human 
 family can attempt to go forward at such a pace 
 that it will lose much of permanent worth that 
 it has acquired. Hence the need of conservatives. 
 Conditions are by no means what they should be
 
 72 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 unless there is opportunity for the full, unhampered 
 development of the opposing orders of intellect. 
 Our country stood sadly in need of those two great 
 opposing statesmen, Alexander Hamilton and 
 Thomas Jefferson. But for Jefferson, we might 
 have had a centralized form of government which 
 would have prevented the diversity in state govern- 
 ments and the free play of forces, essential factors 
 in the glory of our country. On the other hand but 
 for Hamilton we might have had an aggregation of 
 states void of that degree of national power so needful 
 for us in our efforts to play our rightful part in the 
 affairs of the world. America is proud of her 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great romantic novelist, 
 but she is also proud of Mr. William Dean Howells, 
 her great realist. These men belonging to two 
 schools of thought radically, fundamentally, ir- 
 reconcilably different are both great ornaments to 
 our literary life. 
 
 One of the most dangerous features 
 White about the "white primary" is its 
 
 Primary misleading name. It is not "white," 
 Not White, is not a normal product of the white 
 race. The white race stands for 
 healthy division, not unwholesome congestion; for 
 freedom of thought and expression; for an absolutely 
 untrammeled field in which political plants may 
 grow according as their respective natures require. 
 By calling the primaries "white" the people of the 
 South may be led to feel that they are having a 
 white man's government. As we look out upon the 
 world to-day, it must be conceded that a cramped
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 73 
 
 one-party political life is not the white man's method. 
 The Germans, the French, the Russians, the English 
 the Spanish all great white nations, have more than 
 the one political party. The South, politically 
 speaking, is the one great group of white people that 
 is politically one-eyed. 
 
 The narrowing of the South down 
 One Form to the one political party stifles that 
 Not Suf- diversity of development in which 
 ficient. nature so evidently glories and by 
 
 means of which she accomplishes her 
 tasks. It is not enough to throw open the doors of 
 the "white primaries" and bid all white men enter. 
 The mischief of the situation is in the fact that there 
 is but the one political form provided for the situa- 
 tion, whereas one political form is no more adequate 
 for the expression of Anglo-Saxon political genius 
 than the fern is capable of showing all that nature 
 can do in the way of flower making. Nature, who 
 carefully and with wonderful exactitude arranges 
 the human family into sexes, seeing to it that there 
 is everywhere about an equal proportion of men and 
 women born, also so shapes the minds of men that 
 they will under normal conditions fall into different 
 schools of thought in such proportion as is necessary 
 for healthy development. 
 
 o ~. , The suggestion may be offered that 
 
 the defect here pointed out, the failure 
 to provide for all orders of minds is 
 practically cured by drawing no rigid 
 
 line between the whites by allowing well nigh all the
 
 74 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 whites who so desire to participate in the "white 
 primaries." But this does not provide for the free 
 and untrammeled mark the emphasis, play of forces. 
 The primary will be held under the auspices of the 
 dominant party and will be called that party's 
 primary. The great minds, assigned by the fiat of 
 nature to lead the opposition, robbed of the power 
 to develop a formidable following, must, upon en- 
 tering the primary of the party to which they are 
 opposed, remain very quiet, and content themselves 
 with the simple function of casting their own ballots. 
 For if they become too active they will be seized 
 and cast out as strangers at the feast who have not 
 on the wedding garments. It is readily seen, then, 
 that when all is over the political field has not b<~ ^n 
 threshed to the extent of its possibilities, as one side 
 of the political genius of the race entered the pri- 
 mary lame, halt and blind and was required to speak 
 in muffled tones. If Alexander Hamilton and 
 Thomas Jefferson, the two men whose opposing and 
 yet blended thoughts gave us this nation that has 
 Hamiltonian stability along with Jeffersonian free- 
 dom, had both lived in the South under present day 
 conditions, and Jefferson's party had been the one 
 overshadowing party, Hamilton would have been 
 practically a nonentity, creeping into Jefferson's 
 white primary with his one vote; and the common- 
 wealth would not have gotten the great uplift re- 
 sulting from the sifting of things to their very founda- 
 tions by two great minds looking at things in ways 
 that differ fundamentally. Hamilton's activity would 
 have been the one thing needed to stir Jefferson to 
 do his best, not Hamilton's one quiet vote. But Ham-
 
 \Yisi)OM's CALL. 75 
 
 ilton could not have been active with any reasonable 
 hope of success. His very activity would have been 
 used against him. He would have been accused 
 of coming into Jefferson's household as a stranger 
 to seek to control the household as against the head 
 of the house. Hence we can see that in the matter 
 of furnishing an opportunity for the exercise of all 
 sides of the political mind of the white race the 
 "white primary" of the one dominant party is 
 fatally and inherently defective. However strenuously 
 the South may strive to have both schools of thought 
 to thrive in the one camp it can have no more success 
 than the keeper of a zoological garden who tries to 
 make a fish feel at home in a well built bird's nest. 
 
 It has often been observed that the 
 Discord Democratic party as constituted to- 
 
 Accounted day lacks cohesiveness, has not the 
 For. faculty of attaining unto a sufficient 
 
 oneness of thought to make it effective 
 as a governing agency. Evidently the reason for 
 this is that the South has but the one political home 
 for the white man and men who are ordained of 
 nature to oppose each other, radically,f undamentally, 
 are forced to try to live together in this one home. 
 What but an uneven journey can be expected when 
 the mule, good in his place is hitched to a racing 
 cart with the fleetest of race horses? Hitched to- 
 gether thus, neither the mule nor the horse can show 
 his real worth.
 
 76 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 We have cited elsewhere the fact 
 Mistakes that individuals have in themselves 
 Ratified Not wells of reserve energy that are not 
 Corrected. called upon except when grave crises 
 come. The same may be said of so- 
 ciety. It too has a well of reserve energy upon which 
 it draws only in trying times. There is always a 
 considerable portion of the public that takes but 
 little part in the preliminary skirmishes pertaining 
 to civic affairs, knowing of no evil designs and pre- 
 suming that all will go well without activity on its 
 part. This group constitutes society's well of re- 
 serve energy. It sometimes happens that the few 
 who do take part in the preliminary affairs are cor- 
 rupted, or are misled, or exercise decidedlv bad 
 judgment. Where there are two parties, the re- 
 serve of the opposition party, seeing how the good 
 people in the other party were caught napping, be- 
 stirs itself and sees to it that its party does not make 
 a similar mistake. When the general election comes 
 off, all the reserve forces go to the polls to defeat and 
 teach the erring ones to be more careful in the future. 
 But where only one party exists this reserve force 
 merely shrugs its shoulders and proceeds to ratify 
 the mistake at the polls. Thus it is that the South 
 must jog along without the benefit of its reserve 
 energy, against which mediocres and weaklings can 
 hardly stand. 
 
 . Before the eyes of the world to-day 
 
 p . there stands a living illustration of the 
 
 . ? harm wrought by the one-party white 
 
 primary system, a widespread evil 
 
 affecting gravely the South and the whole nation.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 77 
 
 Former President Benjamin Harrison once said 
 that the chief difference between the politics of the 
 Latin republics of South America and of the United 
 States is that the South Americans follow men, 
 whereas the people of the United States follow 
 principles. It was his opinion that this following 
 of the fortunes of individuals was very largely 
 responsible for the unrest and upheaval in these 
 republics. To the mind of Mr. Harrison this 
 disposition to follow principles and not men is 
 one of the most valuable traits in our political 
 life. But so far as the South is concerned the forces 
 which have been at work in the past and are yet at 
 work are utterly destroying this boasted and highly 
 valued difference. The contests before the "white 
 primaries" are in the great majority of cases purely 
 contests between personalities and not between 
 policies. The one, the inevitable effect of such 
 conditions is to reduce the politics of the South 
 almost wholly to the personal basis and to give the 
 Southern mind the trend of deciding its course 
 according to personal attachments. The able 
 exposition of great issues is not the test of preferment, 
 but the ability to muster a sufficient number of 
 personal friends to secure the party nomination. 
 In a contest of this kind a cordial handshake, a 
 genial smile, a jolly disposition, the knowing by 
 name of Dink Hopkins, Tom Sparrow and Mink 
 Bivins are of far more consequence than possessing 
 the brain of an Aristotle.
 
 78 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 The Nashville Banner, edited by one 
 Mr. Bryan of the most astute of Southern editors, 
 and the said in the course of an editorial that 
 South. the hold of Hon. William Jennings 
 
 Bryan upon the South was as much a 
 fit subject for study for the psychologist as for the 
 political observer. When we look into the matter 
 of the allegiance of the white South to Mr. Bryan we 
 do find much that is peculiar. Advocating prin- 
 ciples wholly at variance with the practices of the 
 dominant element of the South, silent for years upon 
 the matter of the white South's attitude toward the 
 Negro voter the South's one great question that 
 section has nevertheless insisted upon Mr. Bryan's 
 nomination for the presidency, has steadily cast her 
 votes for him, and has just as steadily elected men 
 to the Senate and House of Representatives who 
 have with equal steadiness voted against some of 
 Mr. Bryan's favorite policies. Such devotion to the 
 personal fortunes of a man is perhaps without a 
 parallel in the history of the politics of the English 
 speaking race in modern times. When the soci- 
 ologists of the future take up our era and study 
 this phenomenon let them not fail to bear in 
 mind that the absence of a normal political Jife in 
 the South caused nearly all contests to be battles 
 between personalities, caused the Southern mind 
 to be thrown to the personal basis, which basis 
 allows men's personalities to assume large propor- 
 tions in their minds, to the exclusion of the considera- 
 tion of separating principles. There are many 
 thoughtful minds that contend that it is this personal
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 79 
 
 devotion to Mr. Bryan not to his principles, but to 
 him, that is the chief factor in the way of building up 
 a strong opposition party in the nation. The person- 
 al politics of the South have about South American- 
 ized it, save of course as to the armed revolutions of 
 such frequent occurrence. 
 
 Pause to think what this means! 
 Endangers The vast interests of the South and of 
 Political the nation are subjected to the decrees 
 Efficiency, of a voting element that in the very 
 nature of things, is being trained by its 
 system of politics to move along the line of personal 
 attachments. The tendency fully acquired, pushes 
 forward and makes itself manifest when vast and 
 vital interests are involved. Of course it is hardly 
 to be feared that the tendency to follow men rather 
 than principles will at any time lead to a clash of arms 
 in our country as in South America, but the habit 
 of mind engendered by voting according to personal 
 attachments will however very materially impair 
 the political efficiency of any group that indulges it. 
 We shall now cite a case that will clearly illustrate 
 the vast importance of the point here made. Wm. 
 H. Seward was the personal choice of the majority 
 of the delegates to the convention that nominated 
 Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. Lincoln" 
 often remarked jocularly, yet truthfully, that he 
 had the honor of being nominated by a convention 
 that wanted "the other fellow." When the dele- 
 gates became convinced that Seward, the man around 
 whom their affections were entwined would in all 
 likelihood meet defeat at the polls on account of the
 
 80 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 antagonism of the then powerful "Know Nothing" 
 element they agreed to drop him and accept Abra- 
 ham Lincoln as a substitute. If these delegates had 
 been operating along the lines of personal attach- 
 ments Lincoln would not have been nominated and 
 the nation would have been deprived of the services 
 of this man of destiny, this giant soul who steered 
 the nation through the stormy Civil War period, and 
 steered himself eternally into the hearts of the people 
 of the North and of the South alike. But for the 
 fact that the white South has been largely twisted 
 toward a basis of personal attachment is it not possi- 
 ble that it would have long since acted toward Mr. 
 Bryan as the Northerners did toward Seward? Is 
 it not a psychological fact that the one-party, "white 
 primary," no issue policy of the South has at last 
 sunk the South into the quagmire of personal at- 
 tachments, to the serious impairment of its political 
 efficiency? Let the white South think seriously on 
 this matter. 
 
 As a striking illustration of the 
 
 Typical manner in which personal politics 
 
 Campaign, flourish and bear fruit under existing 
 
 conditions in the South, we cite the 
 
 following editorial from The Nashville American: 
 
 "The municipal campaign in Nashville this year, 
 like so many in the past, does not seem to hinge 
 upon the capabilities of those seeking office, but 
 upon the power and ingenuity with which one candi- 
 date can assail the candidacy of his opponent or 
 opponents. Once in a while a candidate may 
 advance a suggestion looking to the city's material
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 81 
 
 welfare, but in the main the speeches are all devoted 
 to the other fellow's failings or alleged failings. 
 
 What has this to do with municipal government? 
 
 Who cares a continental what one candidate 
 thinks about another, or what one candidate says 
 about another? 
 
 What have opinions of individuals to do with the 
 expenditure of the million and seven hundred 
 thousand dollars poured into the treasury every 
 year by the taxpayers? 
 
 The American does not seek to decry candidates 
 for municipal offices. It does not seek to hold them 
 up before the public as a lot of incapables. 
 
 But in not one single speech delivered so far in the 
 campaign has there been a semblance of suggestion 
 that would help Nashville or encourage the hope of 
 wise and economical government. On the contrary 
 the campaign so far has been one of criticism of one 
 or the other candidates by the opposing candidate. 
 
 One man works himself into a frenzy over law 
 enforcement. His opponent, seizing the cue, en- 
 deavors to go him one better along the same line. 
 Another candidate says his opponent, an office- 
 holder, voted to give 'Steenth ward a sewer and voted 
 against giving another ward needed improvements. 
 The campaign is all personal. It is self-glori- 
 fication on the one hand, and criticism on the other. 
 
 The real needs of the city are never touched. 
 What will or will not be of advantage to the com- 
 munity which pays the salaries these candidates are 
 all striving to reach is not of moment. 
 
 And strange and unaccountable as it may seem, 
 the crowds which stand around the speaking booths
 
 82 WISDOM'S CAU 
 
 applaud personal attacks of the one candidate upon 
 the other and at the same time hardly ever realize, 
 after it is all over, that none of the speakers 
 advanced a suggestion, idea or thought that made for 
 betterment of the city government. 
 
 And The American is not interested in the success 
 of a single candidate in this primary, but it does have 
 a very great interest in Nashville. It would like very 
 much to see men in the field, who could point out 
 our shortcomings as a city 'and suggest wise and 
 practicable remedies, men who know the city's needs 
 and its resources, and who can show how to cut the 
 cloth to suit the public pocket. There is no public 
 advantage to accrue from crimination and re- 
 crimination. Nothing tangible comes from this 
 sort of campaigning. What the people should be 
 told is whether A or B or C can give them proper 
 government at the lowest possible expenditure. 
 They want to know how their taxes can be reduced ; 
 how they are to get more streets and sewers and 
 lights; how the police and fire service is to be im- 
 proved. These are the things they are interested in, 
 or should be interested in, not what Tom thinks of 
 Harry or vice versa." 
 
 Nashville, Tennessee is the great 
 The educational center of the South, is 
 
 System. thought by many to be the most 
 cultured city below the Mason and 
 Dixon line, and yet we have the above lament from 
 its chief organ of opinion with regard to the childish 
 plane upon which the political life of the city is 
 projected. The fault is not with the candidates,
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 83 
 
 nor yet with the people, whom the paper chides for 
 their tolerance of the style of campaigning indulged 
 in, but with the system under which the South is 
 seeking to move forward, which drags political life 
 to the basis of personalities as surely as the law of 
 gravitation drew that apple to the head of Sir Isaac 
 Newton. This is the philosophy of the Southern 
 situation and can be no more set aside than can 
 be this same law of gravitation. 
 
 When politics descends to the simple 
 Strong level of a scramble for office on the 
 
 Minds basis of personal friendship, men of 
 
 Disgusted, large minds then steer clear thereof. 
 Big ships avoid shallow streams and 
 great souls cannot be expected to take part in these 
 personal scrambles. Thus we have another weakening 
 influence of the situation, the driving of the larger 
 minds away from civic affairs. 
 
 An editorial pertinent to the point here raised was 
 published recently in the Memphis Commercial 
 Appeal. It was headed "Just Suppose" and ran as 
 follows: 
 
 "Over a thousand men went into and out of the 
 Business Men's Club yesterday and took part in the 
 election. The candidates themselves were active 
 all day, and their friends were active, and interest 
 was at white heat from daylight until sundown. 
 
 The leading citizens of Memphis took part in this 
 election. Perhaps one-half of the taxable wealth of 
 this city was represented by the voters. 
 
 Suppose the people of Memphis took as much in- 
 terest in the election of candidates for political
 
 84 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 offices as they do in the election of officers of the 
 Business Men's Club. Then what? 
 
 Men of the highest character are on both tickets. 
 Some are heavy taxpayers, and some are salaried 
 men, but all are alert, keen and aggressive. 
 
 Just suppose that such men would offer for county, 
 city and state offices. Suppose all voters were as 
 active at the polls as at the Business Men's Club. 
 Then, indeed, would we have in the state, county, 
 and city, in the courts of law, in the legislature, 
 effective men. 
 
 We talk about the influence in politics of the bad 
 elements. The bad elements do influence politics 
 greatly, but they are merely taking a hand because 
 the good citizens themselves are indifferent or re- 
 fuse to do the work." 
 
 But what more can be expected under the present 
 system! Two strong healthy parties are needed. 
 The South may lift its voice in loud lament over the 
 failure of great minds to come to the front, may 
 smite its breast, put on sack-cloth, and toss the ashes 
 of sorrow upon its head, but things will move on as 
 at present, move downward, downward, until the 
 peanut politicians and the peanut minds and the 
 peanut methods have made of the South, a paradise 
 of mediocres, the place in which great minds cannot 
 flourish, the one Dead Sea of the modern political 
 world along whose shores no flower of political 
 genius is allowed to thrive.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 85 
 
 There was an element of the pathetic 
 Seeking to in the journeying of that Memphis, 
 Import Tenn., delegation to Washington, D. C., 
 Greatness, to invite, to urge, to persuade the Hon. 
 Wm. Jennings Bryan to abandon his 
 Nebraska home and come to Memphis. The white 
 South boasts of the purity of its Anglo-Saxon blood , 
 claims that it is the most truly Anglo-Saxon section 
 of the American people. Why, then, with all of 
 this richness of blood can it not manufacture great 
 men rather than import them? Mr. Bryan refused 
 to come to Memphis to reside. That city could offer 
 to him political preferment, unswerving loyalty, 
 social attentions galore, and an opportunity to earn 
 millions of dollars, but under existing conditions it 
 could not give the atmosphere that breeds greatness 
 in men. Blessed is that man who is so situated 
 that his environments call into service all that is 
 great within him, and accursed is that man, what- 
 ever his food, raiment, or lineage whose environ- 
 ments issue no such call for the powers of his soul. 
 Out in the great West where Mr. Bryan resides, men 
 cannot hide behind party names, cannot be sure 
 that the halo of some fond tradition will secure the 
 ratification at the polls of all blunders however grave. 
 Out there men must appeal to the judgment and 
 consciences of their fellows, must be able to meet 
 in fair and open fight men of opposing schools of 
 thought, who have an equal chance to do battle for 
 their convictions. It was upon this Darwinian field 
 of political battle that Mr. Bryan grew to greatness. 
 It was there that he was forced to draw upon every
 
 36 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 drop of his well of reserve energy, knowing full well 
 that not an inch of standing room would be accorded 
 him except such as he conquered and held by the 
 strength of his own soul. And, thus, when he was 
 asked to leave and come to a land where the one- 
 party practice was slowly but surely murdering the 
 political genius of the Anglo-Saxon race, he answered, 
 No. 
 
 We hear much of the havoc being 
 Medioc- wrought in the South by the boll weevil, 
 rity's Path how it bores into the boll and saps the 
 to the life out of the plant, but it is far less 
 
 Throne. dangerous to the South and to the na- 
 tion than the insect of personal politics 
 that creeps into the minds of men and eats away 
 that consideration of great questions that has hither- 
 to wrought mightily in the upbuilding of Anglo- 
 Saxon institutions. In a very direct manner the 
 welfare of the entire nation is bound up in this mat- 
 ter of producing statesmen in the South. Let us 
 suppose that the processes which we have outlined 
 become general throughout the South and the small 
 minds worm themselves to the front and secure 
 seats in the House of Representatives. Though 
 they fall far short of representing the South at its 
 best, by the same methods used to get to the front 
 they can manage to stay there. The Congressmen 
 from other sections are tried first in their own pri- 
 maries, and later in a general election, and a sifting, 
 and eliminating process is constantly going on, 
 but these men from the South escape the second 
 fiery test at least and have the greater chance to 
 remain. By the mere lapse of time they are car-
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 87 
 
 ried forward to seniority on the great committees 
 which really shape legislation. Finally in the course 
 of time, the rest of the nation unwilling to continue 
 one party in power for too long a period summons 
 the opposition party to take over the reins of govern- 
 ment. The men from the South who have come to 
 the front and remained there after the manner des- 
 cribed, by virtue of their long stay are made chair- 
 men of the important committees and thus assume 
 charge of the affairs of the nation. Some, who have 
 become known to the people of their respective 
 states through their long sojourn in the House of 
 Representatives, are sent to the United States Senate 
 and there have still greater influence in the matter 
 of regulating the affairs of the nation. So, here we 
 have the products of the one-eyed political system 
 of the South, men who have never been subjected 
 to the severe tests of which society is capable, 
 placed in charge of the affairs of the richest nation 
 on the earth. Truly, truly has the nation a vast 
 interest in the methods that obtain in the matter of 
 choosing her rulers. For, so surely as the rivers 
 run to the sea, the mediocres that are allowed to 
 flourish and crowd into the background the able 
 minds of the South will one day come to power in 
 the nation and work whatever harm is to be expected 
 of weakness exalted to the place rightly due to the 
 man of strength. 
 
 But let us take even a closer view 
 Great of the injury wrought and the dan- 
 
 Tasks gers to be apprehended because 
 
 Needed. of the present political conditions 
 in the South. The political isolation
 
 88 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 of the South, its constant ignoring at the ballot 
 box of those issues that are dividing the people 
 of the rest of the country, has left national 
 affairs to the care of other sections. This means that 
 so far as its larger political life is concerned, the 
 South has abdicated its seat on the throne of the 
 government and has become like unto a governed 
 province. It is no light thing for a great people to be 
 shorn of the privilege of dealing with the larger 
 affairs of its existence. Likening the Anglo-Saxon 
 mind unto a tree whose fruit is a sadly needed food 
 for mankind, let the South deny it sufficient soil in 
 which to sink its roots; deny it skies in which to shoot 
 its branches, and unfold its buds; deny it sunlight 
 and rain upon which it may feed, and it will shrivel, 
 become barren, become the hiss and by-word of the 
 hungry sons of men who come looking for fruit there- 
 on, but find none. 
 
 Behold the fate of the Jews! They 
 Why the lost their independence, had no great 
 Jews Erred, affairs of state with which to deal, and 
 therefore gave themselves up to sharp 
 disputations on small matters. They developed 
 such a passion for things of small moment that the 
 coming of Christ, the great seer, found them utterly 
 unprepared to receive Him. If they had had the larger 
 affairs of their national life with which to deal, a means 
 for the expansion of the mind and the racial soul; 
 if they had not had their vision narrowed by the 
 poring over the minutiae of the ceremonial law and 
 the inconsequential traditions of the elders, it might 
 have been that they would have escaped the odium
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 89 
 
 attached to the slaying of the Christ, an odium that 
 has clung to them throughout the ages as a veritable 
 body of death. 
 
 If a system is maintained in the 
 Georgia South which hems in and slays the 
 Pays strong minds, and pushes the small 
 
 Penalty. ones to the front, the people, led by 
 small, warped minds will ultimately 
 grow narrow of soul, blind to the demands of the 
 higher life; and in some mad moment they may do 
 that which will stain their name throughout eternity. 
 Look at imperial Georgia! Not being a factor in 
 national affairs, she failed to furnish a field broad 
 enough for the mind of one of her sons. Lacking 
 great national issues that would interest a people 
 inclined to vote the one way regardless of the issues 
 involved, this son of Georgia decided to put saddle 
 and bridle upon the primitive passion of racial hate 
 and on this ride to glory. His campaign against 
 the Negro served to generate the atmospheric 
 condition that caused the storm clouds of racial 
 feeling to burst upon the proud city of Atlanta and 
 wash away the city's good name which thousands 
 of true men and women had been years in building. 
 
 Another baneful effect of the one- 
 In The party system is the fact that under its 
 Hands of operation only a small proportion of 
 The Few. the citizens, even among the whites 
 takes part in governmental affairs. 
 A glance at the returns from the regular elections or 
 from the "white primaries" where matters are really
 
 90 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 settled reveals this fact. But if the few who do take 
 part in elections furnish good government the 
 question might be asked as to what harm, after all, 
 comes of the non-participation of those who have 
 evidently surrendered a vital interest in civic affairs. 
 Much harm in every way as will presently appear! 
 Nature has not placed in the hands of man a chart of 
 the earth, nor of the souls of his fellowmen that 
 discloses just where she has deposited her richest 
 treasures or bestowed her choicest mental and 
 spiritual gifts to men. Thus it is that man has been 
 left to stumble upon silver, gold, diamonds, radium, 
 brilliance of intellect, greatness of soul in most 
 unexpected quarters. In California, at whose 
 borders the voracious, land-swallowing Pacific just 
 happened to halt we find rich deposits of gold, while 
 carelessly rolled in the mud of far away South Africa 
 we get our most beautiful diamonds. Out of little 
 Greece came the world-filling mind of Aristotle; out 
 of little Corsica came the mighty Napoleon; out of 
 the solitude of Kentucky woodlands, came the human 
 giant Abraham Lincoln; out of the manger in humble 
 Bethlehem came the immortal Christ of God. In 
 view of the fact that we know not where nature has 
 planted the divine fire of genius, they indeed sin 
 against humanity who institute systems that lull 
 great sections. of the human family to sleep. 
 
 In trying to escape evils of one char- 
 Sleeping acter, lo, they who have brought to 
 Hosts. pass the condition of affairs that 
 
 has put the millions of the South to 
 sleep and left matters in the hands of the few, have
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 91 
 
 rushed into the crushing embrace of another great 
 evil. 
 
 Think of the millions of whites of the South who 
 never go to the polls; look upon this vast, sleeping 
 army and consider how much of genius, what trans- 
 cendent powers that will not be called into service 
 nature has without doubt deposited in the camps 
 of these sleepers. Grave problems are bearing 
 down upon the modern world to vex its heart sorely. 
 Who knows but that in this great sleeping army of 
 the Southern whites there may be nature's grant of 
 power to some soul or souls which, properly harnessed 
 could move the modern world to its goal. The cry 
 of the age for great souls would undoubtedly find 
 somewhat of an answer from the ranks of these 
 sleeping hosts. 
 
 "Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 
 
 Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; 
 Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed 
 Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre, * * * 
 Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 
 Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood." 
 It should be the one great dream of society to 
 furnish conditions for the flowering of those powers 
 that cause men to be able to add to the comfort, the 
 delight, the glory of the human family for all time. 
 Alas, then, for those conditions in the South that 
 put such great numbers to sleep. 
 
 The evil sustained is not confined to 
 
 Other the possible loss of transcendent 
 
 Lines statesmanship. When the man of 
 
 Affected. public affairs goes to sleep he takes to 
 
 bed with him the poet, the sculptor,
 
 92 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 the artist, the man of letters. Observe that 
 contemporaneous with great rulers and great epochs, 
 have been the great poets of the world. It was 
 statesmanship manifested in the lives of strong 
 characters that quickened the mind and imagination 
 of Shakespeare and equipped it for its loftiest flights. 
 It was a Victorian jubilee, the commemoration of a 
 great reign, that fired the soul of Kipling and enabled 
 it to sing so appealingly of the 
 
 "God of our fathers known of old, 
 Lord of our far flung battle line 
 
 Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
 Dominion over palm and pine;" 
 
 Let the mind but scan the world's great literature 
 and note how often it is the deed of the man dealing 
 with the affairs of state that awakens the genius of 
 the poet. It is not enough to have merely a de- 
 mocracy in name, a theoretical government of the 
 people by the people. To get the benefit of the 
 quickening power of a democracy the people must 
 take part in the management of their affairs. 
 
 We have shown elsewhere how that 
 Arouse the absence of strenuous political 
 
 The contests works against the summoning 
 
 Sleepers. to the front of the reserve powers of 
 the mind ; how that the "white pri- 
 maries" being wholly within the one household, do 
 not furnish room for the development of men to 
 represent fully the two opposing schools of thought, 
 a division that has played such a vital part in push- 
 ing forward Anglo-Saxon political life; how that the
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 93 
 
 loss of the national power as an asset is losing to 
 the South its ability to multiply the influence of its 
 choice minds and to enlarge the aspirations of its 
 youths. Now, add to these weakening influences 
 the further consideration, that so much of its civic 
 genius goes to waste through slumber brought on as 
 herein pointed out, we clearly see what a dreary 
 prospect is held out to the South moving along 
 present lines. The people of Florida have awakened 
 to the fact that immense fortunes are lurking in the 
 everglades, only awaiting the hand that will draw off 
 the waters. The hitherto barren lands of the 
 western wilderness are being reclaimed, called into 
 service, and are now blossoming and blooming as 
 the rose. Oh, statesmen of America, what are 
 swamps and deserts compared to the great areas of 
 sleeping and unused men? 
 
 Holy Writ informs us that "there is a 
 Mistaken, way which seemeth right unto a man 
 but the end thereof are the ways of 
 death." Over and over again in the history of the 
 world has the truth of this assertion been demon- 
 strated. The ancient Greeks, a people of strong 
 mentality cherished the belief that their glory rested 
 upon the maintenance of the autonomy of the 
 several Greek states. The men who advocated 
 this idea succeeded in thoroughly fastening it upon 
 the minds of the Greeks; but they caused the fading 
 of the glory which they sought to sustain. For, the 
 jealous guarding of the autonomy of the several 
 states prevented the growth of a strong federation, 
 which, like the coming together of the early English
 
 94 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 kingdoms, would have secured a permanent place 
 among the great nations of the earth. As the 
 devotion of the Greeks to the notion of autonomy 
 proved to be the undoing of the Greeks, so will the 
 reliance of the white South upon the one-party, 
 "white primary" system continue to bring to pass its 
 decay in genuine political power. 
 
 Son of the white South, withdraw 
 The Course that frown directed toward your fellow 
 To Take. who would think his own political 
 thought; encourage the two-party 
 system regardless of your political affiliations; if 
 needs be lead off in the work of emancipating your 
 section from the thralldom of the one-party idea. 
 It may be that this service rendered by you, this 
 saving of your section from political death may be 
 your crown of eternal glory. Let the word go forth 
 in all the South that each man is to think and express 
 his own political thought, that divisions of opinion 
 are to be encouraged rather than discountenanced, 
 that no form of social ostracism is to be visited upon 
 a man because of his political convictions, that politi- 
 cal differences are not to be carried into the business 
 life of the community, that the press of the South as 
 a patriotic duty is henceforth to give ample attention 
 to the sound contentions of opposition parties. 
 Under such conditions the genius of Thomas Jeffer- 
 son and of the other great giants of the South will no 
 longer object to reincarnation and will cheerfully 
 come back to dwell in the bosoms of the youths of 
 the South of to-day, thus ensuring the grandeur of 
 the times in which we live.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 95 
 
 But there is no condition of human 
 Those affairs but that can be turned to some 
 
 Who Are one's individual profit. When the 
 Satisfied. angry sea marched upon and slew 
 thousands of Galveston's citizens its 
 receding waves were fast followed by ghouls who 
 robbed the unburied dead. The wind from which 
 absolutely no one derives what he terms good must 
 indeed be an ill one. The winter cold that invades 
 the cabins of the shivering poor and carries death, 
 brings with it bags of gold for the dealers in fuel. 
 This thought, clearly borne in mind should prepare 
 us for what is now to follow. Upon a some- 
 what recent occasion, which for the moment 
 attracted national attention, one of the bene- 
 ficiaries of the one-party system, the governor 
 of one of the Southern states, let fly on the wings of 
 the Associated Press his arguments against the 
 proposed policy of President Taft looking toward the 
 building up in the South of an opposition party 
 that' would keep watch on, and render more careful the 
 party in power, to the end that the South might 
 have the means at hand for expressing its real 
 views on the great economic questions dividing the 
 nation, and for forcing the selection of its strongest 
 sons to maintain in the arena of thought the real 
 views of their respective states. 
 
 The governor to whom allusion is 
 Only a here made stated that he was opposed 
 
 Scare to the division of the whites of the 
 
 Crow. South for fear that in case of such 
 
 division the Negroes would prove to 
 be the balance of power, to the great detriment of
 
 96 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 the South. In view of the fact that freedom of 
 political thought is an absolute necessity for the 
 South that cannot be dispensed with except at a 
 tremendous cost, it behooves it to walk up to the ob- 
 jection here raised by this governor to decide whether 
 it is a genuine menace, whose existence justifies the 
 continued huddling of the South in the one political 
 party, or, on the other hand, is a scare crow, frightful 
 in appearance but absolutely harmless withal. A 
 glance at Negro nature and the circumstances 
 surrounding the race will go to show that the Negro 
 vote instead of being a menace to the South can 
 become one of its most helpful assets. Being mainly 
 of the industrial class whose prosperity is bound up 
 intimately with the prosperity of the community, 
 the Negroes would be sure to keep a keen look 
 out and could be relied upon to discover helpful 
 policies by means of that peculiar sharpening of the 
 vision that comes in the school of stern necessity. 
 On one occasion a certain Southern city was in the 
 grasp of a railway monopoly and the only hope of 
 redemption seemed to lie in having the city to vote 
 substantial aid to a movement that sought another 
 outlet. There was a sufficiently large satisfied class 
 among the whites to prevent the securing of the 
 required three-fourth vote from the white race in 
 favor of the proposed aid. The Negroes were ap- 
 pealed to, and seeing clearly and at once the great 
 benefit to the industrial class of the proposed move, 
 they supported the proposition in such numbers s& 
 to make up for the more than one-fourth defection 
 of the whites. The whole city now rejoices in what 
 the Negro vote made possible.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 97 
 
 Not only does the Negro's situation 
 The naturally constitute him the ally of the 
 
 Negro's policies that make for prosperous 
 Choice. conditions but it also makes him the 
 chief seeker for the nobler type of men 
 to hold the reins of government. As there are flies 
 that hunt for sores in which to deposit their eggs 
 and vultures that delight in carrion which they may 
 consume, there is an element of whites that will not 
 hesitate to take advantage of the position of the 
 Negro and most brutally maltreat him. In view of 
 this fact the Negroes follow with the utmost interest 
 the various campaigns waged in the South and 
 ardently hope that the men of nobler type will win 
 the day. Moreover the Negro's judgment of the 
 qualities of mind and heart of the various grades of 
 white men is very good. It is interesting to know 
 that the Negroes have their wjiite neighbors clearly 
 classified and any one proposing to have dealings with 
 them can find out before hajid almost to the utmost 
 detail just what to expect. The terrible shadow of 
 a possible annihilation that has hung like a pall over 
 the Negro race has caused an enforced study of the 
 white man that makes the Negro a good 
 judge of that race. This claim that the Negro 
 is an excellent judge of the character of white 
 men need not jar even those who doubt the full 
 development of the race at the present time, for be 
 it remembered that children are often better judges 
 of the character of some people than the older ones 
 are, which accounts for the fact that the judgment 
 of children so often determines the status of family
 
 98 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 friends. A certain well known Southern novelist in 
 one of his stories pictures the unerring judgment of 
 an aged Negro servant who could read the character 
 of the whites so well that he became the accepted 
 guide of the family in doubtful cases and could seal 
 the doom of a would-be acquaintance by an ominous 
 shake of his woolly head. 
 
 An important consideration to be 
 Chasm borne in mind is the fact that the 
 
 Can be Negro race is not by nature revengeful, 
 
 Bridged. thus making it possible to close the gap 
 between the white and colored people 
 far more easily than the long drawn out political war 
 between the two races would seem to indicate. We 
 submit, here is a situation that offers a good soil for 
 the controlling forces of the South to cultivate with 
 the full assurance that every natural element points 
 to a harvest of beneficial results. Should the white 
 people of the South see fit to discountenance the talk 
 about the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment and 
 proceed to address themselves to the task of es- 
 tablishing a working relationship with the worthy 
 element of Negroes it would be readily seen that the 
 majority sense of the Negroes would be in substantial 
 accord with the majority sense of the whites. Where 
 such was found not to be the case a campaign of edu- 
 cation would certainly bring about the desired results. 
 It is to be observed that the religious divisions among 
 the whites have parallel divisions among the Negroes, 
 and in all probability political divisions among the 
 whites would mean corresponding divisions among 
 the Negroes, so that the efforts of the whites tc
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 99 
 
 divide and strive strenuously to arrive at the best 
 results would not be nullified by the solid massing 
 and blind voting of the Negroes. 
 
 The wise handling of the Negro vote 
 The of the South would have a salutary 
 
 Northern effect upon the national interests of 
 Negro and the South. When in the course of 
 the South, events it has seemed to be the time for 
 the opposition party in the North to 
 come into power, when there has been a decided 
 tendency on the part of the majority sense of the 
 whites of the North to make a shift in the control of 
 -affairs, fear of the South on the part of the Negro 
 voters of the North has caused them to be slow in 
 taking such steps as would give the South national 
 power. A careful analysis of the vote in many 
 elections will disclose the fact that the control of the 
 House of Representatives, and of the electoral 
 college has several times been lodged in the hands 
 that favored economic policies out of harmony with 
 the South's desires through the Negro vote solidified 
 by fear of the whites of the South. 
 
 The Negroes of the North are not 
 Ground on the whole toilers in the factories. 
 For an At present they are largely denied 
 
 Alliance. work as factory hands. They do not 
 therefore come immediately within 
 that group of laborers that are supposed to be pro- 
 tected by the tariff as now levied. Their economic 
 interests, whatever they are, would seem to be in 
 line with those of the consumers rather than those
 
 IOC WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 of the manufacturers. It is generally held that 
 the predominant interests of the South are those 
 of the consumer, hence the consuming Negro 
 of the North would seem to be the natural ally of the 
 Southern consumer. But an unfriendly attitude 
 toward the Negro voter of the South serves to 
 alienate the Negro voter of the North and causes the 
 South to pay millions of tribute annually that might 
 be retained at home. It seems to be generally 
 conceded that the tariff might be much lower than 
 what it is without injury to the country, and a 
 friendly spirit between the whites of the South and 
 the Negroes of the nation would perhaps long since 
 have given enough Congressmen favorable to the 
 consumer's viewpoint to have insured the desired 
 result. 
 
 Those who refuse to grapple with 
 The the question of trying to find a working 
 
 Amend- basis with the worthy Negro in political 
 ment matters, who prefer to continue the 
 
 Secure. policy of slowly murdering, through 
 the one-party system, the political 
 genius of the South in the hope that time will bring 
 about the abrogation of the Fifteenth Amendment to 
 the constitution, are hardly wise. President Taft, 
 representing the conservative thought of the nation, 
 the element that believes more in evolution and 
 development than in legislation as an adjusting force, 
 says that the Fifteenth Amendment never will be 
 repealed and ought not to be repealed. Those 
 influences in the North which have uniformly 
 pleaded for the largest sympathy and trust for the
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 101 
 
 South, which strenuously opposed federal inter- 
 ference in the matter of enforcing the Fifteenth 
 Amendment are still insistent that the amendment 
 abide in the federal constitution as the ideal toward 
 which the nation is to work. These particular 
 forces have the ascendency in the nation to-day. 
 They urge that the task of squaring the life of the 
 South with the federal constitution be left to the 
 better element of Southern whites, and they differ 
 from those who would enforce the amendment only 
 .as to the best method to finally attain the end of 
 having that amendment represent the actual conduct 
 of the nation. To obtain the abrogation of the 
 Fifteenth Amendment would involve the absolute 
 overturning of the ideals of the North and the West, 
 a total revulsion against democracy in general, the 
 flowering in those sections of the caste spirit. The 
 arguments needed to overturn the amendment 
 would have to be fundamental in character and 
 would carry down far more than the Negro. No 
 such general upsetting of ideals may be expected. 
 The general drift is all the other way. Nor need it 
 be expected that the Supreme Court of the United 
 States will run counter to the ideals of the nation as 
 reflected in the constitution and in the enlightened 
 public sentiment of the day. Thus it is that the 
 white South is destined to a long dreary wait if it is to 
 sit by the nation's highway waiting for its ideals to 
 be overturned.
 
 102 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 During this period will the mediocre 
 Roll Call have so fixed his spirit upon the South 
 of the Fu- as to have fully snuffed out its political 
 ture. genius, leaving it, like Greece, the at- 
 
 tenuated shadow of its former self? 
 Shall the South inherit all and bequeath nothing? 
 From across the waters there have come out of the 
 ancestral home of the Anglo-Saxon, Burke and Pitt, 
 Fox and Disraeli, and hosts of others to inspire the 
 youth of to-day. Out of the loins of the South of the 
 past sprang Washington and Jefferson, Marshall, 
 Jackson and Calhoun, fixed stars in the firmament of 
 American statesmanship. But all of this is the 
 output of the blood of the past. Shall the South of 
 to-day not add to the galaxy? In the roll call of the 
 future, when our decade is reached and the names of 
 our contributions to the ranks of the immortals are 
 called for, will there be an oppressive silence to last 
 throughout the eternal ages? Shall we have no 
 great names to keep our section and our era alive in 
 history? It is not enough for the whites of the South 
 simply to fill the House of Representatives and the 
 Senate at Washington with "just anybody," for the 
 togas of intellectual giants may be tightly wrapped 
 about the bodies of intellectual pigmies. 
 
 The South should divide; should have strenuous 
 battlefields which will summon to the front all the 
 latent qualities of mind and soul. The Negroes are 
 no necessary menace. Their majority sense can be 
 appealed to in such a way as to yield a rich harvest 
 to the common good. The cry of the hour, so far as 
 the higher interests of the South are concerned is.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 103 
 
 this, is simply this: 
 
 "Give us men to match our mountains, 
 Give us men to match our plains, 
 Men with empires in their purpose 
 And new eras in their brains." 
 
 Let the white people of the South meet half- way 
 the efforts of the worthy Negroes to influence the 
 political thought of their race that the better ele- 
 ments of the two races may be found working 
 healthily for the common good. Such a consum- 
 mation is indeed immeasurably better than the 
 delivery of the throat of the political genius of the 
 South into the hands of the strangling one-party 
 system which according to the South's highest 
 thought, leaves that genius, bleeding, gasping, dying 
 upon the threshold of the period of the world's 
 greatest enlightenment.
 
 V. THE PRESERVATION OF THE 
 TWO RACES.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PRESERVATION OF THE TWO 
 RACES. 
 
 Their 
 
 Methods 
 
 Differ. 
 
 The various races of mankind, 
 whether considered from the stand- 
 point of the units that compose them 
 or as aggregations, present marked con- 
 trasts in their respective methods of 
 handling the grave questions that from time to time 
 present themselves to them for adjustment. Often 
 the methods of one race are directly opposite to 
 those of another; methods that are in high repute 
 in one race are utterly despised by another. When 
 a Frenchman feels that his honor has been gravely 
 reflected upon he forthwith challenges the author 
 of the alleged insult to a duel, with swords as the 
 weapons to be used in the fight, whereas a "Green- 
 lander, who is aggrieved by another has his remedy 
 in what is called a singing combat. He composes 
 a satirical poem and challenges his antagonist to a 
 satirical duel in face of the tribe. He who has the 
 last word wins the trial." 
 
 (107)
 
 108 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 As an illustration of the wide gulf 
 The that can separate the respective meth- 
 
 Irish. ods employed by races when acting 
 
 as aggregations, we call attention to 
 the wide difference between the methods employed 
 by the Irish and those employed by the Japanese. 
 An Irishman who in our day has attained unto an 
 international reputation as a writer and student of 
 Irish affairs once said in the columns of the New 
 York Independent that the Irish people would never 
 obtain Home Rule for their country by means of a 
 resort to arms, giving as a basis for his assertion the 
 alleged fact that the Irish people were so lacking 
 in the quality of secretiveness that their leaders did 
 not dare to adopt the plan of storing away arms from 
 year to year, by which means alone they could hope 
 to secure the equipment necessary to successfully 
 cope with England upon the field of battle. He as- 
 serted that the secret preparations which were car- 
 ried on by the Boers in South Africa, which finally 
 enabled that small body of people to surprise the 
 world and put England to the supreme test could 
 not have been carried on among Irishmen because 
 of the impulsive, out-spoken, non-secretive trait in 
 Irish character. As a result of the alleged presence 
 of this trait in Irish character, the Irish leaders, so 
 says our authority, have settled upon agitation as 
 the fixed method of striving to advance Ireland's 
 interests; and thus the Irish seek to keep the world 
 stirred by their continuous outcry. So Ireland is
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 109 
 
 the world's 
 
 "* * * infant crying in the night, 
 An infant crying for the light, 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 But it cannot be denied that the Irish by their 
 chosen method have been able to push forward then- 
 cause very materially. 
 
 The very opposite of the Irish as 
 The Jap- pictured by this eminent Irishman are 
 anese. the Japanese who are a secretive people. 
 
 Knowing themselves to possess this 
 trait, and knowing how rrtuch they could make it 
 count in their favor, the Japanese were willing to 
 engage in that life and death struggle with the Rus- 
 sians. One talkative, indiscreet Jap located in the 
 inner circle of Japanese affairs could have affected 
 very easily the whole course of the Russo-Japanese 
 war. If a bare hint as to Japan's initial move 
 had but drifted out of those inner circles the Russians 
 would have been prepared for that night attack 
 made before the issuance of the declaration of war, 
 which attack carried disaster to the Russian navy 
 and gave to Japan immediate mastery of the seas 
 bordering the seat of trouble. Without this mastery 
 Japan would have been woefully handicapped in 
 the matter of transporting her soldiers across the 
 waters to the scene of conflict. 
 
 Not only was secretiveness a factor in this initial 
 move, but it played its part throughout the entire 
 struggle. With the whole world asking with bated 
 breath as to the whereabouts of Togo's fleet, 
 not one word of enlightenment came out cf the
 
 110 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 silent East until the news flashed the world 
 around that the wily Japanese admiral had 
 waylaid and annihilated the last great branch 
 of the Russian navy. Here we have a marked 
 contrast, the Irish discarding secrecy altogether, 
 while the Japanese relied upon it as the pivot around 
 which their 1 policy and their destiny revolved. 
 
 The white people of the South are 
 The Anglo- well pleased with their Anglo-Saxon 
 Saxon Tern- temperament, the mental and spiritual 
 perament. constitution of their racial soul. They 
 rejoice in the fact that there is 
 written in the blood of the Anglo-Saxon race those 
 elements which have permitted the flowering of the 
 great civilization of that race. This blood has proven 
 susceptible of sustaining a civilization based upon 
 love of country, deep reverence for woman, love of 
 home, hatred of tyranny, freedom of the individual, 
 the inviolability of the plighted word, the faculty 
 for dropping all internal differences and presenting 
 a united front to a common foe. With it, blood is 
 thicker than water. It does not swap horses when 
 crossing a stream. Not for a thousand years per- 
 haps has the race voted an administration out of 
 power during a war. It has a proven capacity for 
 social efficiency, for the successful conduct of great 
 governmental affairs with millions of free men 
 working together without being in each other's way. 
 This blood harbors a "restless discontented, burn- 
 ing, striving energy" that insures the onward march 
 of its civilization in spite of all obstacles of 
 whatever nature thrust athwart its pathway. This
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. Ill 
 
 blood has shown the capacity to draw within the 
 range of its consciousness the unborn of that race, 
 an influence steadying and deepening its statesman- 
 ship, causing it to seek to plan for things that can 
 endure as long as earth itself. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps the 
 Napoleon's greatest single product of the Celtic 
 Tribute. temperament paid a glowing tribute 
 to the Anglo-Saxon temperament. 
 These two temperaments, the Anglo-Saxon and the 
 Celtic, had met in the shock of battle, had grappled 
 in a contest that tested their racial souls to the ut- 
 termost. At the close of this memorable struggle 
 the greatest out-put of the rival Celtic temperament 
 Napoleon Bonaparte spoke thus of the Anglo-Saxon 
 temperament: "Had I been in 1811 the choice of the 
 English as I was of the French, I might have lost 
 the battle of Waterloo without losing a vote in the 
 legislature or a soldier from my ranks." 
 
 If we may go to the realm of the 
 Blending lower animals we will find there a 
 Bloods. striking illustration of the change 
 that can be wrought in a tempera- 
 ment when there is a mingling of different bloods. 
 Let us take the case of the bird dog, and note how 
 he was produced. The hound possesses a keen 
 sense of smell and by that means is able to trace 
 birds for a huntsman. But the hound has one marked 
 defect as a hunter of birds; he cannot refrain from 
 making a noise. His yelping scatters the covey. 
 How to utilize the hound's sense of smell and yet be
 
 112 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 rid of his loud yelping was the problem of the hunts- 
 man. The bull dog has no marked capacity for 
 tracing scents but he can be silent when occasion 
 demands it. The hound and the bull dog when 
 mated produced the bird dog, who comes upon the 
 scene with the hounds keen sense of smell and the 
 bull dog's capacity for silence. Here we have a 
 striking case of the modifying of temperament 
 through the union of bloods. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, called upon to 
 The Hu- give his opinion on the question of the 
 man Blend, intermarriage on a large scale of the 
 people of Japan with foreigners in 
 their midst, upon being assured that what he said 
 would not be credited to him until after his death, 
 stated that he did not regard such marriages as being 
 best for the Japanese as they would tend to produce 
 a new people and thus destroy that valuable asset 
 of the statesmen, racial self-knowledge, the knowl- 
 edge as to about what Japanese character could be 
 reasonably expected to do under given circumstances. 
 
 Prof. Giddings in his analysis of the American popu- 
 lation thinks that he sees traces in American life 
 and character of the bloods of the various peoples 
 in about the proportion of the infusions of their 
 several bloods. In his opinion the American national 
 character can be analyzed about as follows: 
 
 "The prevailing English 33 1-3 per cent; the pre- 
 vailing Irish, 29 per cent; the prevailing Scotch, 
 19 per cent."
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 113 
 
 The Negroes constitute about a third 
 Negro and of the population of the South and 
 Anglo- should they be absorbed into the white 
 
 Saxon. race the temperament of that race in 
 
 the South would become approximate- 
 ly 33 1-3 per cent Negro. Now this is what the 
 Southern white man does not want. So well pleased 
 are the Southern whites with their Anglo-Saxon 
 temperament that they absolutely refuse to harbor 
 for a moment any thought of amending their tempera- 
 ment by the drawing in of Negro blood. With eyes 
 open to the Negro's past, and in full view of the pres- 
 ent plight of that race in all the lands of earth where 
 it is found, fearing that the incorporation of Negro 
 blood into their veins would in the end bring unto 
 them the woes that have thus far seemed to follow 
 Negro blood they recoil at the very thought of a 
 Negro blood infusion. 
 
 Prizing most highly their full membership in the 
 great white race of the world, desiring to go on 
 looking at life and facing its problems in the good 
 old Anglo-Saxon way, they have grimly set their 
 souls against any amendment to the fundamental 
 bent of their natures, and are determined to keep 
 undimmed their white complexion, the physical 
 badge of membership in the white race. And the 
 problem of keeping Negro blood out of the veins 
 of the white race is the paramount problem with 
 the Southern white man, and to it all other ques- 
 tions, whether economic, political or social are made 
 to yield.
 
 114 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 The difficulties in the way of carry- 
 Hard Task ing out the desires of the white South 
 Ahead. are great, so great that there are those 
 
 who hold that the desire is unattainable. 
 Says Prof. Lydston of the Medical department 
 of the University of Illinois, himself thoroughly 
 pro-Southern and anti-amalgamationist : ' 'The ques- 
 tion of the cross-breeding of white and black like 
 Banquo's ghost, is one that will not down. Legis- 
 late and moralize as we may, we can never erect 
 barriers that will confine the stream of black blood 
 to its own channel. So long as human passions are 
 what they are and we can never hope to subvert 
 them to American ideas of altruism the black and 
 white streams will intermingle. It is not possible 
 that a distinctly black race, comprising millions, can 
 survive in the midst of a larger community of whites. 
 There are more than two million mixed bloods now; 
 what will the next century show? It is not possible 
 for a stream of white blood to flow on, year in and 
 year out, side by side with a stream of black blood 
 or, rather, surrounding the latter on all sides with- 
 out becoming contaminated by it. Struggle as we 
 may, a gradual blending of the two streams is inevi- 
 table." 
 
 Among the difficulties in the way 
 Some may be cited the likeableness of the 
 
 Difficul- Negro. The claim of the Southern 
 ties. white man that he is the Negro's best 
 
 friend has this much of a basis of fact, 
 he has the stronger personal liking for the Negro, 
 who has a more lovable personality than his facial
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 115 
 
 expression indicates. This liking of the Southern 
 white man for the Negro is what doubles the size 
 of the problem before him. When the Negro woman 
 was yet fresh from uncivilized Africa; before she had 
 become an adept at attiring herself after the fashion 
 of civilized women; when her speech was still broken 
 and her mind a blank, even then her humble cabin 
 became the home of offsprings that bespoke a marked 
 interest in her on the part of a scion of the white 
 race. A goodly part of this attracting force operat- 
 ing upon the white man is perhaps the law of the 
 attraction of opposites, the force that catches hold 
 of all discordant elements in the social body and 
 patiently moulds them into a homogeneous mass. 
 The suction forces that are reaching out to draw all 
 elements into the great American melting pot which 
 is to bring forth the composite American, make un- 
 authorized forays into Negro life in keeping with 
 their tendency to blend all elements into a common 
 type. 
 
 But the greatest obstacle in the way 
 A Grievous of maintaining the separateness of the 
 Blunder. blood of the two races is perhaps a 
 fundamental error on the part of the 
 white South as to the best method of attaining the 
 end sought. It is one of the peculiarities of life 
 that men so often accomplish the very opposite of 
 that at which they are aiming. The leaders of the 
 Jews lifted Christ to the cross with the view to blot- 
 ting his name from the memory of men. They 
 simply made it impossible for the human family 
 ever to forget the Christ. South Carolina felt that
 
 116 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 passing an ordinance of secession would make slav- 
 ery secure; it paved the way for immediate emanci- 
 pation. There has arisen in the South a set of men 
 who have proclaimed themselves the special guar- 
 dians of the purity of Anglo-Saxon blood, and they 
 bestir themselves in season and out of season in 
 search of ways and means to make sure that Negro 
 blood does not flow across the line into the veins of 
 the white race. Permit us to demonstrate how that 
 this element constitutes the greatest of all the forces 
 working for the mixing of the blood of the two races. 
 As the question is grave and should be treated funda- 
 mentally, bear with us, though for a time it may 
 appear that we have left the subject. We shall re- 
 turn. 
 
 As we contemplate the workings 
 Nature's of nature, one of the most striking 
 Methods, facts that everywhere presents itself 
 for our consideration is the diligence 
 with which she seeks to equip her creatures so that 
 they will be fully able to meet whatever conditions 
 of life are to confront them. Observe how the straw- 
 berry, the grain of corn, and the hickory nut differ 
 among themselves. Nature, seeing that the career 
 of the strawberry was to come to a close while the 
 weather is yet warm, gave to it no covering. The 
 grain of corn, having a longer journey to pursue, 
 being very likely to encounter one Jack Frost ere 
 the close of its pilgrimage, was duly provided with a 
 shuck for a shield. After the fading and the falling 
 of the leaves, after the summer and autumn have 
 bidden the earth adieu and left it in the clasp of
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 117 
 
 winter, cold and biting, the hickory nut is still to be 
 found on hand. In preparation for this, nature 
 gave to the nut its thick hard covering to protect 
 the life germ within from the adverse weather con- 
 ditions through which it was destined to pass. In 
 whatever direction we turn, whether it be to look 
 at the tail of the beaver equipped to handle the mud 
 out of which its home is to be constructed, or to 
 observe the bag of ink given to the scuttle fish to 
 discharge in such a manner as to muddy the waters 
 and thus blind its pursuers until it has made good its 
 escape in whatever direction we turn, we stand in 
 awe at the infinite wisdom and consummate skill 
 with which nature prepares its creatures for what- 
 ever environments they are to encounter. 
 
 The late Prof. Thos. H. Huxley, the 
 The Mak- eminent English philosopher and 
 ing of Men naturalist, whose scholarship is uni- 
 Black. versally conceded, has advanced and 
 
 ably championed the theory that it 
 was this motherly care on the part of nature of which 
 we have been speaking, that induced her to give to 
 the Negro race its wooly hair and dark complexion. 
 It is Mr. Huxley's contention that the human family 
 began its existence white throughout, that a section 
 of this white race, retreating before floods and 
 freshly-made seas, due to the sinking of large sec- 
 tions of the earth, kept wandering until it at last 
 landed in Africa. Upon the entrance of the whites 
 into Africa in these prehistoric times, nature, ac- 
 cording to Prof. Huxley's theory, made two discover- 
 ies of vital importance. She found the land infested
 
 118 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 with yellow fever germs that bade fair to exter- 
 minate this white race now resident in Africa. She 
 also discovered that wooly hair and a black complex- 
 ion rendered persons possessing them practically 
 immune from the ravages of the yellow fever germs; 
 so with all the marvelous skill at her command she 
 set about the task of ridding that portion of the hu- 
 man family residing in the germ-infested land of 
 smooth hair and the light complexion, and proceeded 
 to equip it with the characteristics necessary for its 
 salvation. 
 
 The scientists tell us that whenever 
 Natural nature has changes that she desires to 
 Selection, make, she watches for any slight tend- 
 encies in the desired direction; that 
 she so shapes the mating instincts of her creatures 
 that the aforementioned tendencies are pre- 
 served and augmented from generation to generation. 
 For example, if there appeared in this African white 
 race a girl with slight tendencies toward wooliness 
 of hair and swarthiness of complexion, and a boy 
 with like characteristics, nature would incline the 
 two to love each other, nature's object being to in- 
 crease this wooliness and swarthiness in the next 
 generation. By everywhere bending the instinct 
 of marrying in this direction, nature would be able 
 year by year to increase the wooliness of hair and 
 swarthiness of complexion, until she had finally 
 developed a black race fully able to bid defiance to 
 yellow fever germs. Here we have the theory of 
 one of the most emient of English scientists setting 
 forth how that in all probability, nature took charge
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 119 
 
 of a white race and gradually converted it into a 
 black one, without having a single black face with 
 which to begin. 
 
 Just here a decidedly interesting 
 An Impor- question for Southern statesmanship 
 tant Ques- arises, to wit: Can, and will this same 
 tion. nature which took a white race, and 
 
 through the process of years, converted 
 it into one wholly black, now take this black race and 
 change it back to white? 
 
 Let us take up first the question as to whether 
 nature can retrace her steps. A study of what has 
 transpired, and what exists to-day in many quarters 
 of the animal kingdom proclaims the fact that 
 nature has the power not only to make but to un- 
 make as well. Nature gave to a certain fish as splen- 
 did a set of eyes as she had in stock. This fish elect- 
 ed to wander into Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, and 
 made this home, and the home of his seed after him. 
 Perceiving that there was no need of eyes in this 
 dark cave nature withdrew her grant of eyes, so that 
 now the fishes of Mammoth Cave are born totally 
 blind. Scientists tell us that within the body of the 
 whale there are relics of what were formerly hip 
 bones. In the long, long ago, whales, they tell us, 
 walked on the land. Gradually they took to the 
 sea, and as gradually nature withdrew her grant 
 of legs and substituted therefor a powerful tail 
 with which the whale might steer and defend itself 
 in the sea. These instances are sufficient to indicate 
 the ability of nature to retrace her steps should she 
 so desire.
 
 120 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 The next question to be answered 
 Will is, as to whether nature will exercise 
 
 She? this power to whiten the Negro race. 
 
 Under normal conditions nature would 
 not so do. She has no time to waste. All her moods 
 are serious. Normally she desires for species to 
 reproduce their kind, and she steps in to cause a new 
 type to appear and the old type to disappear only 
 when environments imperatively demand such a 
 course. But nature forgets none of her creatures, not 
 even the slimy snail. To-day she looks down upon 
 her dark creatures in America to learn what is to be 
 their lot. If there is to be no future for the black 
 face; if life is to be one long drawn out groaning of 
 the spirit; if the black man as he toils and struggles 
 upward is to feel for every step he takes, the leathern 
 scourge upon his back, and to hear the hiss of hate 
 in his ear; if, to the end of time, he is to hew the wood, 
 draw the water, and be denied the larger joys of life ; 
 if at no time the sun of hope is to dawn and chase 
 out of his face the thousand years of gloom that are 
 written there, then nature who intervened to stay 
 the ravages of yellow fever germs, may feel inclined 
 to step in and recast the race to meet the conditions 
 encountered in a color-hating land. 
 
 Let us now observe the tactics which 
 Nature Re- nature could employ to cause the Negro 
 tracing race in America to be finally lifted 
 Her Steps, from the cauldron of color prejudice. 
 It will be recalled that it is Mr. Hux- 
 ley's contention that nature, beginning in Africa 
 without a single black face seized upon every slight
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 121 
 
 advance toward the black complexion, preserved 
 it and transmitted it in augmented form, on and 
 on until a thoroughly black race was developed. 
 But in the work of retracing her steps if she so 
 desires, nature has a far better start. As a result 
 of conditions existing in the days of slavery 
 numerous persons are to be- found who have light 
 complexions but are classed as Negroes. Nature 
 ever keeps under her jurisdiction the marital in- 
 stinct which fact has begotten the aphorism, 
 "There is no accounting for tastes." Taking charge 
 of the marrying within the Negro race, nature can 
 see to it that the dark man and the dark woman 
 take no marked interest in each other. It can 
 incline the dark man to admire the woman of light 
 complexion, and can prepare that woman to return 
 the affections of the dark man. The same can be 
 done for the dark woman and the man of light 
 complexion. By regulating marriages on this wise, 
 nature can see to it that the thoroughly dark 
 complexion is eliminated. When a child is born 
 in a family where there is one parent dark, nature 
 can see to it that its tastes run in the direction of the 
 lighter complexion, and that child's marriage can 
 be so shaped as to continue the race toward the 
 lighter complexion instead of returning in the di- 
 rection of the darker parent. 
 
 The process here outlined can go on until no 
 one will be able to tell just where the Negro race 
 ends and the white race begins. The next step 
 would be the blending of the two races and the 
 blood of the millions of Negroes of the South
 
 122 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 would at last find itself flowing in the veins of the 
 white race! 
 
 The fact of the matter is the process 
 Nature Al- of making the Negro race lighter by 
 ready at the character of the marriages within 
 Work. the race has been going on until hun- 
 
 dreds of thousands of Negroes are 
 now to be found who can pass over into the white 
 race by the simple expedient of changing their resi- 
 dence. Here then is an army of persons whose ranks 
 are being recruited every day ready for the word of 
 command to disappear into the white race carry- 
 ing their Negro blood with them. 
 
 Left to itself the Negro race is amply 
 To Stay able to hold this element within its 
 or Leave. own ranks by the sheer charm of life 
 within the race. For, the race has 
 beauty in great variety, has the gift of song 
 and oratory, is fun-loving and convivial, possess- 
 ing the social instincts to a marked degree. Thus 
 it can furnish a full measure of the joys of 
 earth to all who will abide within its borders. As 
 Mr. Ray Stannard Baker points out, the Negroes, 
 situated even as they now are, extract more of 
 joy from life than do the whites of the South. 
 For the element of the light complexion, then, to 
 develop a controlling desire to leave the Negro race 
 there must come a powerful pressure from the out- 
 side. Now that is just what a certain element in 
 the South, represented by such men as Messrs. Till- 
 man, Dixon, Vardaman, Smith, Watson and Heflin 
 is doing, supplying this pressure. It is said that
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 123 
 
 rats will desert a sinking ship. If the Negro ship is 
 to be loaded with ignorance, with political serfdom, 
 with exclusion from America's higher life, and, thus 
 loaded, is to be made to sink in the waters of despair, 
 then will it indeed be hard to keep these hundreds 
 of thousands of Negroes of the light complexion 
 aboard the sinking vessel. The dispersion of this 
 blood throughout the white race will not be sudden, 
 but long continued and of ever increasing volume. 
 The recent wave of racial feeling has certainly started 
 a slight movement in that direction. We have 
 personal knowledge of several persons of the light 
 complexion who were living contented lives in the 
 Negro race until this powerful wave came and bore 
 them into the white race. Two of these individuals 
 hail from Mr. Vardaman's own state, Mississippi, 
 but have now gone North. We know of still others 
 who are studying the signs of the times, who are 
 ready to leave the race when out of the western sky 
 there creeps the dark shadow that brings the sad 
 message that the sun of for hope the Negro race has set 
 forever and a day. On one occasion we asked a dark 
 young man from Mississippi as to why dark young 
 men seemed to choose the young women of light 
 complexion for wives. He said : "Mr. Vardaman tells 
 us that as Negroes we shall never have the full privi- 
 leges of citizenship in this country and we think that 
 the sooner we get away from the black complexion 
 the better. I guess I too shall marry a girl with a 
 light complexion." It is true that one swallow does 
 not make a summer but it is also true that straws 
 show which way the wind is blowing. Men do not 
 follow a corpse beyond a graveyard . A disfranchised ,
 
 124 WISDOM'S CALL. " 
 
 proscribed, brow-beaten, murdered element, an 
 element from which lynching material may be 
 drawn with impunity will seek to escape from the 
 fiery furnace through being lost in the ranks of those 
 of the more favored hue, while a kindly treated 
 Negro element, invested with the full privileges of 
 men and women will tend to abide as it is, indefinitely. 
 
 When we stop to consider the fact that 
 Nemesis? a possible infusion of Negro blood is 
 the one great dread of the white South, 
 being regarded by it as a most direful calamity, 
 does it not cause one to reflect upon the distance 
 the human race is from perfect wisdom, when he 
 sees the white South singling out for special honor, 
 for good salaries, for marked social attentions the 
 very men, who, more than all other influences com- 
 bined are driving the maternal instinct and the forces 
 of evolution to the side of lightening the Negro's 
 complexion, and are furnishing the nearly white 
 Negro with reasons for debating as to whether it is 
 wise to continue in the Negro race? The white South 
 can well bear in mind that this terrible racial jangle, 
 racking to the nerves and annoying to the very 
 marrow of the bones may one day grow to sound 
 to the Negroes of the light complexion as an insistent, 
 though unconscious message from the white race 
 saying: 
 
 "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden and I will give you rest." 
 
 In the event that the violent Southerner, who 
 would keep the Negro black by slamming the door 
 of hope in his face and heaping coals of fire upon his
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 125 
 
 head, wakes up to find that these very fires have in 
 some way finally removed the kinks from that wooly 
 hair and burned up the cells out of which the color- 
 ing fluids came to darken the Negro's face, let him 
 not be amazed at what he has unwittingly done, for 
 it will not be by any means the first t*me in history 
 that men have accomplished the opposite of what 
 they planned. If the hundreds of thousands of 
 Negroes who are nearly white, and the millions to be 
 made like unto them that are to come trooping after, 
 ever decide to take up their home in the white race 
 and, in the years to come modify or add to the funda- 
 mental bent of the white race in the South, may 
 the white South summon from their tombs, Messrs. 
 Tillman, Vardaman and company and say unto them, 
 "Behold the fruits of your labors." 
 
 Will the white South see all this, or has Nemesis 
 blinded her to the true philosophy of the situation 
 so that she (Nemesis,) charged with the execution 
 of the law of retribution may, by a flank movement, 
 and through the back door of the white race, bear 
 into that race as much Negro blood as the white 
 race has sent into the Negro race? 
 
 The writer would not have the reader 
 A Personal feel, because of anything herein said, 
 Word. that we are an advocate of the disap- 
 
 pearance of the dark complexion, for 
 such is not the case. We have sought to demon- 
 strate not what we desired to take place, but what 
 nature herself could do and might be influenced to do, 
 regardless of the wishes of those who favor the reten- 
 tion of the dark complexion . We believe in the Negro,
 
 126 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 in the majesty of his patient soul, in the brilliancy of 
 the future that awaits him as a distinct branch of the 
 human family. We believe that he is but waiting 
 his call to the center of the stage whence he will pour 
 forth in inimitable sweetness and surpassing grand- 
 eur his special message from the many-sided heart of 
 the Great Creator. We especially protest against 
 the disappearance of the American Negro as a Negro. 
 Who knows but that he is being evolved as the special 
 guide of the host of the dark millions across the 
 waters? With the loss of color might go the loss of 
 special feeling of kinship. Feeling we cannot view 
 with equanimity the forces at work tending to 
 whiten the race. 
 
 We live in the hope that the entire 
 The Wiser white population of the South will see 
 Way. that a full and hearty recognition of 
 
 worthy aspirations on the part ot the 
 Negro is most in harmony with its cherished ideals. 
 We live in the hope that the spiritual war between 
 the two races in the South will cease, and that the 
 white people of the South will take the lead in asking 
 the nation that the Negro be given a man's chance 
 as a Negro. We live in the hope that the future 
 will reveal the white man and the black man jointly 
 working for the glory of the South, for the honor of 
 each, for the good of the nation, for the uplift of the 
 submerged millions of the colored world, for the ad- 
 vancement of the entire human family, for the glory 
 of the one God that made us all.
 
 VI. SOUTHERN STATESMANSHIP 
 AND THE NEGRO WOMAN.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SOUTHERN STATESMANSHIP AND THE 
 NEGRO WOMAN. 
 
 Colored 
 Woman 
 a Factor. 
 
 In the work of maintaining the 
 separateness of the two races the white 
 people cannot ignore the Negro woman 
 as a factor in the situation and still 
 hope to succeed in attaining the goal of 
 their ambition. In view of the clearly established 
 fact that an abundance of white men are to be 
 found who have no aversion to entering the Negro 
 race and establishing what practically amounts to 
 marital relationship, it is very evident that if the 
 colored woman should lose her self-respect, should 
 fall a victim in any general way, to the pressure di- 
 rected against her there would come into being a 
 vast army of mulattoes, who by judicious inter- 
 marrying could so whiten the Negro race that 
 their descendants could easily pass for white. If 
 the colored woman but so decreed the dark com- 
 plexion would vanish from American life, and with 
 its going, the border line between the two races 
 would no longer be visible, and the long fought 
 and much dreaded amalgamation would be an 
 
 129
 
 130 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 accomplished fact. In the work, therefore, of 
 keeping out of the Anglo-Saxon race the blood of 
 the Negro it must be kept clearly in mind that 
 the colored woman can be either the most valuable 
 ally or the most deadly foe of the dreams of the 
 white South. 
 
 In view of the importance of the 
 Factor colored woman as a factor in the situa- 
 
 Unpro- tion it is pertinent to inquire into her 
 tected . status under the existing order of things 
 
 in the South. The colored women of 
 purest life report that the atmosphere in which they 
 and their daughters are forced to move is anything 
 but wholesome; that, however correct their bearing 
 white men do not hesitate to smite their ears with 
 improper suggestions; that the world has no concep- 
 tion of the boldness of the address of the white men, 
 who knowing that the social life of the two races is 
 divided into two currents which never mingle, have 
 no fear of the sting' of the social power. It is indeed 
 appalling to listen to the accounts of experiences 
 related by many of the truest and best of the race. 
 An incident that was reported to the writer by his 
 brother will, perhaps, throw some light upon the 
 charge brought by colored women of character. 
 This brother, at the time in question a lad working 
 in a clothing store, was standing near two of the 
 male white clerks one day while one of the clerks was 
 advising the other to abandon his associations with 
 white women, and as a matter of economy, to ally 
 himself with a colored woman until such a time as he 
 might see fit to marry. The young man who was 
 thus advised replied that he did not know how to
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 131 
 
 proceed, could not tell just which colored woman to 
 approach. 
 
 "Stand in front of the store and ask just any of 
 them that pass until you come to the right one," was 
 the response. The young man followed the advice. 
 
 Let it be understood that the charge of the colored 
 women is not by any means against the whole 
 body of Southern white men. On the contrary 
 they are careful to state that there are white men 
 whose conduct toward them is ideal, who treat them 
 as considerately as any woman of honor could be 
 treated. But the complaint is that such white men 
 as have evil in their hearts have no regard whatever 
 for the sensibilities of the purest colored woman 
 and make her life miserable by their frequent, wanton 
 insults. 
 
 An incident which throws an inter- 
 An Illus- esting sidelight upon the status of the 
 t ration, colored woman in some sections of the 
 South was reported to the writer a few 
 days since by a thoroughly reliable person who was 
 in a position to be sure of his facts. A colored woman 
 had purchased some goods from a white man on the 
 installment plan. Having gotten somewhat behind 
 in her payments, the white collector ordered her to 
 have his money for him on a given day. This the 
 woman failed to do and the collector thereupon 
 began to beat her. She ran out of her house into 
 the store of a colored man, begging the storekeeper 
 for protection. This was given her, and the white 
 man was pushed out of doors. A telephone call was 
 sent by the colored man for the patrol wagon. When 
 the policeman arrived he at once put the colored
 
 132 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 woman under arrest, and while he was leading her 
 to the patrol wagon the collector began to assault 
 her again by kicking her, whereupon the colored 
 man once more intervened. The colored woman 
 was put into the patrol wagon and carried to the jail. 
 The assaulting collector rode with the driver for a 
 short distance, then got down and went about his 
 business. It is very apparent to the dullest mind 
 that a man who would feel free to thus beat a colored 
 woman would also feel free, if so inclined, to address 
 a colored woman in any manner that might suit 
 his fancy. 
 
 A factor inevitably tending toward 
 The Nat- the whitening of the Negro race, 
 ural Sen- and therefore toward the ultimate 
 tinel. blending of the two races, is the 
 
 denying to the colored woman the pro- 
 tection of the colored man. As the white man of 
 the South is the sentinel that stands guard over the 
 white woman and resents anything that savors of 
 social attention on the part of the Negro man, so 
 the Negro man is the natural sentinel that would 
 stand guard over the Negro woman. 
 
 In the matter of dealing with im- 
 Fear to proper advances of the libertines among 
 Summon the whites, the colored woman feels 
 Aid. absolutely unprotected. If when im- 
 
 properly approached, she sees fit to 
 call a colored man to resent the insult for her, one 
 of two results usually follows. Either the white 
 man kills the Negro, and is at once set free, or the 
 Negro kills or injures the white man and is forth- 
 with lynched or sent to prison. Colored women
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 133 
 
 know the danger to which colored men are exposed 
 and as a consequence they hesitate about calling in 
 their male relatives even where such seem sadly 
 needed. A mother may see clearly the designs on 
 her daughter by a white man, and the child might 
 be saved if there were some one to warn the would- 
 be-betrayer to desist. But as before stated the 
 mother hesitates to summon her husband or her son 
 to what she regards as certain death or imprison- 
 ment if he but speaks for the child in peril. What 
 is here asserted is no mere theory or idle supposition, 
 as the graves of many colored men in the South elo- 
 quently testify. 
 
 By way of illustration we shall cite 
 Cases. just a few typical cases. A white 
 
 man having improperly accosted a col- 
 ored girl,, she reported his conduct to her brother. 
 The young man armed himself, went to the white 
 man's home, called him out and told him to treat 
 his sister with respect. This was at night. The 
 next morning the white man, armed with a shot 
 gun, went to the place where the colored man was 
 working, called him out, and shot him down, killing 
 him instantly. The slayer of this Negro who only 
 sought to shield his sister was no more punished 
 than if he had slain a mad dog. The newspaper ac- 
 count of the killing rather commended him for his 
 course. A white man who had designs on a colored 
 girl living on his farm with her widowed mother and 
 brother, came to the conclusion that the girl's brother 
 was in the way of the accomplishment of his purpose, 
 and he thereupon ordered the lad to leave. The 
 boy, desiring to be near his sister for her protection,
 
 134 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 refused to go. The two met and fought, the colored 
 boy severely injuring the white man. The boy was 
 conveyed to jail and steps were taken to have him 
 lynched. The sheriff, talking to a colored man 
 with a very light complexion thinking that he was 
 white, told of the projected lynching. Led by this 
 man a delegation of colored men interceded with the 
 Governor to save the lad's life, but all to no avail. 
 The mob came on schedule time as forecasted by 
 the sheriff and the lad was duly lynched. Yes, in 
 many an humble cemetery in the South there lies 
 the body of a Negro, his neck broken, a hundred 
 bullets having dropped from his frame to the coffin 
 floor as the flesh decayed. If there be a recording 
 angel whose duty it is to write epitaphs for heroic 
 souls whose deeds are unsung by the poets of earth, 
 over these graves he shall write: "His crime was 
 that, in the heart of the modern home of chivalry, 
 the South, he was lynched and mutilated because he 
 sought as best he knew how to defend himself from 
 a murderous onslaught from one whom he had asked 
 to desist from sinister designs on the family honor." 
 Elsewhere in these pages we discuss the danger of 
 an unprotected spot, showing how that one weak 
 spot, serving as a gateway could and would admit 
 evils, which once in, would disport themselves 
 throughout the length and breadth of the social 
 body. It has been our observation as we have 
 traveled through the South that wherever the Negro 
 has lost all connection with the ballot and therefore 
 his connection and influence with the governing 
 power, white men all the more freely take up their
 
 \YISDOM'S CAM.. 135 
 
 abode with Negro women. Those, therefore, who 
 cry out for the weakening of the Negro man in the 
 body politic are preparing the one needed point of 
 weakness where the white man may enter the Negro 
 race, and through his offsprings prepare for the 
 journey of Negro blood into the veins of the 
 whites. 
 
 When soldiers are to land to take 
 Invaders possession of a new country, warships 
 Protected, take up their positions within firing 
 range, and under the protection of 
 their guns the soldiers take possession of the con- 
 quered territory. Under the protection of the mob 
 which Southern statesmanship has thus far failed to 
 suppress, white men are daily invading the Negro 
 race and making efforts that tend in the direction 
 of undoing all that Southern statesmanship is plan- 
 ning for the future. When the white South leaves the 
 colored woman in the open, bereft of an atmosphere 
 of respect, denied the supporting arm of the Negro 
 man, subjected to the unhampered play of what- 
 ever influences may be brought to bear upon her, 
 it would seem to be small cause for wonder if white 
 men of evil design succeeded in finding the weak 
 creatures of the race who join with them in pro- 
 viding offsprings whose very presence in the world 
 lessens the color gap between the races. x Every- 
 time the white South fails to punish the white as- 
 sassin who slays the Negro that warned him to dis- 
 continue his efforts to beguile his daughter, every 
 time a mob lynches a Negro who slays in pure self- 
 defense the white man who, angered at being told 
 to desist from his evil designs, seeks the Negro's
 
 136 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 destruction, just that much progress is made toward 
 the amalgamation which the white South most 
 bitterly abhors, which the Negro, anxious for the 
 perpetuity of his own class, laments. 
 
 The question very pertinently arises 
 The Courts just here as to what protection the 
 and the colored woman finds in the courts 
 Colored of the South. Often, so often, the 
 Woman. colored mother of unquestioned re- 
 spectability is unable to even get a 
 hearing in court when she desires to lay bare a wrong 
 done her very young daughter by a white man. 
 The writer has personal knowledge of several re- 
 spectable colored mothers who were unable to bring 
 to judgment white men who had grievously sinned 
 against their daughters of tender years. If, per- 
 chance, a colored woman who has been wronged by 
 a white man succeeds in getting her case in court, 
 the opposition lawyer so lacerates her feelings, so 
 stabs her in every corner of an already wounded 
 heart that she regrets the day that she so much as 
 heard of a court room. 
 
 But the plight of the colored woman, 
 Sadder the indispensable ally of the white 
 Still. South in the matter of maintaining 
 
 the separateness of the blood of the 
 two races is far more pitiable than we have thus far 
 depicted. Not only is this ally the subject of wanton 
 insult because of her fear that the mob will wreak 
 vengeance upon the male that she might summon 
 to her protection; not only does she encounter ridi-
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 137 
 
 cule and contempt when she tries to go to court 
 but it may also be said that the white man who 
 aspires to a relationship with her that means and can 
 only mean in its larger consequences the whitening 
 of the Negro race and the ultimate blending of the 
 blood of the two races, has it in his power to utilize 
 the mob to wreak vengeance upon her for daring to 
 repulse his advances. Of course he could not openly 
 avow such a basis for his grievance and gain support 
 from the more respectable classes, but he could easily 
 put forward some other ground for complaint, and, 
 as a mob is not a judicial body that carefully sifts 
 statements and searches for motives, he could in 
 this way wreak vengeance upon the colored woman. 
 
 Permit us just here to cite a case 
 Woman that will clearly illustrate how the mob 
 Terrorized, can be called into action to chastise 
 the colored woman because of her hav- 
 ing repulsed the advances of a white man. There 
 lived in one of the smaller towns of the South a 
 mulatto woman of high standing among both the 
 white and colored people. Her husband enjoyed 
 the good will of the whites to a marked degree and 
 mainly through their influence held the position of 
 principal of the colored school of the town. One 
 day the colored woman in question had occasion to 
 enter a white man's clothing store for the purpose 
 of making a few purchases. The proprietor waited 
 on her and while so doing sought to converse with 
 her in a familiar sort of way, calling her flatly by her 
 given name. She had heard that he had said that he 
 was desirous of the friendship of some nice-looking
 
 138 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 colored woman, and perceived that he was trying 
 to lay the foundation for improper advances toward 
 her. When he leaned over to talk to her in an offen- 
 sive manner, she said, "I would rather that you 
 would not talk to me at all. Just sell me the goods 
 and let me go." That afternoon the white man 
 accosted this woman's husband and told him that 
 he must send his wife to him to apologize or else 
 he would wreak vengeance upon him. Later, on 
 hearing that the colored woman had said that 
 she would never again set foot in his store this white 
 man went to her place of business, ordered her to 
 cease all criticism of himself, insisted that she had 
 to pay his store another visit, and threatened to 
 organize a midnight mob for the purpose of taking 
 her out at night and severely whipping her. The 
 affair between this white man and colored woman be- 
 came known to the whites of the town and he succeed- 
 ed in lining up the white people on his side by stating 
 that the trouble was wholly due to the desire of this 
 woman to be called Mrs. Had the mob been formed 
 the rallying cry, of course, would have been to keep 
 a "smart" colored woman in her place, whereas 
 she would have been receiving punishment for not 
 having become the mother, perhaps, of a child which 
 under the circumstances would have been so light 
 of complexion as to be able to easily carry its share 
 of Negro blood into the white race. 
 
 In a certain community in one of our 
 
 Preacher Southern states some Negro girls who 
 
 Driven Out. had been led astray by white men 
 
 listened to a sermon from the Negro 
 
 pastor, which caused them to discard their alliances.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 139 
 
 Their white companions insisted upon knowing the 
 cause of their change of attitude and were told that 
 the minister had shown them the error of their way. 
 Straightway these young men formed a mob, assault- 
 ed the minister and drove him from the community, 
 threatening to kill him if he returned. And through- 
 out many a section of the South the menace of the 
 mob hangs over the pulpit offering death to any 
 Negro minister who cries out against a course that 
 inevitably leads to the disappearance of the Negro 
 race through its final absorption into the white race. 
 
 White statesmen of the South, look, 
 Is it if but for a moment, at what a situation 
 
 Wise? confronts you! Here you are search- 
 
 ing for every influence, every device 
 to keep the two races apart. All of your devices 
 will be absolutely worthless without racial chastity 
 on the part of the colored woman. Suppose, as in 
 New Orleans, you erect screens on the street cars 
 to separate the races. The absence of racial chastity 
 on the part of the colored woman could render your 
 screens useless by giving to you a progeny that could 
 come from behind those screens. Is it, therefore 
 wise in you, is it in keeping with the dictates of 
 enlightened self-interest for you to suffer your most 
 needed ally to stand out in her present unprotected 
 state? 
 
 But one will say "We know that the 
 
 The White mob sometimes kills innocent Ne- 
 
 Woman and groes, decreases values, is frequently 
 
 The Mob. invoked to deal with minor offenses, 
 
 and for aught we know may operate to
 
 14C WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 the disadvantage of the colored woman, but it is 
 needed now and then to be used for the protection of 
 the white woman, and therefore must be preserved 
 even if it is diverted from time to time from the 
 main purpose for which it is retained." Far from 
 aiding the white woman the mob works injury to 
 her cause. Its methods often arouse the germs of 
 evil in the bosoms of depraved Negroes and the 
 result is an increase of the very offense of which com- 
 plaint is made. He is not a wise friend to the white 
 woman who indulges in practices that brutalize and 
 inflame the minds of beings by whom she is sur- 
 rounded and among whom she must move. The 
 interests of the white woman call for a decrease in 
 savagery, not its increase. Nor is this stubborn 
 fact altered in the slightest by the other fact that the 
 white mob has it in its power to kill with torture 
 every savage that appears, for all the torture inflicted 
 can not recall from the victim her horrible expe- 
 riences. Why then cause an increase of victims by 
 increasing savagery? No, the mob is no help to the 
 cause of the white woman. 
 
 On the contrary the white woman's 
 White Worn- most vital interests are bound up ; n 
 an's True the matter of protecting the colored 
 Interests. woman. Whenever a white man takes 
 up his abode in the Negro race in mari- 
 tal relationship it is some white woman's loss. He 
 either fails to wed a white woman or if wedded, so 
 divides his attention as to be far removed from 
 what would be termed an ideal husband. Thousands 
 of unwedded white women in the South have been
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 141 
 
 cut short of their possible mates through the de- 
 parture of white men into the Negro race. Moreover 
 many a distempered white husband is such toward 
 his wife because of his Negro affiliations. A white 
 woman in one of our Southern cities remarked to a 
 Negro woman with whom she was on friendly terms 
 that she could always tell when her husband was 
 paying attention to a colored woman by the un- 
 pleasantness that he brought home during those 
 periods. In appraising the equity of the white 
 woman in this matter, we cannot leave out the depth 
 of chagrin, the utter humiliation that many of them 
 are made to endure by virtue of the fact that their 
 husbands are rearing families in both races. By 
 virtue, then, of the equity of the white woman in 
 this matter, her interests lie in the direction of those 
 things calculated to make it more difficult for the 
 
 white man to seek to enter the Negro race. 
 
 i 
 Not only has the white woman an 
 
 White Worn- equity in this matter, but great power 
 an's Help. as well. The one great need of the 
 situation is an atmosphere of respect 
 for the colored woman. Where that is lacking all 
 the evils complained of are sure to abound, but with 
 the coming of respect, will come a desire for the pro- 
 tection of the colored woman. The white woman's 
 opportunity is to be found in her control of the fire- 
 side and the social realm where she can foster an 
 atmosphere of respect. As the white mother buckles 
 down to the task of so fashioning the heart of her 
 offspring that he will be imbued with the unyielding 
 ambition to hand over to posterity an unmixed
 
 142 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 Anglo-Saxondom, may it be hers to succeed in 
 planting deep in the bosoms of her sons a feeling of 
 respect for the colored woman, and with the re- 
 straining influence of respect as a factor in the situa- 
 tion the misalliances will assuredly be fewer in num- 
 ber. 
 
 As we view the matter, every in- 
 Sacred terest of the white race, if its one pas- 
 Atrnos- sionate dream of an unmixed race is to be 
 phere. fulfilled calls for the protection of the 
 Negro woman. She should be encouraged 
 to speak out. The courts of the land should be 
 thrown wide for her protection. She should not be 
 left alone in her struggle to save her daughter from 
 the wooer of the other race. The mob should be 
 suppressed. The entire white South looking out 
 for the ultimate purity of its own blood should in 
 every way possible sound the slogan that the colored 
 woman must have as sacred an atmosphere to sur- 
 round her and her daughters as the best civiliza- 
 tion affords. The colored woman is entitled to re- 
 spect and protection in her own right, but if such 
 a plea should fall on deaf ears surely the white 
 South's own interests will be heard as they too cry 
 aloud for the protection of the colored woman.
 
 VII. HOW TO KEEP THE COLORED 
 RACE FROM BEING A BURDEN.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HOW 
 
 TO KEEP THE COLORED RACE 
 FROM BEING A BURDEN. 
 
 "Why kill the hen that lays the gold- 
 Is Crime en egg? Since the Negroes who are 
 Profitable? sent to the penitentiaries in the South 
 by the thousands annually are so farmed 
 out that they produce a handsome revenue for 
 the state treasuries why should cool-headed business 
 men of the white race be concerned about reducing 
 the number of Negro criminals? Ought sensible 
 men shed tears when, people of their own volition, 
 break the law and are thenceforth put to work in 
 such a manner as to reduce the tax rate?" But is 
 the Negro criminal a hen laying a golden egg? When 
 all the facts are in, is the criminal in reality an asset, 
 a paying institution? 
 
 Much depends upon what those who 
 Cost of are now shaping the destiny of the 
 Crime. South think on this subject. The 
 
 first step toward a life of crime is a life 
 of idleness. Crime and steady employment are 
 sometimes found in each other's company, but as 
 
 (145)
 
 146 WISDOM'S GALL. 
 
 a rule they are not very good mates. In order that 
 he may have ample time and the very best oppor- 
 tunities to plan and to execute his crimes, the man 
 who decides to follow a life of crime, usually with- 
 draws himself from honorable gainful occupations. 
 Being unemployed he can move about at will and is 
 under no obligations to account to any one as to 
 his whereabouts. His incoming and outgoing are 
 not subject to the supervision of an employer. 
 This idleness on the part of the criminal class, the 
 idleness which precedes incarceration and is of an 
 extensive and ever-present character, subtracts 
 just that much from the stock of useful things that 
 should be produced by the human race in its efforts 
 to maintain itself. For the world to fare well, it 
 requires the world to take care of the world; else 
 some one is pulling a double load. When some are 
 drones, it can only mean more toil for the toilers. 
 Multiply what is reasonably expected of the average 
 man, by the number of idle, uncaught criminals 
 now roaming the earth and you have the enormous 
 loss that society is sustaining through their failure 
 to engage in honorable pursuits. Even those crimi- 
 nals now in prison and at work, must have charged 
 against them the periods of idleness and consequent 
 loss to society that preceded their capture and in- 
 carceration. 
 
 Not only does society suffer a negative loss 
 through the failure of those gravitating toward 
 the prisons to be producers, but the loss is also posi- 
 tive in that the criminals, though not at work eat 
 food and wear clothes produced by others, and are 
 thus a drain on others. In the loss sustained by
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 147 
 
 society must also be figured the damage to and 
 destruction of property involved in thievery and bur- 
 glary and the disarrangement of values caused by the 
 abstraction of property from its rightful owners and 
 its transfers to the hands of others. But by far the 
 greatest source of expense is that incurred by the 
 state in providing means for the apprehension and 
 conviction of the criminals. To cope with the army 
 of non-producing criminals there must be another 
 army composed of non-producing guardians of the 
 peace. What this second army might produce for 
 the good of the world is lost, and their task is that 
 of conserving what others produce, which is a direct 
 tax upon the production of the others. Yes, charge 
 to the accounts of the criminal the cost of the entire 
 police system and detective agencies, the salaries 
 of sheriffs, deputies, constables, jailers, judges, court 
 clerks, prison wardens, guards, the fees of jurors, 
 the cost of jails, penitentiaries and criminal court- 
 buildings, and the expense of feeding and clothing 
 the inmates of penal institutions. When the cost 
 of the criminal as here briefly outlined is placed 
 over against the pittances that reach the state 
 treasuries from the hands of the prison management, 
 it can be seen that the criminal is a tremendous 
 drain upon society. So great is the disparity be- 
 tween what the criminal costs and what he brings 
 that those who would retain him as an asset are 
 not even so wise as those proverbial characters who 
 deem it good business to rob Peter to pay Paul; for 
 in this case, Paul, the state treasury, does not get a 
 tithe of what is taken out of the pockets of Peter,
 
 148 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 the people, because of the existence of the criminal 
 class. 
 
 Such is the cost of the criminal in 
 The Negro general. Let us glance now at the 
 Criminal, special opportunities of the Negro 
 criminal to pile up costs on society. 
 Since the day on which Nathan stood before David 
 to tell him of a wrong that had been committed in 
 the latter's kingdom, (and before that day as well) 
 men have had a habit of viewing the sins of others 
 with a greater degree of horror than that with which 
 they contemplate their own. As sin draws nigh to a 
 man's own door, through some magic process it sheds 
 a portion of its hideousness, so that the man simply 
 laments in himself that which he violently denounces 
 in others. Thus the white people of the South have 
 an extra vial of wrath for the Negro criminal, and 
 this criminal has it in his power to uncork this extra 
 vial. It is the function of civilization to lull to sleep 
 the primitive passions of men; to keep securely 
 tethered those powerful giants of wickedness yet 
 found in the human bosom; to give to mankind a 
 life of law and order. Through toil and sorrow and 
 the untimely death of countless thousands a measure 
 of social order has been evolved, the giant passions 
 subdued. But the perpetration of some peculiarly 
 revolting crime by a Negro often gives these giants 
 an inspiration that enables them to break their 
 bands and make wild rushes through earth. Once 
 upon a rampage, they batter down the fabric of the 
 law, trample under foot the most sacred 
 usages of civilization, and clearly reveal how much
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 149 
 
 of the savage and of the beast yet lurks in the heart 
 of man. 
 
 But the capacity of the Negro criminal to work 
 harm is wider still. Following the perpetration of 
 a heinous crime on the part of the Negro there 
 often comes the shrinkage of good will toward 
 the Negro race on the part of the whites, perhaps 
 because the environing influences of the race failed, 
 for some cause, to prevent the evolution of the offend- 
 ing criminal. On the other hand, the Negroes do 
 not take kindly to the fact the accused was not al- 
 lowed an opportunity of being heard in open court 
 in his own defense, and was denied handling accord- 
 ing to the terms of the law. Thus the Negro crim- 
 inal, condemned by both races, nevertheless becomes 
 the entering wedge to drive the two races further 
 and further apart, and to sunder the spirit of accord 
 without which chaos will reign in the land. 
 
 Bearing in mind the fact that the 
 Ravages Negro criminal has it in his power to 
 of the summon the mob, we must follow the 
 
 Mob. trail of his cost by following the path- 
 
 way of the mob. The mob lowers 
 the opinion of mankind as to the ability of the com- 
 munities furnishing it to conduct a civilization 
 of law and order. At present the South has urgent 
 need within its borders of more substantial families 
 and of vast sums of foreign capital to develop its 
 resources. But, when men from afar hear of the 
 work of the mob, they hesitate about bringing their 
 families, about coming themselves and about in- 
 vesting their money. Marvelous as has been the
 
 150 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 material development of the South in recent years, 
 it is nevertheless true that the mob has kept mil- 
 lions and billions out of the South through the law- 
 less handling of the Negro criminal, who could 
 have been better handled and without the result- 
 ing loss. When we reflect upon the harm, the 
 vast incalculable harm that a Negro criminal under 
 existing conditions, is capable of doing, it should 
 be the prayer of us all that an influence may be 
 brought from some source to remove him as a 
 factor from the life of the community. 
 
 We come now to the consideration 
 What De- of a few factors in the development of 
 velops Negro criminals, such factors as come 
 
 Criminals, within the purview of those dealing 
 with the affairs of state. Statistics 
 of homicides in the United States disclose the start- 
 ling fact that the greatest slayers of men in the coun- 
 try are Negroes, whose victims are usually their 
 fellow Negroes. The question very naturally arises 
 as to how the Negroes are becoming affected in so 
 marked a manner by the impulse to kill. The usual 
 victim of a mob is a Negro. The concern of a mother 
 for the life of her child is proverbial, and the Negro 
 mother grows to regard the mob as the greatest 
 menace to the life of her offspring. Every time, 
 therefore, a mob is formed the Negro mother en- 
 gages in a spiritual conflict with it. While the mob, 
 hot on the trail of an accused Negro is peering be- 
 hind logs, groping through dense woods, scouring 
 the entire country with the avowed purpose of 
 taking the life of the suspected Negro the moment
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 151 
 
 he is caught, there surges through the minds of 
 Negro mothers who know of the hunt doubt as to 
 the guilt of the pursued. Often they feel that the 
 Negro who is being trailed is innocent and that his 
 pursuers are murderers. In the absence of a 
 trial and conviction, the prisoner is given the benefit 
 of the doubt. The mob process therefore throws 
 the sympathy of the Negro mother on the side of 
 the accused. The maternal instinct always causes 
 her to have murderous thoughts with regard to the 
 lynchers, and in this way the instinct of killing is 
 imparted to an unborn babe soon to enter the world. 
 When we stop to reflect that child-bearing in 
 the human family is constantly going on, who can 
 begin to compute the number of murderers, at that 
 time unborn, made by every foray of a mob? 
 The Negro mother, forced to bear children in an 
 atmosphere of murder in which offsprings like unto 
 her own are the chief sufferers, her spirit torn and 
 distracted, has but small chance to bring her child 
 into the world well equipped. A colored mother, 
 who had passed her days of maternity, once 
 remarked: "I thank God that my days of becom- 
 ing a mother are gone. I tremble to think of what 
 a boy of mine might become in view of the feelings 
 stirred within me by the mob." The various states 
 are adopting the policy of bringing the prisoners 
 that are to be executed to the state prisons, 
 where private executions can take place, and this is an 
 admission of the demoralizing effects of publicity 
 in connection with the taking of human life. 
 The mob in its mad gallop from one end of the
 
 152 WISDOM'S CAIX. 
 
 country to the other will drop its homicidal germs 
 at every door, especially the door of the colored 
 mother. The Negro criminal is no friend to the South 
 nor to the nation. Why, oh why then, does the 
 South, and sometimes certain sections of the North 
 provide an atmosphere, charged and surcharged 
 with murder, to surround and completely envelop 
 the Negro mothers who cannot help but write what 
 they feel on the souls of their unborn babes? With 
 the mobs preparing thousands of babes to enter the 
 world as criminals, with these criminal babes grow- 
 ing to manhood, shocking humanity and affording 
 the occasion for thousands of whites to be law- 
 tramplers and life-takers where, indeed, is the end? 
 The South should arise in its might and put down 
 the mob as the arch-breeder of criminals. 
 
 We shall now address ourselves to 
 Negroes of another factor bearing upon the pro- 
 Distinction duction of the Negro criminal. In 
 Needed. the days of slavery in the South the 
 Negro of distinction was regarded as 
 both a needless and dangerous factor in the situation. 
 A man of distinction serves as a rallying point for 
 the masses of men. The gaining of attention must 
 precede leadership. The fact that Saul was head 
 and neck above his fellows, and therefore attracted 
 attention wherever he went, helped to qualify him 
 for the kingship of the Jews in the time of their 
 search for a head for their proposed kingdom. David's 
 distinction came from a source other than that of 
 height, but it was distinction, nevertheless. As the 
 Negro of distinction might have served as a rallying
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 153 
 
 point for the slaves, pains were taken to see to it 
 that there should be no Negro of distinction. Here 
 we have the basis of the original unpopularity of 
 the idea of having a Negro towering above his fel- 
 lows. But the white South, whether as a whole it at 
 present so sees the matter or not, now needs the 
 Negro of distinction, needs him badly. Since the 
 external restraints, the close espionage, the whip 
 and the lash of slavery are gone something must 
 be found within the Negro to take their place. An 
 internal monitor is needed as a guide and help for 
 his soul. 
 
 The white people have bedecked 
 What Helps their skies everywhere with beckon- 
 White Boys, ing stars to appeal to their youths. 
 There are the alderman, the mayor, 
 the legislator, the governor, the judge, the Congress- 
 man, the diplomat and the President standing in long 
 array saying to the white youth: "Be decent, keep 
 your record clear, then pick your place in this line 
 of men who have been honored by their fellows." 
 What a great asset this is for the white race! How 
 much it aids it in saving its boys from downward 
 careers! The mothers have arguments with which 
 to ply the hearts of their boys when they would go 
 wrong. In this connection let us now read the story 
 of the rise of Col. James Gordon of Mississippi whose 
 brief stay in the United States Senate brought him 
 national fame. 
 
 "I will tell how I came to be a United States 
 Senator. I started when I was five years old. It 
 took me a long while to get here, and I found it a
 
 154 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 very rugged road to travel; but I did get here. 
 When I was a little chap about five years of age I 
 will tell you a story, and you may tell your children, 
 and you old fellows may tell your grandchildren 
 I received as a present something like a map on 
 pasteboard. It had this great Capitol as a picture 
 at the top of it and squares with numbers on them. 
 Those numbers represented all the passions that had 
 escaped from Pandora's box. That map had marked 
 on it all the temptations that would befall a youth 
 coming up. It had a little teetotem, as it was called 
 in octagon shape, and it had numbers on it up to eight, 
 on which to spin. My mother used to take me to 
 her side. If you should spin the teetotem and it 
 went over the mark and got on a bad place in the 
 square, that would be one of the bad passions; but 
 if it escaped all those, and the teetotem got on the 
 great Capitol of the United States, you would be 
 in the United States Senate. I saw a great big 
 fellow sitting up there in that stand. I wanted to 
 know of Ma, if I would get there; and, God helping 
 me, I got there yesterday. (Laughter.) She told 
 me that if I would lead a clean life and form no bad 
 habits I would be sure to get there. She never 
 told a story in her life, and so I knew it would come 
 true. In all my life, Senators, that thing has stuck 
 to me, and every time I wanted to do wrong I saw 
 one of those passions on that board, and that board 
 has stood before my eyes from that day until to-day, 
 though I have never made it public until now. I 
 thought this was the place to do it."
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 155 
 
 The problem of the colored mother 
 Door of of the South and of the nation is: 
 Hope. "What, Oh, what can I say to my boy 
 
 to bid him hope?" When she consid- 
 ers the whirlpools of evil all around him, ready to 
 lure and suck him under, her heart cries out for 
 some strong word of hope that she may shout to 
 him and cause him to be forever alert and steer his 
 vessel in the middle of the stream. Even if the 
 mother is able to rise above unpromising signs of the 
 times, and impart hope where there seems no ground 
 for hope, the day is to come when the youth will be 
 able to observe and draw conclusions for himself. 
 Many a Negro lad, inspired by his mother, has be- 
 gun his upward journey with a rush. But, finding 
 the world hostile to his aspirations because of his 
 color, he has often become hopeless, aimless, has 
 sunk lower, lower, lower until it required a judge, 
 jury, sheriff, prison warden and guard to manage 
 him, whereas, but for the death of hope, he would 
 have been his own keeper. It would indeed be an 
 immense saving, a paying investment if the South 
 would enter upon a policy of judiciously honoring 
 deserving colored men in the various communities 
 that they might serve as sources of imspiration for 
 the millions that are to make choice as to whether 
 they are to be a benefit or a tax to society. Those 
 men who, out of dislike for the Negro, or for what 
 they regard as good cause, would deny him all op- 
 portunities for preferment, in reality work against 
 those who pay the taxes in that they break down 
 that upward look on the part of thousands, and in- 
 crease the burdens of the state through the resultant
 
 156 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 criminality that ultimately follows. Looked at 
 purely from a standpoint of dollars and cents, ig- 
 noring for the moment all higher considerations, 
 the profound discouragement of the Negro, at 
 present the chief labor of the South, would be the 
 greatest financial tax that could be laid upon the 
 South. Men labor, not so much for the love of work, 
 nor yet so much for themselves, perhaps, but for 
 what lies beyond the work, and the better future 
 that awaits their children. But, when there is 
 nothing beyond the day of toil, when men can see 
 no glimmer of hope for their children 
 
 What the Much has been said in derogation of 
 Amend- the adoption of the Fifteenth Amend- 
 ment Did. ment to the Constitution of the United 
 States, and the extravagance of the 
 reconstruction governments is cited as evidence of 
 the alleged unwisdom of that action. 
 
 In the days of their ignorance, when their hearts 
 were warm with gratitude for deliverance from 
 slavery, when their former masters were holding 
 aloof and refusing to treat with them in their new 
 role of citizenship, it is true that the Negroes trusted 
 their cause in the hands of many unworthy white 
 men who acted shamefully, and brought reproach 
 upon the Negro-supported regime; but when all 
 the losses sustained in this unfortunate period have 
 been added together and thrown over against the 
 quickened spirit of the Negro race, the upward im- 
 pulse, the fever of progress, begotten by the confer- 
 ring of the right to vote; when, as the years roll by, 
 it is more and more revealed, how much more of a
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 157 
 
 burden an unaspiring people is than one properly 
 awake, it will then be seen that the action of the 
 nation was worth all of its painful cost. It was 
 no small thing to be suddenly lifted from the posi- 
 tion of field hand to that of a sovereign voter in the 
 earth's greatest republic, and the psychological 
 effect was tremendous. The ability of the Negro 
 race to withstand all the jars that have come since 
 that day, and yet look hopefully toward the future 
 is beyond doubt due in large measure to the impreg- 
 nation begotten by the conferring of that great boon. 
 Just think what might have been! No desire for 
 education. No ambition to establish home life. 
 No interest in the children. Eating, drinking, 
 carousing, lewdness. A wholesale leap into the caul- 
 dron of consuming vices. Laziness, filth, a sliding 
 back into barbarism. All these things might have 
 been, and, indeed, there were those who predicted 
 that this result would follow emancipation. But 
 the ballot came, and with it the girding of the spirit 
 of the race to meet the duties imposed. In an effort 
 to rise to the dignity of the occasion the Negro got 
 on his feet spiritually. 
 
 Oh, men of the white South, go back 
 How the to your boyhood days! Know you 
 White man not how you arose; how often your 
 Rises. minds wandered, your feet, perhaps, 
 
 began to stray? Know you not what 
 mighty forces bombarded your hearts and sought to 
 deposit there the poison that would have made for 
 an evil life? Know you not that amid all the stren- 
 uous times of your young souls that it was hope, only
 
 158 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 hope, that kept your feet from going too far afield, 
 that aided you to keep the path that has led you up 
 to renown? The Negro youth is human. He must 
 have his ambition quickened; must have goals for 
 which to strive; must have incentives to nerve him 
 to breast unyieldingly the waves of temptations that 
 dash against him; must hear a sound up yonder in 
 the heavens of hope so charming as to drown the cry 
 of the baser passions arising from the depth and im- 
 ploring him to descend. 
 
 That Negro playmate of yours who romped and 
 wrestled and played marbles with you; who cheered 
 you with his sunny laugh and the genial warmth of 
 his nature; who, alas as a man committed that awful 
 crime, which shocked the world and brought down 
 upon his head the wrath of multitudes that wrecked 
 your law in seeking to be rid of him that man might 
 have been so different if the white South had not 
 denied to him all hope of rising in the sphere of civic 
 duty! Let the white South in every community 
 take up the matter of judiciously honoring worthy 
 colored men. 
 
 The Hon. Wm. H. Taft, trusting to 
 An the goodness of heart of the white 
 
 Appeal. South, while insisting upon the justice 
 of giving recognition to worthy Ne- 
 groes, yet left the matter to the white South, express- 
 ing the hope that with the approval of that element 
 of the population, the needs of the Negro in this di- 
 rection may ultimately be met in a larger degree 
 than was formerly the case. May it come to pass 
 that the white South shall fully realize that the Negro
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 159 
 
 criminal is an awful incubus, and that the human 
 heart of the Negro is subject to the law of the human 
 family and can only be handled successfully by 
 dealing with it as other human hearts are dealt with. 
 Give unto the Negro full opportunity to plant beacon 
 lights in the form of Negroes of distinction who can 
 serve to guide the oncoming Negro into the upward 
 way. 
 
 The Negro constitutes a part of the state, is 
 part of the social body that makes necessary the work 
 of administration. Let him have a part of the civil 
 administrative functions to aid his racial life as the 
 whites use them to aid their racial life. Let not the 
 white South absorb all of the administrative functions 
 those created by virtue of the presence of the Negroes 
 and those created by the presence of the whites, 
 and leave the Negro youth to the darkness and de- 
 spair that brings riot to the soul and crime to the 
 door of society.
 
 VIII. THE WHITE MAN'S EQUITY 
 IN NEGRO EDUCATION.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE WHITE MAN'S EQUITY IN NEGRO 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 The European mind is of an in- 
 Skeptical quiring turn, very much disposed to 
 Europe. examine with great care reputed hap- 
 penings that are ascribed to supernat- 
 ural agencies. While Asia is the birthplace of all the 
 great religions, Europe has furnished all the great 
 criticisms of them. Peter preaching to Jews, 
 children of Asia, proclaimed the resurrection of 
 Christ from the dead, and at the close of his sermon 
 had three thousand persons asking for baptism. 
 Paul, preaching to Greeks Europeans, was making 
 progress it seems, until he mentioned the resur- 
 rection, whereupon the Greek mind revolted, mocked 
 him and called for further explanation. Prying is 
 the abiding mood of the European mind, and it 
 demands a look at the foundation stones of its 
 temple of faith, even though the priest thereof 
 stands in the doorway threatening death, and 
 asserting that the proposed look at the foundation 
 will assuredly over-turn the temple. Sacred veils 
 are ruthlessly torn from the face of every 
 
 (163)
 
 164 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 mystery that comes its way if an eager, searching, 
 never tiring human mind can accomplish that end. 
 It was a mind whose roots ran back to Europe that 
 decided to be no longer mystified by the flashing of 
 the lightnings of the heavens, and sent a kite to play 
 the part of a detective in the upper realms and bring 
 back to earth the hitherto awe-inspiring secret of the 
 skies. It was the mind that sprang out of Europe 
 that resented the efforts of the north and south poles 
 to dwell perpetually in a maze of mystery, and thus 
 it was that boats and balloons, dogs and men, hunger, 
 cold and death were pressed into service in an effort 
 to see and to know what are these alleged poles. To 
 Europe we trace the mind that through electricity 
 has made man swifter than the horse, stronger than 
 the lion; that gazed into the air and, watching the 
 birds, discovered the secret of aerial flight and 
 robbed the lordly eagle of his kingship of the skies. 
 
 Is there a personal God? Is the 
 The Child Bible His inspired word, and as such 
 Of Europe, free from all error? Was Christ divine, 
 the very son of God? Did He perform 
 the miracles ascribed to Him? Did Christ in body 
 rise from the dead? Is the soul of man immortal? 
 These are the questions which have engaged the 
 serious thought of modern Europe, and of America, 
 the child of Europe. In England and New England 
 there has been a vigorous questioning of all that 
 pertains to the supernatural found in the Christian 
 religion, but the South has been comparatively free 
 from all such questionings. No higher critics there; 
 no heresy trials; no bickerings with any of the claims
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 165 
 
 of the supernatural made for Christ by the New 
 Testament writers or by himself. The South is the 
 stronghold, the unapproachable citadel of orthodoxy. 
 Why this great difference between the South and 
 other groups of people of European descent? What 
 great transforming influence has been at work to 
 dig in the mind of the white man of the South a 
 capacity for faith in supernatural things equal to 
 that of the Asiatic mind? Bombs of criticism are 
 exploding under the ancient faith in other lands; 
 the thunderings of the guns of the South are heard 
 only in defense of that faith. 
 
 We shall now see how this solidarity 
 The Cause, of the white South has been brought 
 about. The mind of the African, 
 like unto that of the Asiatic is capable of profound, 
 unquestioning religious belief. Into the African's 
 believing heart with its ocean-like capacity for 
 faith the Christian religion was poured and he 
 accepted it in its entirety. The scriptural accounts 
 of the signs, the wonders, the miracles, did not 
 repel him but rather served to enchant his warm 
 imagination and draw him nearer in reverent awe. 
 Yes, at the foot of the cross the African bowed 
 his head, lifted his unquestioning eyes to the face 
 of the loving, bleeding, dying Christ and gave over 
 to His cause every nook and corner of his mind 
 and heart. The children of the white South were 
 turned over to the care of the African women who 
 were most thoroughly saturated with a belief in, 
 and a love for, all that is contained in the Bible.
 
 166 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 These African women told the white children of 
 God, of the devil, of hell and its lurid flames, of 
 the signs and wonders of the Bible; told of those 
 things by means of the solemn look, the quavering 
 voice, the subdued whisper of awe; told the children 
 with that impressiveness which can be found only 
 where, there is full faith on the part of him who 
 tells. Generation after generation of white children 
 passed through this crucible. It is thus that the 
 mind of the white South has been so wrought 
 upon that it now has the capacity to absorb the 
 teachings of the Bible concerning supernatural oc- 
 currences while other minds of European extraction 
 are "storm swept and tempest tossed." 
 
 Here is a matter of the deepest 
 What it possible significance, fraught with a 
 Means. lesson so very plain that he who runs 
 may read. Nothing strikes deeper 
 than the fundamental religious bent of the mind of a 
 race, and yet we here have this bent of the white 
 South taken in charge and affected in a way that 
 attracts the marked attention of the world; for the 
 orthodoxy of the South is known and spoken of by 
 all men. Out of the great fact here cited there 
 comes a lesson of the utmost clearness, that the 
 white people of the South cannot afford for their 
 own sakes to be indifferent to the kind of life that 
 flourishes near them. If white people sprang into 
 the world fully matured the matter might not be so 
 serious; but whatever the attainments of the race, 
 each generation has to come into the world absolutely
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 167 
 
 ignorant, and grow to maturity inhaling whatever 
 atmosphere is given it. And the lives of men must 
 ever speak of what their souls inhale. 
 
 The mere drawing of the line in 
 Slums social matters does not in any degree 
 
 Reach solve the problem here indicated, for, 
 
 Upward. even in the absence of social contact 
 the life of the Negro race can and does 
 affect that of the whites powerfully. The white 
 people of the South will assert that their parlors are 
 as free from the influence of Negro slum life as from 
 the influence of those who dwell in far away Bombay. 
 But is this indeed the case? A few years ago Negro 
 song writers conceived the idea of reducing the 
 philosophy and the experiences of Negro slum life 
 to writing and embodying them in song. These rag 
 time products were sung in the theatres, placed on 
 the music stands, and soon were heard, coming from 
 the lips of white boys and young men whether at work 
 or play, and floating from the music rooms of the 
 whites. So great became the craze for this 'rag time 
 product that music lovers began to fear for the 
 future of classical music, and the National Associa- 
 tion of American Musicians felt impelled to begin 
 a propaganda against rag time music. Thus we see 
 that the total absence of the Negro from the white 
 man's parlor did not prevent his exercising an 
 influence on that parlor. The simple fact of the 
 matter is that no human device can be constructed 
 which can prevent the infiltration of the Negro spirit 
 into the life of the white race.
 
 168 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 It has been said that the Southern 
 Other white man's love for the joke and his 
 
 Changes habit of taking time, whatever the 
 Wrought, business in hand, to hear or tell a 
 good joke are traceable to his contact 
 with the fun-loving Negro nature. 
 
 The Negro is said to be an emotional being. In 
 commenting upon the emotional character of the 
 Democratic national convention held in St. Louis a 
 few years ago a trained observer who was reporting 
 for the newspapers said in the course of his account 
 that such an emotional convention could not have 
 been held anywhere save in a Southern city. More 
 recently the Confederate veterans made such a 
 display of emotion over Gen. Grant, the son of the 
 man who led the Union cause to final victory, that a 
 leading Southern journal felt called upon in ironical 
 vein to hold the emotional outburst up to ridicule, 
 remarking that on no occasion had the old leaders 
 and heroes of the South been accorded such a 
 demonstration. 
 
 Is the emotional nature of the Negro 
 Are The writing itself in the soul of the Southern 
 Whites Be- white man? Glance at the Southern 
 ing Trans- white man's lynching habit. When we 
 formed? consider the fact that the white man of 
 the South has the judge, the jury and 
 the police system in his charge and can therefore do 
 all the legal hanging that he desires; when, along 
 with this fact we put the evils of lynchings the 
 blunting of the sense of justice by the lynching of 
 innocent persons, a thing of frequent occurrence;
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 169 
 
 the imparting of the impulse of murder to the un- 
 born babes of Negro mothers who are so often 
 mentally in mortal combat with the mob; the in- 
 flaming of the baser passions of the lower elements, 
 to the destruction in their savage breasts of that 
 kindly feeling which would restrain them from 
 crime where fear of punishment would fail; the 
 frightening away from the South of capital; the 
 checking of desirable immigration; when, we say, 
 the evils of lynching are considered along with the 
 fact that no necessity for lynchings exists, we are led 
 to ask the question: Does the white man lynch 
 because he is becoming so emotional that he cannot 
 control himself? Would it not be the very irony of 
 fate for the Negroes to have unconsciously imparted 
 to the white people that emotional nature which in 
 themselves has been wont to explode mainly in 
 religious fervor, but which in the whites explodes in 
 the lynching of Negroes? 
 
 At the recent session of the national 
 Im- Democratic convention, (the con- 
 
 parting vention in which representative 
 Super- Southern thought gathers more largely 
 
 stitions. than in any other) midnight on Thurs- 
 day night came with the presidential 
 nomination still to be made before adjournment. 
 A delegate climbed to the clock and turned back the 
 hands so that the convention might proceed with its 
 business unmolested by the thought that it was 
 transacting business on Friday. This was a small 
 incident, but how much did it signify? To what 
 extent has the faculty for superstitious beliefs, found
 
 170 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 in the masses of the Negro race, written itself into 
 the natures 'of the Southern whites? In the Besse- 
 mer Alabama mines, the superstition obtains among 
 the Negro miners to the effect that it is the most un- 
 lucky thing in the world for a woman to go into the 
 mines, and it is said that the white officials and 
 employees connected with the mines have become 
 very largely imbued with the same superstitious 
 belief. Shortly after having learned of the super- 
 stition concerning the going of women into the mines, 
 the writer had occasion to go into the mining district 
 where the superstition is said to prevail. Meeting 
 a colored man who was a miner of that district we 
 asked him about the existence of the superstition 
 and then put to him the following question: "Do 
 the white men connected with the mines fear the 
 entering of women into the mines?" 
 
 With not the faintest hint of the theory that was 
 at work in our mind, and without an instant's 
 hesitation, the young man said: "The foreign 
 white men such as Scotchmen and Frenchmen who 
 work in the mines do not have the superstition but 
 the native white men, the Southerners, do." 
 
 Not long since a Southern educator 
 
 Result of instituted an investigation of a certain 
 
 an Investi- Southern university to find out to 
 
 gation. what extent the students, all white, 
 
 were superstitious. The following 
 
 summary of his findings appeared in one of the 
 
 leading daily newspapers of the state of Mississippi: 
 
 "One boy, for example, expressed his firm belief 
 
 that if he picked his teeth with a splinter taken from
 
 WISDOM'S CALL, 171 
 
 a tree that had been struck by lightning, he would 
 never have the toothache. A number believed that 
 hair cut at the time of the new moon would grow 
 better than at any other time, while many expressed 
 their opinion that if they dropped the kitchen 
 dish rag they would soon have company. Others 
 held that the man who carried a potato in his pocket 
 would never have rheumatism, while a large number 
 believed that when a dog howled a death in the 
 family was impending. There were others as 
 grotesque and as absurd as these. 
 
 The amazing thing about the whole affair was 
 that so many of the students believed in these 
 superstitions. Some 875 students were examined, 
 and of this number forty-five per cent believed in 
 superstitions which number some 3,000. Perhaps 
 even a larger percentage of the students believed in 
 some superstitions, or at least partly believed in 
 them. Not half the men were free from some belief 
 in signs and omens. These are facts that admit of 
 no dispute." 
 
 In the course of an Editorial headed 
 Direct "Superstition," The Memphis Commer- 
 
 Testimony cial Appeal, among other things had 
 the following to say: "It is useless to 
 discuss the many superstitions of the day. We find 
 them on the street, at the ball game, in the theater, 
 in fact, everywhere we go. * * *How many of 
 our older generation of the South, who once had an 
 old black mammy, can forget how they used to sit, 
 huddled up, as they listened to blood-curdling 
 stories of giants and witches? Can they forget how
 
 172 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 they crept between the sheets at night and pulled 
 the cover over their head fearing to see some awful 
 creature creep from the shadow of the darkness. 
 
 Superstition was dreadful but delightful then. 
 We shuddered and cold chills trembled down our 
 back, but we wanted to hear the same story again 
 and even to the last we were disappointed because 
 we could see no ghost, although we imagined we would 
 see one every time that darkness came." 
 
 We recognize the fact that the human family as a 
 whole is more or less suprestitious, but the Southern 
 white man has something like a double portion and 
 the above citation indicates plainly that he owes his 
 marked development along this line to the Negro 
 race. 
 
 In view of the fact that the Negroes 
 Negro's are going to impress whatever of soul 
 Soul Will they have on the white race, and 
 Be Felt. ultimately upon the world, it behooves 
 the white man to see to it that the 
 influences under which the Negroes are to live are 
 the most wholesome. If the Negroes are left to 
 grow up in ignorance, in superstition, in vice; if they 
 are allowed to become a dismal swamp in which 
 deadly poisons are generated, the products of their 
 souls will float out therefrom and make themselves 
 felt on the spirits of the whites in ways that none of 
 us can now see. Perhaps the poisoning will be slow 
 and insiduous, and will stand revealed only when it 
 is too late to avoid its baneful consequences.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 173 
 
 In the heavens above us, nature 
 Earth and has hung the plainest sort of a 
 Moon Point hint. We are now being told that 
 a Moral. the earth in the far distant past saw 
 
 fit to capture the moon, to drag it 
 out of its own orbit and to force it to accompany the 
 earth in her journeyings around the sun. While 
 the conquering earth has profoundly influenced 
 the destiny of the moon, the captive moon has 
 likewise greatly influenced life upon the earth. 
 Withdraw moonlight from the earth and think of 
 what would have to be withdrawn from song and 
 story; think of the ebb and flow of the tides that 
 must cease; think of the blendings of hearts under 
 the benign influence of the moon's rays that must 
 be cancelled. 
 
 Tis true, 'tis very true, that the earth captured 
 the moon, but it is not less true that the moon has 
 affected the earth. In the first verse of the first 
 chapter of the first book of fate, it is written, plainly, 
 solemnly written, that in whatever proportion the 
 civilization and the soul of the white man do not 
 make over the Negro, to that extent will the Negro 
 make over that civilization and that soul. 
 
 The Negro is so closely interwoven with the 
 industrial life of the South, is so manifestly its 
 present prop that all thought of withdrawing from 
 him as a solution of the problem here raised, is out 
 of the question. Moreover, the more the Negroes 
 are left to themselves the more opportunity there is 
 for them to flower out of harmony with the civiliza- 
 tion of the other elements of the population. 
 Education is the one remedy.
 
 174 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 Having seen how the Negro, left in 
 Value of ignorance and superstition, can provide 
 Education, an atmosphere that will discolor the 
 soul of the white race, let us briefly 
 glance at the good which the Negro race, well ed- 
 ucated, can do. When culture begins to take hold 
 of the mind there arises a desire to look well. Cheap, 
 tawdry things lose their charm. The educated Ne- 
 gro helps the dealer in fine fabrics. Education 
 brings the habit of reflection. The educated colored 
 man begins to reflect touching the question of paying 
 rent. Seeing that the renter pays for the place in which 
 he dwells, the Negro who has been taught to think 
 decides to buy a home. Here is work for the lawyer 
 who must prepare the abstract and draw up the deed. 
 The one-room cabin does not suit the taste of a man 
 with a broad outlook, so, when a house is to be 
 constructed there is work on hand for the architect. 
 Paint must go on the building, the floor must have 
 carpets and the walls must have paper. These 
 things must be manufactured, transported and sold, 
 hence here is work for the manufacturer, the railroad 
 and the merchant. A piano must enter the home, 
 music must be purchased, hence the music house is 
 patronized. In the course of one's training, distant 
 cities have been read about, the wonders of the world, 
 have been discussed, so, travel becomes a necessity. 
 At this point the railway magnate and the stock- 
 holder come in for their share of profits from the 
 educated man. Having been introduced to the 
 affairs of mankind in general through education, 
 the mind is imbued with a desire to keep pace with
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 175 
 
 the march of events, so the magazine and the daily 
 paper become necessities. Here the writer and the 
 editor draw their toll. The poet with his song, the 
 artist with his painting, the sculptor with his stat- 
 uary, the man of letters with his books find the open 
 door at the home of the man of culture. For the 
 wants herein described, funds are necessary. So 
 the educated man has powerful incentives to keep at 
 work or, in some honorable way to keep others at 
 work so that he may attain the desires of his heart. 
 Go to centers where the fever of education and 
 progress have taken hold of a people and there you 
 will find a steady set of toilers and a minimum of 
 idleness. 
 
 The white man's great need of hav- 
 Educated ing an educated Negro race could 
 Negro hardly be more forcibly demonstrated 
 
 Race than by referring to the anti-tubercu- 
 
 Plainly losis crusade. The chief reliance ot 
 Needed. the civilized world for stamping out 
 the great white scourge is upon the 
 dissemination of knowledge through the printed 
 page. The men who in their laboratories work out 
 the causes of the spread of the disease invoke the 
 aid of printers' ink to give their findings to the world. 
 Let us suppose that the Southern whites read this 
 literature, become thoroughly aroused and deter- 
 mine to be rid of the disease. How can they hope 
 to stamp it out without the aid of the Negroes who 
 seem more susceptible to it than the whites? If the 
 Negroes keep the germs in the community the whites 
 will be sure to inhale a goodly portion of them.
 
 176 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 Thus the work of the whites in defending themselves 
 against the plague can hardly be said to be half 
 accomplished until the Negroes have also been 
 aroused. But if the Negroes are uneducated, have 
 no inclination for reading, how are they to be 
 reached by means 01 the printed page? 
 
 When the tuberculosis exhibit was in Nashville, 
 Tenn., a few years ago, and the entire white popula- 
 tion was aroused, those directly concerned in the 
 management of the exhibit were sorely disappointed, 
 and somewhat puzzled as well, over the fact that the 
 Negro masses took such slight interest in what was 
 being done. They realized that Nashville was by 
 no means saved from the scourge until the Negroes 
 were aroused. The simple fact of the matter was 
 the Negro masses had not read of the exhibit, and 
 thousands of them did not know that it was in the 
 city. These masses who did not read can harbor 
 tuberculosis germs as splendidly as the most cul- 
 tured person in the world, and the means should 
 be on hands for reaching them. 
 
 What is here said with reference to the impedi- 
 ments in the way of the success of the anti-tubercu- 
 losis crusade can be applied with equal force to what- 
 ever reforms the South may desire to effect, whether 
 it be to suppress the typhoid fever through the driv- 
 ing out of the fly, or to be rid of the boll weevil, or to 
 emancipate the South financially through the diversi- 
 fication of crops and the consequent retention at 
 home of the millions now needlessly sent out of the 
 borders of that section. Until the enlightened 
 element of the white South has devised a means of
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 177 
 
 speaking to the Negroes, of informing them of such 
 readjustments as are necessary, that section will fall 
 far below its possibilities and abide in evils of which 
 it could so easily be rid. Education paves the way 
 for this much needed speaking. 
 
 We are now to call attention to 
 To Know another consideration of transcendent 
 Each importance calling for the education 
 
 Other. of the Negroes. It is a well known 
 
 fact that mutual knowledge begets a 
 better understanding between peoples. A governor 
 of Massachusetts speaking to a New Orleans audience 
 of Southern whites said that if the North had under- 
 stood the South as well before the time of the Civil 
 War as it now does, that there would not have been 
 any war between the sections. The fact that ig- 
 norance is largely the groundwork of dislike between 
 individuals is strikingly illustrated by the following 
 dialogue, given from memory, which took place 
 between Charles Lamb and his friend: 
 
 "I hate that man" said one, referring to a man 
 that they saw. "Hate him! Why you don't even 
 know him," said the other. "Know him! of course 
 I don't know him. How could I hate him if I knew 
 him," was the rejoinder. 
 
 The white South has issued a decree, against which 
 the Negro as a race lift no voice of protest, to the 
 effect that two races are not to commingle in social 
 matters. This means that the great assuager of 
 troublous conditions the world over, the social in- 
 fluence, is not to be allowed to stretch forth its wand 
 over the tangle of the races.
 
 178 
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 This very absence of social contact renders it 
 necessary for the races to discover some other way 
 of understanding each other better. Cannot literature 
 become this bond of union? Cannot white men 
 and women picture the inner life of the white South, 
 and through these books give the Negroes a sympathy 
 and knowledge of the whites? Cannot Negroes be 
 developed to mirror the life of their race, and thus 
 make it better understood by the whites? Cannot 
 the millions of whites and Negroes be led to exchange 
 visits in this way? This mutual knowledge will 
 make for peace and good will. But this can only be 
 reached through the higher culture of the Negro race.
 
 IX. THE SPIRIT OF A PEOPLE.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF A PEOPLE. 
 
 Physical 
 Environ- 
 ments. 
 
 It is a matter of common knowledge 
 that the environments of a people, the. 
 forces of nature, such as the soil, the 
 sea and the sun, the animal and the 
 vegetable life all have their influence 
 in shaping the habits, temperament and character, 
 and therefore the destiny of that people. A familiar 
 yet striking illustration of the powerful influence of 
 environment upon the fortunes of respective peoples 
 is the fact that the invigorating climate of the 
 Temperate zone has given to the men thereof a 
 zest for the duties of life which enables them to 
 become the rulers of those who dwell in the Torrid 
 zone where men's energies are sapped by the fierce 
 rays of a, blazing sun. A man sitting astride the 
 equator, with a tropical sun beating upon his heacj, 
 would perhaps hardly have the energy to read, 
 much less to write a "Paradise Lost." 
 
 Another formative, environing in- 
 fluence operating strongly upon a 
 people is the question of the relation- 
 ship of that people toward its neighbor. 
 The mental attitude that the neighbor 
 
 (181) 
 
 Political 
 Environ- 
 ments.
 
 182 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 causes to be assumed enters into the formation of 
 racial or national character. In order for the 
 various German kingdoms to become susceptible of 
 being gathered into one great central empire certain 
 well defined characteristics had to be developed in 
 the minds of the German people. Bismarck is 
 credited with having effected this union, but he was 
 simply able to make good use of the spirit of co- 
 hesiveness which the proximity of the French and 
 the constant menace of a possible French invasion 
 engendered in German character. 
 
 We wish now to invite serious 
 A Look attention to the potentialities of the 
 Back- Southern Negro in his capacity as an 
 
 ward. environing influence. We do not at 
 
 all here refer to what he may do as a 
 conscious or active agent in influencing the character 
 of the white South but to what his mere presence 
 will accomplish in the way of shaping its spiritual 
 destiny. Before, however, proceeding to show how 
 the Negro of to-day is affecting the thought life of 
 the South let us hark back to former times and get a 
 glimpse of the manner in which as a silent human 
 environment, he was a vital factor in bringing to 
 pass a happening of tremendous import to the South 
 and the entire nation. As the years go rushing on, 
 carrying with them, further and further into the hazy 
 regions of the past the riot of bitter feelings born of 
 the turmoil and strife incident to the waging of the 
 Civil War, as the Northerner and the Southerner now 
 meet, fraternize and discover in each other so many 
 admirable traits, so many points in common, the
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 183 
 
 wonder increases on each side as to how they ever 
 got so far apart as to drench their common country 
 with the precious blood handed down to them from 
 an ancestry that laid equal claims to both of them. 
 It cannot be said that this war was the outcome of 
 Abolitionist influence, for the Abolitionists were a 
 comparatively small group very much depised even in 
 the North, and lacked the commanding influence nec- 
 essary to precipitate the great struggle. The strength 
 of their hold upon the public mind may be measured 
 by such incidents as the dragging of William Lloyd 
 Garrison, the greatest of all Abolitionists, through 
 the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck, 
 and the murder of Lovejoy by an infuriated mob 
 bent upon suppressing the agitation of the aboli- 
 tion of slavery. Nor yet can it be said that the 
 business men of the North brought on the war. They 
 shrank from it, for they foresaw the coming of 
 privateers on the order of the Alabama that would 
 terribly cripple their business by sweeping their 
 commerce from the seas. The masses of the North 
 did not call for the war. Their outbursts against 
 the Abolitionists show rather plainly where they 
 were. Of course the Negroes were in no position 
 to conduct a propaganda and arouse the nation to 
 arms. 
 
 There was but the one way for the 
 How it war to come at the time that it did and 
 
 Happened, that was for the Southern white people 
 to make a miscalculation as to what 
 would be the outcome of the war, and upon the 
 strength of this miscalculation to proceed to take
 
 184 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 such action as would invite a conflict. We shall 
 now see how they were led to make the miscalcula- 
 tion. It has been said that the battle of Waterloo 
 was won on the playgrounds of Eton, that at that 
 school the English lads, who afterwards became 
 soldiers, acquired those characteristics which served 
 them so well when called upon to face in battle array 
 the hosts of the great Napoleon. With equal truth 
 it may be said that the Civil War was a gift of the na- 
 tion from the playgrounds of the slave plantations of 
 the South. The Southern white child reared among 
 its father's slaves became thoroughly saturated with 
 the spirit of mastery. Its frown brought obedience; 
 a lick directed at a Negro companion however well 
 aimed, brought no lick in return. There was, under 
 the circumstances, no escape from the development 
 of that child's mind the conception that it was born 
 to rule, and that it was the sacred duty of all opposi- 
 tion to fade before its frown. The white child which as 
 a youth had Sent twenty Negro lads scurrying through 
 the woods, when grown to manhood felt that he could 
 handle at least five Yankees by himself. It was anoth- 
 er case of a David's success with a bear and a lion in- 
 fluencing him to believe that he could handle Goliath. 
 Wise men in the South saw the utter hopelessness of 
 the struggle and pleaded with the people to refrain 
 from taking the fatal step, but all to no avail. The 
 playground had done its work too well. The yield- 
 ing, non-resisting Negro had so charged the spirit 
 of the Southern white with the idea of mastery that 
 he hesitated not for a moment to rush into a struggle 
 in which he was overwhelmed with numbers, robbed
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 185 
 
 of his possessions and for a season placed in charge 
 of his former slaves. Where in all of human history- 
 has there .been a case of a greater miscalculation 
 than that which the white South made, and to what 
 may it be ascribed, but to the fact that che Negro 
 was the Southern white child's environment and 
 furnished food for the development of an exaggerated 
 notion of its prowess, without which notion the Civil 
 War would never have been invited? 
 
 Not only did the yielding Negro as an 
 Prolonged environing influence bring on the 
 The war, but as such an influence he pro- 
 
 Struggle, longed the struggle and made it the 
 more bloody. One of the facts that 
 stands out most conspicuously with reference to the 
 Civil War is the facility with which the South furn- 
 ished its armies with splendid commanders. The 
 institution of slavery had given to the Southerners 
 the habit of command. The Northerners, going 
 to the war out of an industrial democracy, had to 
 acquire step by step, the art of handling men, whereas 
 with the Southerner it was often an inheritance, 
 handed down from father to son and accentuated 
 through the constant exercise'of lordship over slaves. 
 When therefore, we behold the Southern commanders 
 marshalling their poorly equipped battle lines' 
 against their better fed, better equipped and far 
 more numerous foes; as we see the skill of these 
 Confederate officers as commanders of men making 
 up for the disparity of numbers; as we think of the 
 length of the titanic struggle and glance around at 
 the hundreds of thousands of graves, we must
 
 186 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 admit the importance of the part played by the 
 Negro as a silent human environment when as a 
 slave he furnished the material upon which the 
 white South developed and sharpened its instinct 
 for the exercise of executive ability in the matter of 
 handling men. 
 
 So much for the past. But the 
 Affecting Negro is still here as a silent environing 
 Spirits. influence of great importance as will 
 
 presently appear. It is very evident 
 to all observers that while the South has in it men 
 and women of an intensely vigorous spirit who have 
 builded a new and prosperous empire upon the ruins 
 of the former South which the war so largely des- 
 troyed, there are also present in its life millions of 
 dull, unaspiring, listless, spiritless whites who plan 
 no great things for themselves nor yet for their 
 children after them. 
 
 Philanthropists, sociologists and sundry classes 
 of men and women have made a study of this un- 
 aspiring element of whites in an effort to account 
 for its utter lack of spirit. Let us join them in the 
 search. 
 
 One of the great, all pervasive forces 
 What Spurs at work in the hearts of men, causing 
 Men On. them to exert themselves, is the desire 
 
 to attain unto a sense of station, to 
 reach that state of mind where they can feel that they 
 are something when compared with something else, 
 that they are beyond some point which all men would 
 be glad to pass. The effort of the child to stand 
 at the head of its class, the quest of the student of 
 maturer years for degrees, the strivings of rich men for
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 187 
 
 greater wealth, are but variations of the universal 
 search of man for a sense of station. The failure of 
 many of the children of the rich and the powerful to 
 develop into successful men and women is due to 
 the fact that, finding ready to hand that which gives 
 them a sense of station, they miss the quickening 
 influence of the spirit of a desire to acquire such. 
 Conceiving that they are already something they 
 feel no inclination to put forth efforts to become 
 something. Unlike the Apostle Paul they do not 
 forget but rather remember the things that are be- 
 hind, hence do not press forward to the mark of the 
 high calling. 
 
 A thing to be avoided as one would 
 That a deadly poison is any influence which 
 
 Which begets a degree of self-satisfaction 
 
 Stifles. that is benumbing to the spirit, that 
 
 robs one of the motive power that calls 
 his powers into action. Successful fathers, for this 
 reason, have before them the task of preventing 
 their own successes from constituting a full measure 
 of soul satisfaction for their children. 
 
 Solomon assures us that "Pride goeth before 
 destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall." 
 This is true because pride is but another name for 
 self-satisfaction, and self-satisfaction means stagna- 
 tion, which in turn means spiritual lifelessness, 
 death. Hence the fall of the man of a haughty 
 spirit. 
 
 The Southern white people find 
 Spiritual themselves living side by side with a 
 Barriers race which they do not desire to see 
 Erected. blended with their own. In order 
 
 that there may be no fusing of 
 
 7
 
 1S8 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 the races they feel it incumbent upon themselves'to 
 keep strengthened the spiritual barriers between the 
 two races. For the furtherance of this end there 
 has been a careful cultivation of certain modes of 
 thought with regard to the Negro race. The more 
 refined and cultivated among the whites confine 
 their efforts to the cultivation of the thought that 
 there is a difference between the races and rely upon 
 the stressing of the fact of difference to keep 
 each race in a distinct sphere. This thought 
 of difference is what is used in the matter 
 of having girls and boys move in different 
 spheres. The editor of the New York 
 Independent, Mr. William Hayes Ward, an un- 
 compromising champion of the rights of the Negro, 
 in setting forth his attitude toward the intermarriage 
 of the two races, stated that he would not desire a 
 child of his to marry a Negro, and stated that he 
 would base his objections to his child, not on the 
 ground of superiority, but upon that of difference. 
 When the question of Japanese immigration was 
 up for discussion in Congress a distinguished Con- 
 gressman from "the South asserted that the influx of 
 Japanese was opposed, not because they were in- 
 ferior, but because they were different from the 
 American people. 
 
 But some of the white people of the* 
 Wrong South, especially a certain type of 
 
 Method politicians, have seen fit to make use of 
 Employed, the thought of superiority as an aid to 
 the thought of difference. The back- 
 ward element among the whites has it sung into
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 189 
 
 their ears that the mere fact of their being white is a 
 tremendous thing of itself. When the illiterate 
 white man is made to feel, not only that he is not a 
 Negro, but that the mere fact that he is not, is of 
 itself something great, a sort of inexhaustible capital 
 stock on which he may do business indefinitely he 
 thenceforth has his sense of station. But this ready 
 to hand sense of station is far, far from what this 
 illiterate white man needs. He has remained in the 
 valley of his ignorance while his more favored Anglo- 
 Saxon brother, from the top of the mountain range 
 has been grappling with world, and other-world 
 problems. What the derelict so sadly needs is the 
 whip and the spur to his soul, the impregnation of 
 his spirit with those dim but all powerful yearnings 
 which move men to be up and doing. We know of 
 no greater wrong that has been done the illiterate, 
 the backward whites than this going among them of 
 politicians who have sought their votes by making 
 them hug themselves in benumbing self-satisfaction 
 over the tremendous fact that they are not Negroes. 
 If the teachers of these backward whites had but 
 insisted upon the fact of difference between the 
 races, leaving to each man the problem of working to 
 acquire his own individual sense of station, of sup- 
 eriority, the spirits of the backward ones might have 
 escaped the blight that comes from feasting upon 
 imputed attributes, unearned personally. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon race was not 
 Coddling coddled by Fate into its present great- 
 No Aid. ness. On the contrary, she has urged 
 it forward with her frown. Pretending
 
 190 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 to despise the breed, Fate pushed it out of Lower 
 Germany into the sea and at length allowed it to 
 gain a precarious foothold upon the shores of Great 
 Britain. Throughout its history the Anglo-Saxon 
 race has been made to fight in an open field for every 
 slight advance. On the other hand, Fate, acting as 
 though she loved the African, lulled him to sleep 
 under the bamboo tree, poured his lap full of food 
 that he might eat when he awoke, and return 
 immediately to his slumbers. In the meanwhile 
 she was scourging other races and causing them to 
 leave the African far behind. Is this process to be 
 reversed in the South? Is Fate permitting the 
 white man to weaken and coddle his own, that the 
 Negro may have the opportunity through the 
 strength that comes from suffering to regain the 
 ground lost through residing in over-indulgent 
 Africa? 
 
 The most picturesque, the most 
 Harmful forceful figure of the English speaking 
 to Whites, world to-day, in fact the most pregnant 
 personality of our times, is that of ex- 
 President Theodore Roosevelt. When he sought 
 to dissipate the ill feeling engendered against him in 
 the South because of a certain now famous dinner, 
 he issued a card through Judge Jones of Alabama in 
 which among other things he gave his grounds for 
 opposing such of the constitutions of the Southern 
 States as discriminated in favor of illiterate whites. 
 He asserted that he regarded such a course as an 
 injustice to these whites. Was Mr. Roosevelt 
 right? In the practice of discriminating in favor of
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 191 
 
 the white man, does there not lurk harm for the 
 spirit of the white race? Let us here quote the 
 words of the late Chancellor Hill, of the University of 
 Georgia: "The thing which the South cannot afford in 
 its relation to the Negro race is injustice; all history 
 teaches that injustice injures and deteriorates the 
 individual or nation that practices it, while on the 
 other hand, it develops and strengthens the race 
 upon which it is inflicted." 
 
 The white people of the South out- 
 Free Yet number the Negroes and hold the 
 Not Free. political power in their own hands. 
 Our form of government permits a 
 large measure of local self government. The Su- 
 preme Court and the Congress of the United States 
 have ever been slow to interfere with the white 
 South in the matter of the adjustment of the relations 
 between the races, not exercising such powers as 
 clearly belong to them under the constitution. In 
 view of these facts the white people of the South are 
 largely free to build up whatever sort of system they 
 may desire. But be it known unto them that the High 
 Court of Things Eternal has decreed that all systems of 
 caste shall finally wither the souls of the men that in- 
 stitute them; that an unjust deed eventually breeds 
 and hands back an unjust heart; that, in so far as 
 the white people of the South, by legislative enact- 
 ment or in the execution of the laws, practice dis- 
 crimination supposedly in the white man's favor, and 
 seek to lift him from the sphere of the operation 
 of the law of the survival of the fittest, to that ex- 
 tent they shall write lethargy, stupor, distemper in 
 the hearts of millions of their kind.
 
 192 WISDOM'S CALL. 
 
 One morning as we were scanning a 
 A Prayer. daily paper issued m one of the larger 
 of our Southern cities, we found 
 printed at the head of the editorial column a prayer, 
 the essence of which, in part, was as follows: "May 
 it be granted unto the good people of our great state 
 that no sinister influence come over them to pervert 
 the noble spirit that has all along been theirs." 
 
 The editor who breathed this prayer had a vision 
 of the evils that could come to his state through the 
 transforming of the spirit of the people. He realized 
 that the fertile soil and delightful climate would not 
 suffice to make life attractive if the people lost the 
 flavor of the kind of spirit needed to make a people 
 truly glorious. If the spirit of the people is wrong 
 it cannot possibly yield any of the finer fruits of the 
 soul which alone make life worthy of the pain and 
 sorrow essential to carrying forward the work of the 
 world. He, therefore, who aspires for leadership, 
 or is singled out by the people and marked for a 
 guide, should have it as his first and most sacred 
 care to stand guard over the spirit of the people 
 whom he would serve. With the eye of an eagle he 
 should watch for whatever would maim, pervert, 
 deform the spirit of the people which is the one 
 reliance for weaving a wreath of glory that will 
 wear well in the eyesight of worthy men, now and 
 hereafter. While the medical profession is busy 
 trying to give new life by purging the system of the 
 hookworm, may the doctors of the body politic 
 purge the government of all discrimination calculated 
 to breed a far more deadening stupor in the soul of 
 the white race.
 
 WISDOM'S CALL. 19S 
 
 In view of the mighty deeds done 
 Spiritual in the various climes of earth in the 
 Restless- years that have gone; in view of the 
 ness A strenuous strivings of men of every 
 
 Vital Need, kindred, tribe and tongue in this great 
 age of the world, if the white South 
 would hold its own, would develop a social body 
 able to compete with the North, with France, with 
 England and with Germany, it must have that 
 spiritual restlessness, that burning discontent which 
 located in the bosom of the units of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race has heretofore pushed that race forward 
 into its present position of world-wide influence. But 
 it cannot have the presence of this mighty influence, 
 cannot have it, so long as there hangs over Southern 
 skies the dark shadow of discrimination distilling its 
 poisonous dews over the souls of men, giving unto 
 them a sense of satisfaction, intense in nature, 
 causing millions to sit down spiritually, and quietly 
 take their ease when they should be on the alert 
 grappling with the great problems of human society. 
 
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