A number of men inside the Democratic party are not afraid to speak out. Ex-Congressman Fleming of Georgia said in a notable address at Athens, Ga.:

“Those whose stock in trade is ‘hating the nigger’ may easily gain some temporary advantage for themselves in our white primaries, where it requires no courage, either physical or moral, to strike those who have no power to strike back—not even with a paper ballot. But these men will achieve nothing permanent for the good of the state or of the nation by stirring up race passion and prejudice. Injustice and persecution will not solve any of the problems of the ages. God did not so ordain his universe.

“Justly proud of our race, we refuse to amalgamate with the Negro, but the Negro is an American citizen, and is protected as such by guarantees of the Constitution that are as irrepealable almost as the Bill of Rights itself. Nor, if such a thing as repealing these guarantees were possible, would it be wise for the South. Suppose we admit the oft-reiterated proposition that no two races so distinct as the Caucasian and the Negro can live together on terms of perfect equality; yet it is equally true that without some access to the ballot, present or prospective, some participation in the government, no inferior race in an elective republic could long protect itself against reduction to slavery in many of its substantial forms—and God knows the South wants no more of that curse.”

Men of the type of Mr. Fleming are far in the minority in the South; they are so few as yet as to count, politically speaking, for little or nothing. But the fact that they are there, that they are not afraid to speak out, even though it ruins them politically, is significant and hopeful.

Ante-bellum Aggression

Now it is this way with a party having only one issue: when attacked, it can only become more and more violent and vociferous upon that issue. And this is what we discover in the South: an increasing bitterness of leaders like Tillman and Vardaman, for they know that their own existence and that of the party which they represent depends upon keeping the Negro issue prominent. The very fact that they are violent is significant: it shows that they recognise powerful and growing new elements in the South, which, though not yet apparent politically, are getting hold of the people.

In other words, the present group of autocratic leaders is seeking at any length to defend itself. And its work is not only defensive, it is also offensive. It must be. The institution of slavery might have lasted many years longer if the Southern leaders had been content with the slave territory they already held. But they were not so content. They tried to extend slavery to the new territories of the Union, and it was this aggression that was the chief immediate cause of the Civil War. It was the struggle over Missouri and Kansas, and the policy of the country regarding the new West, whether it should be admitted slave or free, which precipitated hostilities.

“Continual aggression,” John Hay once said, “is the necessity of a false position.” The ante-bellum Southern leaders saw that they must either extend their institution or else face its ultimate extinction.

At the present time we have a repetition of the ante-bellum aggression. As it happened then, we have speakers like Tillman and others coming North urging the validity of the Southern treatment of the Negro. Writers like Thomas Dixon rekindle old fires of hatred. At the same moment that Tillman is abusing the North for its interest in Southern education, he himself is speaking from Northern platforms to make sentiment for the Southern position. So we have the extension of disfranchisement and “Jim Crow” laws to the new Western state of Oklahoma and the agitation for disfranchisement in Maryland. So we have the advancing demand by Southerners in Congress for the repeal of the XV Amendment. And just recently Congressman Heflin of Alabama has introduced a bill seeking to provide for “Jim Crow” distinctions upon the street-cars of Washington. How all this recalls the efforts of the ante-bellum Southern Congressmen to force the United States Government to take the Southern position on the slavery question!

Fighting to Put the Negro Down

I have recently read some of the voluminous discussions upon the subject of slavery which took place before the Civil War, and I have been astonished to find the arguments of the Southern political leaders of to-day almost identical in substance (though changed somewhat in form) with the reasoning of the old slave-owning class. One hears the same arguments regarding the physiological and ethnological inferiority of all coloured men to all white men: the argument that “one drop of Negro blood makes a Negro,” and even that the Negro is not a human being at all, but a beast.

I have before me a book recently published by a Bible house (of all places!) in St. Louis and widely circulated in the South. It is entitled “Is the Negro a Beast?” and it goes on to prove by Biblical quotation that he has no soul! Being a beast, it becomes a small matter to kill him.

One also hears the argument now, as in slavery times, of the divine right of the white man to rule the Negro. “God intended the white man to rule,” says Vardaman, “and the Negro to be a humble servant.” And finally there is the frank argument of physical force; that the white man, being strong, will and must rule the Negro.

Hoke Smith to-day is supporting much the same position that Robert Toombs held before the war. Of course Hoke Smith has receded from the belief in the chattel slavery of the Negro for which Toombs contended; but in many other respects he evidently believes that the Negro should be reduced (as Ex-Congressman Fleming of Georgia says in the quotation given above) “to slavery in many of its substantial forms.” In order to validate its position and keep its place (and make the Negro keep his) the white aristocracy has been forced to defend the doctrine of all monarchies and aristocracies—the inequality of men in all respects. Hoke Smith states the fundamental assumption thus plainly in his address (June 9, 1906):

“I believe the wise course is to plant ourselves squarely upon the proposition in Georgia that the Negro is in no respect the equal of the white man, and that he cannot in the future in this state occupy a position of equality.”

Both the South and the North Undemocratic

Thus I have attempted to present the political situation in the South and the reasoning which underlies it. It possesses a large significance for the entire country.

Here is the fact: the war and the emancipation proclamation did not make the South completely democratic; it merely cut away one bulwark of aristocracy—slavery. The South is still dominated by the aristocratic idea, and more or less frankly so. The South has admitted only grudgingly, and not yet fully, the “poor white” man to democratic political fellowship. There are, as I have shown, hundreds of thousands of disfranchised white Americans in the South. Moreover many white leaders look askance on the new Italian immigrants, though they, too, are white men. The extreme point of view in regard to the foreigner was expressed in a speech by the Hon. Jeff Truly, candidate for governor of Mississippi, at Magnolia in that state on March 18, 1907:

“I am opposed to any inferior race. The Italian immigration scheme does not settle the labour question; Italians are a threat and a danger to our racial, industrial, and commercial supremacy. Mississippi needs no such immigration. Leave your lands to your own children. As governor of the state, I promise that not one dollar of the state shall be spent for the immigration of any such.”

As for the Negro, of course, the South has never believed in a democracy which really includes him.

But neither does the North. When we get right down to it, the controlling white men in the North do not believe in an inclusive democracy much more than the South. I have talked with many Northerners who go South, and it is astonishing to see how quickly most of them adopt the Southern point of view. For it is the doctrine which many of them, down in their hearts, really believe.

In reality the North also has an aristocratic government, an oligarchy based upon wealth and property, which dominates politics and governs the country more or less completely. Roosevelt has been fighting some of the more boisterous aspects of the rule of this oligarchy—and has showed the country how powerful it is!

The Underman Fighting All Over the World

It is curious, indeed, when one’s attention is awakened to the facts, how strong the parallel is between the South and the North. I mean here a parallel not in laws or even in customs, but in spirit, in the living reality which lies down deep under institutions, which is, after all, the only thing that really counts.

The cause of all the trouble in the North is similar to what it is in the South: the underman will not keep his place. He is restless, ambitious, he wants civil, political, and industrial equality. Thus we see the growth of labour organisations, and the spread of populists and socialists, who demand new rights and a greater share in the products of labour. They will not, as Hoke Smith says of the Negroes, “content themselves with the place of inferiority.” The essential feature of the history of the last five years in this country, and it will go down in history as the beginning of great things, has been the vague, crudely powerful effort of the underman (half his strength wasted because he is blind) to limit in some degree the power of this moneyed aristocracy. Such is the meaning of the demand for trust and railroad legislation, such the significance of the insurance investigation, such the effort to curb the power of men like Rockefeller, Harriman, Morgan.

So the North, in spirit, also disfranchises its lower class. It does it by the purchase at elections in one form or another of its “poor whites” and its Negroes. What else is the meaning of Tammany Hall and the boss and machine system in other cities? Tammany Hall is our method of disfranchisement: it is our cunning machine for nullifying the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. While the South is disfranchising by legislation, the North is doing it by cash.

The Question We Are Coming To

I have spoken of the lack of free speech in the South; but that is not peculiar to the South. Though there is undoubtedly a far greater intellectual freedom to-day in the North than in the South, yet the North has disciplined more than one professor for his utterances on the trust or railroad questions. South or North, it is dangerous to attack the entrenched privilege of those in control.

We criticise the frankness of Vardaman in advocating different standards of justice for white men and Negroes, but do we not have the same custom in the North? How extremely difficult it is sometimes to get a rich criminal into jail in the North!

In short, we are coming again face to face in this country with the same tremendous (even revolutionary) question which presents itself in every crisis of the world’s history:

“What is democracy? What does democracy include? Does democracy really include Negroes as well as white men? Does it include Russian Jews, Italians, Japanese? Does it include Rockefeller and the Slavonian street-sweeper? And Tillman and the Negro farmhand?”

CHAPTER XIII

In a former chapter I showed how the Negroes of the country are divided into two parties or points of view, the greater led by Booker T. Washington, the lesser by W. E. B. DuBois. Washington’s party is the party of the opportunist and optimist, which deals with the world as it is: it is a constructive, practical, cheerful party. It emphasises duties rather than rights. Dr. DuBois’s party, on the other hand, represents the critical point of view. It is idealistic and pessimistic: a party of agitation, emphasising rights rather than duties.

But these two points of view are by no means peculiar to Negroes: they divide all human thought; and the action and reaction between them is the mode of human progress.

Division of White Leadership in the South

White leadership in the South, then, is divided along similar lines with Negro leadership—a party of rights and a party of duties. But with this wide difference: among the Negroes as I showed, the party of agitation and criticism led by DuBois is far inferior both numerically and in influence to the party of opportunity and duties led by Washington. For the Negroes have been forced to concede the futility of trying to progress by political action and legislation, by rights specified but not earned. Washington’s preaching has been:

“Stop thinking about your rights and get down to work. Get yourself right and the world will be all right.”

But among the white people of the South the party of agitation and the emphasis of rights rather than duties is still far in the ascendency. Led by such men as Tillman, Vardaman, Jeff Davis, Hoke Smith, and others, it controls, for the present, the policies of the entire South. It has much to say of the rights of the white man, very little about his duties. It is, indeed, doing for the whites by agitation and legislation (often a kind of force) exactly what Dr. DuBois would like to do for the Negro, if he could.

“Agitate, object, fight,” say both Tillman and DuBois.

“Work,” says Washington.

Now, the same logic of circumstances which produced Booker T. Washington and his significant movement among the Negroes has produced a group of new and highly able white leaders. These new leaders saw that agitation (while most necessary in its place) would not, after all, build up the South; they saw that although the sort of leader typified by Tillman and Vardaman was passing laws and winning elections, he was not, after all, getting anywhere; that race feeling was growing more bitter, often to the injury of Southern prosperty; that progress is not built upon stump speeches. The answer to all this was plain enough.

“Let us stop talking, forget the race problem, and get to work. It does not matter where we take hold, but let us go to work.”

And the doctrine of work in the South has become a great propaganda, almost, indeed, a passion. It has found expression in a remarkable growth of industrial activities, cotton-mills, coal-mines, iron and steel industries; in new methods of farming; in spreading railroads. But more than all else, perhaps, it has developed a new enthusiasm for education, not only for education of the old classical sort, but for industrial and agricultural education—the training of workers. All this, indeed, represents the rebound from years of agitation in which the Negro has been “cussed and discussed,” as one Southerner put it to me, beyond the limit of endurance. Wherever I went in the South among the new industrial and educational leaders I found an active distaste for the discussion of the Negro problem. These men were too busy with fine new enterprises to be bothered with ancient and unprofitable issues.

New Prescriptions for Solving the Negro Problem

When I asked Professor Dillard of New Orleans how he thought the Negro question should be treated, he replied:

“With silence.”

“My prescription,” says President Alderman in his address on “Southern Idealism,” “is ‘silence and slow time,’ faith in the South, and wise training for both white and black.”

Edgar Gardner Murphy of Alabama, himself one of the new leaders, has thus outlined the position of the rising Southern leadership:

“The South is growing weary of extremists and of sensational problem-solvers.... Our coming leadership will have a sense of proportion which will involve a steady refusal to be stampeded by antique nightmares and ethnological melodrama. It will possess an increasing passion for getting hold of the real things in a real world. And it will ... deal with one task at a time. It will subordinate paper schemes of distant amelioration to duties that will help right now.”

Emphasis here is laid upon “real things in a real world” and “duties that will help right now”; and that is the voice everywhere of the new statesmanship.

But let us be clear upon one point at the start. The platforms of these parties are matters of emphasis. One emphasises rights; the other emphasises duties. I have no doubt that Booker T. Washington believes as firmly in the rights of the Negro as any leader of his race; he has merely ceased to emphasise these rights by agitation until his people have gained more education and more property, until by honest achievement they are prepared to exercise their rights with intelligence.

In the same way, the views of many of the new Southern white leaders of whom I shall speak in this article have not radically changed, so far as the Negro is concerned; some of them, I have found, do not differ from Tillman upon essential points; but, like Washington, they have decided not to emphasise controversial matters, and go to work and develop the South, and the people of the South, for the good of the whole country. If the test has to come in the long run between white men and coloured men, as it will have to come and is coming all the time, they want it to be an honest test of efficiency. The fittest here, too, will survive (there is no escaping the great law!), but these new thinkers wish the test of fitness to be, not mere physical force, not mere brute power, whether expressed in lynching or politics, but the higher test of real capacity. They have supreme confidence that the white man is superior on his merits in any contest; and Washington, on his side, is willing to (indeed, he must) take up the gauntlet thus thrown down.

The condition in the South may be likened to a battle in which the contestants, weary of profitless and wordy warfare, are turning homeward to gather up new ammunition. Each side is passionately getting education, acquiring land, developing wealth and industry, preparing for the struggles of the future. And it is a fine and wholesome tendency. In a large sense, indeed, this movement typifies the progressive thought of the entire country for it means a sincere attempt to change the plane of battle (for battle there must be) from one of crude, primitive force, whether physical, political, or, indeed, industrial, to one of intellectual efficiency or usefulness to society.

And these working idealists of both races understand one another better than most people think. Dr. Mitchell and President Alderman understand Booker T. Washington, and he understands them. This is not saying that they agree. But agreement upon every abstract principle is not necessary where both parties are hard at work at practical, definite, and immediate tasks.

Self-Criticism in the South

The new Southern statesmanship began (as all new movements begin) with self-criticism. Henry W. Grady, a real statesman, by criticising the old order of things, announced the beginning of the “New South”—an active, working, hopeful South.

He saw the faults of the old exclusive agricultural life and the danger of low-class, uneducated labour, and he urged industrial development and a better school system. R. H. Edmonds of Baltimore, through the Manufacturers’ Record, and many other able business leaders have done much to bring about the new industrial order: the day of new railroads, cotton-mills, and coal-mines; the day of cities.

But it is in the educational field that the development of the new statesmanship has been most remarkable. Although it was unfortunate in one way that so much of the political leadership of the South should have fallen to men of the type of Vardaman, Jeff Davis, and Heflin, it is highly fortunate in another way. For it has driven the broadest and ablest minds in the South to seek expression in other lines of activity, in industry and in the church, but particularly in educational leadership. It is not without profound significance that the great American, General Lee, turned his attention and gave his highest energies after Appomattox, not to politics, but to education. The South to-day has a group of schoolmen who are leaders of extraordinary force and courage. The ministry has also attained an influence in the South which it does not possess in most parts of the North. The influence of Bishop Galloway of Mississippi, Dr. John E. White and Dr. C. B. Wilmer of Atlanta, and many others has been notable.

For many years after the war the South was passive with exhaustion. Young men, who were not afraid, had to grow up to the task of reconstruction. And no one who has not traced the history of the South since the war can form any conception of the magnitude of that task. It was essentially the building of a new civilisation. The leaders were compelled not only to face abject poverty, but they have had to deal constantly with the problem of a labouring class just released from slavery. At every turn, in politics, in industry, in education, they were confronted with the Negro and the problem of what to do with him. Where one school-house would do in the North, they were compelled to build two school-houses, one for white children, one for black. It took from twenty-five to forty years of hard work after the war before the valuation of wealth in the South had again reached the figures of 1860. The valuations in the year 1890 for several of the states were less than in 1860. South Carolina in 1900—forty years after the beginning of the war—had only just caught up with the record of 1860. Since 1890, however, the increase everywhere has been swift and sure.

Courage and Vision of New Leaders

Well, it required courage and vision in the earlier days to go before a poverty-stricken people, who had not yet enough means for living comfortably, and to demand of them that they build up and support two systems of education in the South. And yet that was exactly the task of the educational pioneers. Statesmanship, as I have said, begins with self-criticism. While the mere politician is flattering his followers and confirming them in their errors, the true statesman is criticising them and spurring them to new beliefs and stronger activities. While the politician is pleading rights, the statesman also dares to emphasise duties. While the politicians in the South (not all, but many of them) have been harping on race prejudice and getting themselves elected to office by reviving ancient hatred, these new statesmen have been facing courageously forward, telling the people boldly of the conditions of illiteracy which surround them, and demanding that schools be built and every child, white and black, be educated. In many cases they have had to overcome a settled prejudice against education, especially education of Negroes; and after that was overcome they have had to build up a sense of social responsibility for universal education before they could count on getting the money they needed for their work.

After the war the North, in one form or another, poured much money into the South for teaching the Negroes; lesser sums, like those coming from the Peabody fund, were contributed toward white schools. But in the long run there can be no real education which is not self-education; outside influences may help (or indeed hurt), but until a state—like a man—is inspired with a desire for education and a willingness to make sacrifices to get it, the people will not become enlightened.

In the middle eighties the fire of this inspiration began to blaze up in many parts of the South. Various combustible elements were present: a sense of the appalling condition of illiteracy existing in the South; a pride and independence of character which was hurt by the gifts of money from the North; a feeling that the Negroes in some instances were getting better educational opportunities than the white children; and, finally, the splendid idealism of young men who saw clearly that the only sure foundation for democracy is universal education.

Inspiration of Democracy in North Carolina

Not unnaturally the movement found its earliest expression in North Carolina, which has been the most instinctively democratic of Southern states. From the beginning of the country North Carolina, with its population of Scotch-Presbyterians and Quakers, has been inspired with a peculiar spirit of independence. When I was in Charlotte I went to see the monument which commemorates the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence: the work of a group of stout-hearted citizens who decided, before the country at large was ready for it, to declare their independence of British rule. North Carolina was among the last of the Southern states to secede from the Union, and its treatment of its Negroes all along has been singularly liberal. For example, in several Southern states little or no provision is made for the Negro defective classes, but at Raleigh I visited a large asylum for Negro deaf, dumb, and blind which is conducted according to the most improved methods. And to-day North Carolina is freer politically, the state is nearer a new and healthy party alignment, than any other Southern state except Tennessee and possibly Kentucky.

Such a soil was fertile for new ideas and new movements. In 1885 two young men, Charles D. McIver and Edwin A. Alderman, now president of the University of Virginia, began a series of educational campaigns under the supervision of the state. They spoke in every county, rousing the people to build better school-houses and to send legislators to Raleigh who should be more liberal in educational appropriations. In many cases their rallies were comparable with the most enthusiastic political meetings—only no one was asking to be elected to office, and the only object was public service. As Alderman has said:

“It was an effort to move the centre of gravity from the court-house to the school-house.”

And it really moved; the state took fire and has been afire ever since. Governor Aycock made the educational movement a part of his campaign; Governor Glenn has been hardly less enthusiastic; and the development of the school system has been little short of amazing. When I was in Raleigh last spring J. Y. Joyner, State Superintendent of Schools, who was also one of the pioneer campaigners, told me that a new school-house was being built for every day in the year, and new school libraries established at the same rate. Between 1900 and 1906 the total amount of money expended for schools in North Carolina more than doubled, and while the school population in the same years had increased only 6 per cent., the daily attendance had increased 28 per cent.

North Carolina Compared with Massachusetts

To give a graphic idea of the progress in education, I can do no better than to show the increase in public expenditures since 1872:

I have looked into the statistics and I find that North Carolina spends more per hundred dollars of taxable property for school purposes than Massachusetts, which is perhaps the leading American state in educational expenditures. In 1906 North Carolina raised $.40 on every one hundred dollars, while Massachusetts raised $.387. But this does not mean, of course, that North Carolina has reached the standard of Massachusetts; it only shows how the people, though not rich, have been willing to tax themselves. And they have only just begun; the rate of illiteracy of the state, as in all the South, is still excessive among both white and coloured people. According to the last census, North Carolina has more illiterate white people than any other state in the Union, a condition due, of course, to its large population of mountaineers. While the progress already made is notable the leaders still have a stupendous task before them. At the present time, although taxing itself more per hundred dollars’ worth of property than Massachusetts, North Carolina pays only $2.63 each year for the education of each child, whereas Massachusetts expends $24.89—nearly ten times as much.

I do not wish to over-emphasise the work in North Carolina; I am merely using conditions there as a convenient illustration of what is going on in greater or less degree all over the South. One of the group of early enthusiasts in North Carolina was P. P. Claxton, who is now in charge of the educational campaign in Tennessee. With President Dabney, formerly of the University of Tennessee and State Superintendent Mynders, Mr. Claxton has conducted a state-wide campaign for education. Every available occasion has been utilised: picnics, court-days, Decoration Days: and often the audiences have been larger and more enthusiastic than political rallies. Indeed, the meetings have been carried on much like a political campaign. At one time over one hundred speakers were in the field. Every county in the state was stumped, and in two years it was estimated that over half of the entire population of the state actually attended the meetings. Labour unions and women’s clubs were stirred to activity, resolutions were passed, politicians were called upon to declare themselves, and teachers’ organisations were formed. The result was most notable. In 1902 the state expended $1,800,000 for educational purposes; in 1908—six years later—the total will exceed $4,000,000.

A similar campaign has been going on in Virginia, under the auspices of the Coöperative Educational Association, in which the leaders have been Dr. S. C. Mitchell, Professor Bruce Payne, President Alderman, and others. In this work Ex-Governor Montague has also been a force for good, both while he was governor and since, and Governor Swanson at present is actively interested. Local leagues were formed in every part of the state to the number of 324. Negroes have also organised along the same line and now have ten local associations in five counties.

How the South Is Taxing Itself

One of the most striking features of the movement has been the development of the system of local taxation for school purposes—which is a long step in the direction of democracy. In the past the people have looked more or less to some outside source for help—to state or national funds, or the private gifts of philanthropists, or they have depended upon private schools—but now they are voting to take the burden themselves. In other words, with the building up of a popular school system, supported by local taxation, education in the South is becoming, for the first time, democratic. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this movement in stimulating the local pride and self-reliance of the people, or in inspiring each community with educational enthusiasm.

Another development of profound influence has been going on in the South. As I have already pointed out, the so-called “Northern philanthropist” has long been interested in Southern education, especially Negro education. For years his activities awakened, and indeed still awaken, a good deal of hostility in some parts of the South. Many Southerners have felt that the Northerners, however good their intentions, did not understand Southern conditions, and that some of the money was expended in a way that did not help the cause of progress in the South.

South and North Work Together

But both the Northerners (whatever their mistakes in method may have been) and the new Southern leaders were intensely and sincerely interested in the same thing: namely, better education and better conditions in the South. It was natural that these two groups of earnest and reasonable men should finally come together in a spirit of coöperation; and this is, indeed, what has happened. Out of a series of quiet conferences held in the South grew what has been called the “Ogden movement” and the Southern Education Board. This organisation was made up of three different classes of men: first, a group of the Southern leaders of whom I have spoken—Mitchell, Alderman, Dabney, Curry, Houston, Hill, McIver, Claxton, Edgar Gardner Murphy, Sydney J. Bowie, and Henry E. Fries; second, Southern men who, living in the North, were yet deeply interested in the progress of the South—men like Walter H. Page, George Foster Peabody, and Frank R. Chambers; and, finally, the Northerners—Robert C. Ogden, who was president of the board, William H. Baldwin, H. H. Hanna, Dr. Wallace Buttrick, Albert Shaw, and Dr. G. S. Dickerman.

One of the inspirers of the movement, also a member of the board, was Dr. H. B. Frissell, who followed General Armstrong as principal of Hampton Institute.

Each year conferences have been held in the South, a feature of which has been the “Ogden Special”—a special train from the North bringing Northern citizens to Southern institutions and encouraging a more intimate acquaintanceship on both sides. No one influence has been more potent than this in developing a spirit of nationalisation in the Southern educational movement.

So far in this chapter I have had very little to say about the Negro, and especially Negro education. It is important to know the view of the new leadership on this question. I have shown in previous articles that the majority view in the South was more or less hostile to the education of the Negro, or, at least, to his education beyond the bare rudiments.

The new leaders have recognised this feeling, and while without exception they believe that the Negro must be educated and most of them have said so openly, the general policy has been to emphasise white education and unite the people on that.

“In education,” one of the leaders said to me, “it doesn’t matter much where we begin. If we can arouse the spirit of the school, the people are going to see that it is as important to the state to have a trained Negro as it is to have a trained white man.”

One of the troubles in the South, one of the reasons for the prejudice against education, and particularly Negro education, has arisen from the fact that what has been called education was not really education at all. In the first place many of the schools have been so poor and the teachers so inefficient that the “education” acquired was next to worthless. There was not enough of it, nor was it of a kind to give the Negro any real hold upon life, and it often hurt him far more than it helped. Much of the prejudice in the South against Negro education is unquestionably due to the wretched school system, which in many places has not really educated anybody. But, deeper than all this, the old conception in the South of a school was for a long time the old aristocratic conception—what some one has called “useless culture”—of educating a class of men, not to work, but to despise work. That idea of education has wrought much evil, especially among the Negroes. It has taught both white and coloured men, not the doctrine of service, which is necessary to democracy, but it has given them a desire for artificial superiority, which is the characteristic of aristocracies. It has made the Negro “uppish” and “bumptious”; it has caused some white men to argue their superiority when they had no basis of accomplishment or usefulness to make them really superior.

The Inspiration of Hampton Institute

But when the idea of education began to be democratic, when men began to think more of their duties than of their rights, a wholly new sort of school appeared; and it appeared first among the Negroes. The country has not yet begun to realise the debt of gratitude which it owes to the promoters of Hampton Institute—to the genius of General Armstrong, its founder and to the organising ability of Dr. H. B. Frissell who followed him. These men will be more highly honoured a hundred years from now than they are to-day, for Americans will then appreciate more fully their service to the democracy.

The “Hampton idea” is the teaching of work—of service, of humility, of duties to God and to man. It is in the highest sense the democratic idea in education. And it has come, as most great movements have come, from the needs and the struggles of those who are downtrodden and outcast. And how wonderfully the idea has spread! Out of Hampton sprung Tuskegee and Calhoun and Kowaliga and scores of other Negro schools, until to-day nearly all Negro institutions for higher training in the South have industrial or agricultural departments.

The best Southern white people were and are friendly to schools of this new type. They thought at first that Hampton and Tuskegee were going to train servants in the old personal sense of servants who become only cooks, butlers, and farmers, and many still have that aristocratic conception of service. But the “Hampton idea” of servants is a much greater one, for it is the democratic idea of training men who will serve their own people and thereby serve the country. Men who graduate from Hampton and Tuskegee become leaders of their race. They buy and cultivate land, they set up business establishments—in short, they become producers and state-builders in the largest sense.

New World Idea of Education

The idea of Hampton is the new world idea of education, and white people in the South (and in the North as well) are now applying it everywhere in their educational movements. Agricultural and industrial schools for white boys and girls are spreading throughout the South: schools to teach work, just as Hampton teaches it. Only last year the state of Georgia provided for eleven new agricultural schools in various parts of the state, and there is already talk in the South, as in the North, of agricultural training in high schools. These men, white and black, who are educated for democratic service will in time become masters of the state.

The new leaders, then, of whom I have spoken, do not oppose Negro education: they favour it and will go forward steadily with the task of bring it about. So far, the Negro public schools have felt little of the new impulse; in some states and localities, as I have shown in other chapters, the Negro schools have actually retrograded, where the white schools have been improving rapidly. But that is the continuing influence of the old leadership; the new men have not yet come fully into their own.

I could quote indefinitely from the real statesmen of the South regarding Negro education, but I have too little space. Senator Lamar of Mississippi once said:

“The problem of race, in a large part, is a problem of illiteracy. Most of the evils which have grown up out of the problem have arisen from a condition of ignorance, prejudice and superstition. Remove these and the simpler elements of the question will come into play.... I will go with those who will go furthest in this matter.”

No higher note has been struck in educational ideals than in the Declaration of Principles adopted last winter (1907) at the meeting of the Southern Educational Association at Lexington, Ky., an exclusively Southern gathering of white men and women. Their resolutions, which for lack of space cannot be here printed in full, should be read by every man and woman in the country who is interested in the future of democratic institutions. I copy here only a few of the declarations: