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226   THE CRISIS 

handicaps, the despised African has beaten all his competitors. 'This remarkable development,' said the late Sir John Rodger, Governor of the Gold Coast some years ago, when the cocoa output was but a third of what it has become, 'has been carried out with only slight assistance from the Government agricultural staff, and entirely by native, not by European, planters. I know of no other country of which this can be said, and I think that the natives of the Gold Coast deserve the highest credit.' Sir Hugh Clifford, the present Governor, has recently recorded his opinion in equally emphatic terms:

"'To-day, it is gratifying to recall, this colony occupies the position of the premier cocoa-producing country of the world. When it is remembered that cocoa-cultivation is, in the Gold Coast and in Ashanti, a purely native industry - that there is hardly an acre of European-owned cocoa-garden in the territories under the administration of this Government - this remarkable achievement of a unique position as a producer of one of the world's staples assumes, in my opinionn, a special value and significance.'***

"To-day the Uganda farmer has put 100,000 acres of land under cotton - each farmer working 'on his own.' The export of lint, which was 725 tons in 1909, rose to 2,473 tons in 1911. It is estimated that the crop this year will be somewhere near 50,000 bales of 400 lb. each which, with the seed, will be worth roughly three-quarters of a million sterling. The whole of the crop has been grown by the natives on their farms, and they are well satisfied with the price they obtain. * * *

"So here again the Uganda experiment is conclusive as to the willingness and the ability of the native of tropical Africa to utilize his land fruitfully to the world's advantage, provided he works for himself on his own plot under his own methods. In Northern Nigeria the industrious Hausa has grown cotton for upwards of a thousand years, and not only grown it but weaved it on narrow looms of his own manufacture into handsome and enduring cloths, dyed it with indigo of his own growing, and embroidered the finished product with elaborate and really beautiful designs. In the Kano province particularly, which is almost as large as Scotland, with a population of 2,500,000, the cultivation of cotton is accompanied by a true national industry of weaving, dyeing, manufacture, and embroidery, which gives healthy employment to tens of thousands of African men, women, and children, adds dignity, interest, and wealth to the life of the people, and sustains several other branches of industrial activity, binding the agriculturist and the artisan in the close relationship of a common utilitarian interest. I confidently recommend a journey through Kano province as an antidote to the popular delusion about the African's 'incapacity to work.' Nowhere in France or Belgium have I seen anything more remarkable in the way of cultivation. * * *

"The tropical African native is neither the half-child nor the half-devil of popular imagination. He is at bottom a keen man of business, a trader, and an agriculturist. In the measure in which this is recognized the modern intervention of the white race in tropical Africa will be a success or disaster to both white and black. 

A COLLECT

FROM THE APRIL GLEBE

Horace Traubel is one of the few modern prophets who dares think straight on the race problem. Indeed, dares to think at all. Read this from one of his collects in the Glebe:

"What is the color of your skin? Are you a child of the sun or a child of the snow? Do you come with red in your face? Are you the white child of a black mother or the black child of a white mother? I see your brown red right hand. How warm it feels to me. I look into your glowing equatorial eyes. How like being led to fathers and mothers that is. You bring me north, south, east, west. You guide yourselves to me. You distribute me among yourselves. I am your child no matter how. Your child no matter where. There are seas everywhere. But there is no sea between us. * * *

"Dear prouds and humbles: By God I'm yours and you're mine. Do you believe that anything can take you from me or take me from you? I meet you. I read about you. I am told all the terrible truths. But everything draws me nearer. Nothing drives me away. If you could be less to me than I am to myself then I would have to be more



OPINION 227

to myself than I could be to you. That would violate my democracy. That would be setting one thing above another. When I elevate myself with all I am a democrat. When I lift myself above the rest I am a tyrant. Listen to me. You who are reading what I write. Maybe you are black. Maybe you are pink or white or yellow. Maybe you are between or across. All that goes with maybe. But when you are my brother there is no maybe to it. If I could look at any man and not see his mother as my own I'd be false to all motherhood. If I could look at any woman and not see her father as my own I'd be false to all fatherhood. I'm not satisfied with one mother. I want all mothers. Nor with one father. I want all fathers. Nor with my children. I want all children. I'm not satisfied with one color. I want all colors. Nor with one race. I want all races. Nor with one language. I want all languages. My hunger is fiercely universal. I'm not fed till I've eaten at every table. I can only know one woman by knowing all women. I can only know one people. 

"What is the color of your skin? I see. You are a nigger. You are a damned dago. You are the man on the other side of the wall. The man over somewhere. The yellow peril. The ignorant dirty emigrant. The two for a quarter six for a half dollar mill slave. There is a border line between us. There are incomes between us. There is a whole code of manners between us. You are the godforsaken Polack. You are the hook-nosed Jew. You are the monkeyfaced Irishman. You are the beerguzzled deutscher. I call you names. I can't see you. You are in the next yard. The stars look just as well from the next yard. But I insist upon the exclusive astronomy of my own garden. I smell your stale clothes. I am choked by the aromas of your foul kitchens. Would you like your sister to marry an African? I'm not fussy. I'm only a man. A white man. I don't draw lines ferninst you. I only draw lines in favor of myself. Do you mean to say you think these ignoramuses as good as yourself? Do you tell me that you're no better than the herd? Nonsense. There's the nietzschean word for it. The average man is the herd. The awkward big-fisted loon. The idiot crowd. The people everybody kicks. The folks everybody despises. The men, women, children you wouldn't invite into your home. I use them. Ride them. Make money off them. But that's all I want of them. Just the robber money. Not the man love. * * *

"A woman heard me expressing my race faith. She asked me: 'How would you like to have a grandchild with a black skin?' That was it. That was the whole devilish poisonous story. The entire problem prejudice in a nutshell. She didn't ask: How would you like to have a grandchild with a black soul? That would have meant something. But she wasn't interested in souls. She was interested in skins. How would I like to have a grandchild with a black skin? What is the color of your skin?

"What is the color of your skin? Maybe you have a black skin and a white heart? Maybe you have a white skin and a black heart. I don't know. We talk about the yellow peril when we think of Asia. And we talk about the brown peril when we think of Italy. And we talk about the black peril when we think of South Carolina. But all of us are afraid to talk about the white peril. I see no perils. My arms reach out to all. I want the Chinaman to possess himself of the earth if he's an earth man. Let him freely pass right and left testing himself and us. Don't put up pennywise barriers built on poundfoolish laws. Rather do anything than stop your fraternities short of the total census of man. Every interfering sea, every contradicting statue, every counterchecking prejudice, every adventure in money-making, that nullifies the international inference is a slap in the face of brotherhood. Damn up the human stream. Then you damn down the soul. * * *

"I would only be worthy of serving if I was worthy of being served. I would only cease being a peril if I ceased calling others perilous. How could I be worthy of being a white man if I was too good to be a black man? Ethiopia cries out loud to Scandinavia. India cries out loud to England. All the peoples cry out loud from everywhere to all the peoples. There is no peril in peoples."

A CONGRESSIONAL DEBATE

MORE EXPOSITIONS

The colored people of Illinois are asking Congress for $150,000 to celebrate Emancipation. Hearing of this Giles B. Jackson, a colored man of Richmond, Va., who has been accused of very disreputable practices, has appealed to Congress for $55,000 to enable