Viewing page 12 of 27

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

74     THE CRISIS

of development on its own line (applause). The white man must understand that he was to treat the native with full justice, and no artificial barrier should be put in the way of the native development. He must be given his constitutional opportunities of voicing his grievance. "Do not think," added Lord Selborne, "that the native is fit for the franchise. On the whole he is wholly unfit for the exercise of the vote. They are adult children- but it is a farce and hypocrisy to pretend that the white man in democratic government represents the black. He cannot, and does not. The problem, therefore, is a difficult one." The problem of education presented an intense difficulty. Education should not be forced on people who did not want it, but adequate facilities should be given to those who did, and while not advocating the intermingling of the races, his lordship said no artificial barrier should be placed in the way of the native rising to the height which his intellect and character would enable him to rise. Though the ordinary native was unfitted for the vote, men did emerge who were fitted for it. How could they give that privilege? He did not favor a technical test, adding that a man of 30, who had shown he was living a civilized life, should be given the privilege of the civilized man (applause). It was of the utmost importance that every group of natives existing should have a constitutional opportunity of stating their grievances and wants in public. They should have the right at intervals of meeting the ministers for native affairs, and in the presence of the press stating their wants (applause). It was essential that when the natives met the ministers the press should be present (applause).

Sir Sidney Olivier, former governor of Jamaica, said:

"The question in practical politics was: Are we to discriminate in legislation on the ground of backwardness or on the ground of the race? He believed that Negrophobia in race prejudice was in mixed communities the most active source of danger. The civilization and morality of the Jamaica Negro were not high, but he was on a markedly different level from his grandfather, the plantation slave, and his great-grandfather, the African savage. Negroes were now the equal of the white men in fields of human function in which a hundred years ago slave owners would have confidently alleged the Negro to be incapable of equality. The vast transplantation of the Negro, the intercourse of white and black, had, in fact, brought advance in humanity to the colored people. His study and comparison of conditions in the United States and in the West Indies had brought him to the belief that no solution of the American color difficulties would be found except by resolutely disclaiming the color line and race differentiation theory."

E. D. Morrell declared that a shudder of new emotions was passing through those hundreds of millions of colored men from the plains of Hindustan to the swamps and forests of West Africa. Strange tremors, vague ambitions and passions were stirring them as they had never before been stirred. The old unquestioned and unquestioning acquiescence in the ascendancy of the white man over the colored man as part and parcel of the natural order of things was disappearing where it had not already disappeared. The white man had made, and was making, unwittingly, and but half consciously, its return impossible. They day was rapidly approaching, if it had not already dawned, when we could no longer base the stability of our rule in the ultimate resort wholly upon our superiority in material power. There was on use in disguising from ourselves that the slave spirit is not dead in Western Europe, and that the need of fighting it whenever or wherever it reared its head was vital to the moral and material interests of civilization.

The Rev. J. H. Ritson, of the British and Foreign Bible Society, say of the church in South Africa:

"That south of the Zambesi there are at least six blacks to every white, while in Natal the proportion is eleven to one. The blacks are increasing more rapidly than the whites, and in Natal will double themselves in thirty-seven years. There are only a million native Christians and six millions of black heathen constitute a growing peril. These blacks are seeking education and progressing by leaps and bounds- a spirit of individualism is taking the place of that tribalism which has been a restraint in the past. 'No one ought to withhold facilities for education- no one can ultimately withhold them,' said Mr. Ritson. The idea of the South Africa Native College was conceived

OPINION     75

seven years ago in the Cape Province. An appeal was made for £50,000, and large European contributions were promised if the natives raised one-half of the amount, and the whole sum required was secured. The property has already been bought near Lovedale, but this is hardly accessible, it is thought, for the Transvaal natives. Efforts have been made to secure assistance from the Union government, but at present without success."

THE "JIM CROW" CAR.

The New York Evening Post has an editorial on the "Jim Crow" car which we quote in part:

"One of the most enlightened students of race relationships, here and elsewhere, Sir Sydney Olivier, for five years governor of Jamaica, spoke yesterday before the Church of England Congress on the dangers to the United States from race discriminations. if they are adhered to, so the cabled report runs, he feels that there will be danger of civil war and rebellion. If this is to be avoided, he says, 'statesmen and citizens' must 'face in the contrary direction.' It is not a theorist who speaks, but a trained colonial administrator, who has governed an island containing but 15,605 whites among 793,382 blacks. Moreover, Sir Sydney Olivier has traveled in our Southern States for the express purpose of studying our race relations at close range, and in more than one paper has deprecated much that he found there, dwelling notably upon the absence of such an admirable black constabulary as keeps the peace in Jamaica, and upon the many rasping discriminations which bear down so heavily on the American of color. As a result he has written that 'the color line is not a rational line, the logic neither of words nor facts will uphold it.'

"If we should be asked what is the discrimination in the South, not known in Jamaica, which to-day is most unjust to the colored people in their daily life, we should be tempted to say the 'Jim Crow' car. For every time the colored man would travel the badge of inferiority is placed upon him, unless he be one of the few who, like Booker Washington, can obtain accommodation in a Pullman car. The enlightened white Southerner is gradually beginning to realize what this means; Dr. James H. Dillard, of the Jeans Fund and Slater Fund, is, for instance, cited as declaring: 'If I were a colored man the "Jim Crow" cars alone would drive me out of the South'- and it is indubitable that this institution is driving Negroes out of the South and keeping them out. Thus, there are hundreds of colored people in Washington alone who will not go into Virginia because they will not enter the separate coach. But the 'Jim Crow' car policy is not for the moment the greatest grievance. In the South there is no escape from it, and it is accepted by the Negroes there as something that has come to stay for a long time, although eventually it must go if the principles of Christianity are lived up to. But aside from its injustice and discrimination, the actual conditions of travel in the car itself are so unbearable as to call forth the bitterest complaints, which go unheeded because the Negro has no vote and the superior race is too superior to listen to fault-finding from blacks.

"We are aware, of course, that the mere proposal to abolish the 'Jim Crow' car at present provokes a storm of anger, just as we know that the presence in white cars of the lowest element of the Negroes does mean hardship for refined white passengers, precisely as refined colored passengers suffer from overbearing white boors who enter their coach. But is there no way out? Is there not any constructive suggestion to offer? We have one which, it seems to us, is at least worth discussing. It is the adoption of the foreign system of cars of varying classes and rates of fare. We practically have two classes now, the Pullman and the 'day coach.' In Europe they have 'unwashed' peasants to deal with, but they are almost never found in the first or second-class carriages. They pay third and fourth-class rates and receive decent and clean accommodations. Is it impossible to adapt this system to our Southern railroads? It would do away with discrimination, while the presence in ever class of white men with votes would prevent the existing intolerable violation of law. At least, as Sir Sydney says of the whole question, a solution along this line would be traveling the only road which leads to civil peace."

DEMOCRACY AND DISCRIMINATION.

The Chicago Tribune and the Greenville (S. C.) News are debating democracy. "Rare discrimination is foreign