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134 THE COLORED AMERICAN MAGAZINE [[start column]] Booker T. Washington has the right ideals, and that Dubois is injuring the progress of his race with his views." President Eliot emphatically denies that he ever said that there was a suffrage problem in the North owing to the predominance of Catholics. "In the North we are afflicted in our civic life by having masses of voters who know nothing of liberty. Take the Irish, they say themselves that at home they had no experience at self-government. Our problem is to show the newer arrivals that it is to their interest to have efficient government and not lavish expenditure." President Eliot seems to forget in his [[italics]]ipsi dix it[[/italics]] against the mixture of the races the well-known historic fact that the English race to which he belongs is the result of the biggest admixture of races in history. He should have spoken this protest when Carnite the Dane and William the Conqueror were invading England mixing up the races. Does the good Doctor think that Englishmen are inferior because of this admixture? Then, too, the mixture of races is claimed by many able scientists to endure to the best interest of the human stock. [[line]] THE KIND OF NEGRO OFFICIALS TAFT SHOULD APPOINT On this subject it is better to say what kind of persons Mr. Taft should not appoint rather than the kind he should appoint. In the first place, we do not need the professional politician simply because he is such, but rather let him measure up to the standard in other respects than that of a "ward heeler." We do not need appointments from that class of individuals who are of the booze soaked variety, men who get drunk in public places and disgrace the offices they hold. We think preference should be given also [[end column]] [[begin column]] to men who have made a success in life and have something to show for it. This is the character of man that the Negro youth should be taught to pattern after, as they surely will take for their examples the men who are honored by appointment by Washington. This has always been so and will be so in the future. Mr. Taft can find good and capable men in the race, if he will look for them. He should find some of them, and in accordance with his promise, give the race recognition through them. [[line]] CENSUS DATA AS TO NEGROES There were in the United States in 1900, or at the time of the last decennial census was taken, 8,833,994 persons of African descent. Of this number 7,836,267 lived in the Southern States. In other words, nearly nine-tenths of the Negroes in this country were inhabitants of the South. In making plans for the next enumeration which will be begun next year, Director S. N. D. North, of the Census Bureau, suggests an amendment to the law which provides for the enumeration of persons having Negro blood. In former laws provision has been made for learning the color, sex, relationship of head of family and conjugal condition of each person. One item in the present act to which Director North calls attention is that calling for statistics as to the number of intermarriages between white persons and persons of either whole or part Negro blood. Such marriages are now prohibited by law in all the South Atlantic and South Central States, except the District of Columbia; in all the North Central States, except Indiana, Missouri and Nebraska; and in all the Western States except Arizona, Colorado, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah. In the rest of the country there were nine year ago only 749,052 Negroes. Naturally it is among this relatively small number, less than one out of ten, that the data souht from 85,000,000 people would affect. Director North thinks it would be well to find out in the case of each Negro whether there has been any intermingling of blood and this could be done most satisfactorily by asking the simple question whether he is black or mulatto. From 1850 to 1890 this was done, but at the last census an attempt was made [[end page]] [[start page]] THE COLORED AMERICAN MAGAZINE 135 [[start column]] to list Negroes, mulattos, quadroons and octoroons separately. It is doubted if the statistics so secured are within ten per cent. of the correct figures. The difficulty of getting statistics that will show the intermixture of the races, is difficult. The director while recognizing this difficulty, says: "It is not certain that the answers to the simple question about each Negro whether he is of pure or mixed blood would be erroneous in so many cases as to deprive the resulting tables of all value." The statistics as to the Negro race so far as they have been tabulated by the Census Bureau show that of the total population, those listed as mulattos were in 1850 11.2 per cent. of the total; in 1860, 13.2 per cent.; in 1870, 12 per cent., and in 1890, 15.2 per cent.—Ex. THE COLORED AMERICAN MAGAZINE would respectfully suggest that Director North leave this matter of intermarriage of the races alone. Who's got anything to do with it except the parties themselves and the heavens above, where it is said all marriages are made. [[line]] LINCOLN DAY AND THE WHITE FOLKS The anniversary of Lincoln's birth was more generally celebrated this year than ever before. Not alone perhaps because it was the one hundredth anniversary, but because the white people are beginning to think more of Lincoln's character and work. Heretofore Lincoln's birthday has been left to the freedmen to celebrate. They have had to sound his praises as martyr, statesman, liberator; but this year the whites have outheralded Herod in their celebration of Lincoln's birthday. They in many places grew so intensely fond of him that Negroes were barred from not only speaking at many of their meetings, but at the Union League Club in Brooklyn, New York, it is stated the colored waiters who wanted to hear what the orators would say about Lincoln were told to hie to the kitchen. After considerable persuading and apologies the din- [[end column]] [[start column]] ner was served, but very sullenly. Probably next time this club will have foreign white waiters who will not be so sensitive about hearing what is said of Lincoln, who is no more to them than any other dead American. In Springfield, Ill., Lincoln's home town, the whites refused the Negroes admission to the exercises, and thus created some little stir. So after all the white man is beginning to admire Lincoln, but he wants to do the job by himself with no sandwiching in with the very bondmen that Lincoln set free. What a contrast, what strange things happen in this life anyway? [[line]] A COMMENDABLE POEM It is so seldom we have acceptable verse come to the colored American's grist mill that it is a pleasure when such does come to give it cordial welcome. Mr. George B. Thornton's poem, "In Days of Yore," which we publish on another page, is of this character. It has merit. There is nothing new in the subject or in the treatment of it; these were exhausted, practically, by the great masters of the Elizabethan school, who, because the classics prevailed in the English system of education, drew upon the mythology of Greece and Rome for models about which to drape the beauties of imagination. Even the only William Shakespeare was not free from the prevailing classical saturation, which finally exhausted itself in the rhapsodies of Keats and Shelly of the early Victorian school. In his handling, therefore, of a moth eaten theme, Mr. Thornton is much to be commended.
Transcription Notes:
*souht - typo (sought)
