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230
THE CRISIS

stream in the hands of people who a few years ago where as poor as the proverbial small rodent in the sanctuary.

"The discovery of oil several years ago is the cause of all this, and already a number of Indians, blacks and whites are in the millionaire class, with the money still coming in in barrels full.  Uncle Sam's part in this is to see the Indians and the freedmen who own the lands get their royalty for the oil taken out.  The commissioner of Indian affairs, Cato Sells, has direct charge of this get-rich-quick game, as his office looks out for the leasing of the lands belonging to the Indians and freedmen.

"The freedmen mentioned were Negro slaves held by the Creek Indians until they were freed by the civil war.  Later a treaty was made between the United States and the Creek Indians whereby slaves belonging to the Creeks and their descendants were given an equal share with their former owners on the government allotment of the old Creek lands in Indian territory.

"This is how Danny Tucker, a 10-year-old Negro boy, came into possession of 160 acres of land, which has produced and is producing as much oil as any other similar area of ground in the United States, if not in the world.

"The 160 acres of land were allotted to him in 1906 for farm purposes.  It is rock and hilly, no ten acres slanting the same way and is virtually unfit for farming.  Two years ago one of the big oil companies obtained a lease on the allotment, with the result that apparently worthless land has become one of the richest spots in Oklahoma.

"At first Danny received $200 a month in royalties; in March last it had jumped to $6,000 a month, and now it is $6,750 a month and still going up.  The production of oil on the land owned by the little Negro now amounts to 2,400 barrels daily.

"The wells completed give promise of long life, and if they do keep up, it will not be long before it will be utterly impossible for Danny to count his money.  Although the colored boy is a prospective millionaire, he is paying little attention to anything but the feeding of his chickens and pigs on his father's farm."

It is needless to add that a white man has been made Danny Tucker's guardian.

The special grievance of Mr. Spingarn against Dr. Washington, as given by his speech, is that under Dr. Washington's leadership the colored people have collected about $1,000,000,000 worth of property and everything else except this $1,000,000,000 worth of property has been taken from them. -- N.Y. Age.

The editor of The Age is wrong.  Prof. Joel E. Spingarn expressed, in his "New Abolition" speeches, no such grievances against Dr. Booker T. Washington, and our people have NOT "collected about $1,000,000,000 worth of property under Mr. Washington's leadership." It is positively silly for any one to make such a monstrously untrue statement.  The great bulk of the race's property, however much it may be, was secured under the leadership of Hons. Frederick Douglass, John M. Langston, John R. Lynch, B. K. Bruce and others of their time, and the intelligent of our people, especially those of hte olders ones, know it. -- Cleveland Gazette.

Eight striking personalities are treated in careful essay form in Harry Graham's "Splendid Failures, " most of the studies being reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, National Review, Dublin Review, or Cornhill.  Any attempt at welding together the material, as by a discussion of the causes of the failure of genius, is quite properly avoided.  Theobald Wolfe Tone, now best known for his diary, which Wellington declared the most fascinating  of books, figures as "The First of the Fenians"; the "Napoleon of San Domingo" is, of course, Toussaint L'Ouverture; an old gibe is revived in calling Haydon "The Cockney Raphael"; Charles Townshend is "A Shooting Star"; W.H. Betty is "The Infant Roscius"; George Smythe, "The Paladin of Young England, " and Hartley Coleridge and the Emperor Maximilian complete the gallery.  The word "failure" is, of course, used in not merely a relative, but  a very wordly sense, and the author makes no attempt to accentuate shadows, or to deprive such men as Tone, L'Ouverture, and even the suicide, Haydon, of the admiration for moral and material achievement which is their due.  And he makes clear the contrast between the inbred faults which caused Townshend and Coleridge and Smythe to pitch a flight so pitiful below their powers and the natural obstacles before Maximilian, L'Ouverture, and Tone.

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Colored Surgeon-In-Chief, Internes and Nurses, General City Hospital, Kansas City, MO.