of self-help and thus justified philanthropic and missionary effort in
his behalf? The best answer to this is found not in such a shining
example of self-help as Booker Washington, but in efforts that better
represent the rank and file of the race. Take education. The African
Methodist Episcopal Church, that branch of the Methodists which has
always emphasized the race idea, from very early years took an active
interest in educational work. To-day it maintains twenty schools and
colleges--one or more in each Southern state, two in Africa, and one
in the West Indies. The property represented by these institutions is
approximately $1,500,000. The third Sunday in September is set apart
as Education Day, and on this a general collection is taken in all the
churches. The total income from all sources for the educational work
of the church is now not less than $175,000 a year. Two other distinct
branches of Negro Methodists, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion
Church and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, have sometimes
raised even more money in proportion to their membership. The Baptists
because of their church polity are of course not so thoroughly
organized. Most of the higher missionary effort of this denomination
has been done through the American Baptist Home Mission Society, which
from its headquarters in New York maintains wholly eight higher
institutions, contributing in a smaller degree to twenty preparatory
schools. The word of the secretary of this organization in a recent
report may be taken as summing up what the Negro Baptists have done
for themselves: "We are sometimes told that it is about time for the
Negroes to do something toward their own education, and some members
of our churches seem to believe that their missionary money boards and
clothes the thousands of pupils in attendance at the twenty-eight
schools of the Home Mission Society. The following facts entirely
refute these assertions: During the ten years ending March 31, 1907,
pupils paid for tuition $300,517.62; for board $954,822.01, and Negro
churches and individuals gave for the support of the work or for new
buildings to supplement the gifts of their Northern friends,
$197,995.70. This makes a total of $1,453,335.33 paid or given by the
Negroes for ten years, or $145,333.53 annually. It should be
remembered that this is only a small part of the vastly larger amount
contributed by these people for education, for all through the South
many associations have their own denominational schools, and
sacrifices are made for their maintenance which reflect credit upon
the race which is so rapidly coming forward. The Negro presidents and
principals are showing unusual wisdom in collecting funds for their
work. Negro churches, too, are taking a great interest in these
mission schools. The gifts from the Home Mission Society are hastening
the day of still larger efforts from those benefited."
Let us, however, grant, say some, that the Negro helps himself; that
is not sufficient. Anybody should help himself, anybody can; but what
is the race worth as a constructive factor in American civilization?
Is it finally to be an agency making for the upbuilding of the nation,
or simply one of the forces that retard? What is its promise in
American life?
In reply to this we recall first of all the work that has already been
remarked along industrial lines. We have seen that the nation,
especially in the South, depends upon Negro men and women as the
stable labor supply in such occupations as farming, sawmilling,
mining, cooking, and washing. Figures bearing this out have already
been given. The tremendous new emphasis on farming and mining incident
to the war is known to all. The Negro is now helping most vitally to
feed the American people and to produce the materials for
transportation and the making of munitions. Let any one ask, even the
prejudiced observer, if he would like to see every Negro in the
country out of it, and then he will decide whether economically the
Negro is a liability for the country or an asset.
Again, consider the Negro soldier. In all our history there are no
pages more heroic, more pathetic than those detailing the exploits of
the black man. We remember the Negro, three thousand strong, fighting
for the liberties of America when his own race was still held in
bondage. We remember the deeds at Port Hudson, Fort Pillow, and Fort
Wagner. We remember Santiago and San Juan Hill, not only how Negro men
went gallantly to the charge, but how a black regiment faced
pestilence and fever that the ranks of their white comrades might not
be decimated. And then Carrizal. Once more, at an unexpected moment,
the soul of the nation was thrilled by the bravery of the black
troopers of the Tenth Cavalry. Once more, despite Brownsville, the
tradition of Fort Wagner was preserved and passed on. It mattered not
that "some one had blundered." "Theirs not to make reply; theirs but
to do and die." So in the face of odds they fought by the cactus and
lay dead beneath the Mexican stars.
And now, all around us, everywhere is the greatest of all wars. Once
more has the Negro been summoned to the colors, and, because he is not
fully protected in some places, because he has not the full power of
suffrage, summoned out of all proportion to his numbers, summoned even
when he could best serve at his regular work on the farms--not because
the government intended unfairness, but because local registration
officials have not been fair, because exemption boards have not been
honest. And yet, even when physically disabled, even when he had the
roughest work to do, he has still obeyed orders, not because he was
not brave, not because he was not strong, but because he was true.
Others might desert, but not the Negro; others might be spies or
strikers, but not he--not he in time of peril. In peace or war, in
victory or danger, he, the Negro, has ever been loyal to the Stars and
Stripes.
Not only, however, does the Negro give promise because of his economic
worth; not only does he deserve the fullest rights of citizenship on
the basis of his work as a soldier; he brings nothing less than a
great spiritual contribution to civilization in America. His is a race
of enthusiasm, imagination, and high spiritual fervor. He revels in
the sighing of the wind, the falling of the stars, the laughter of
children, and already his music is recognized as the most original
that the country has produced; from his deep-toned melodies wails a
note of intolerable pathos. But over all the doubt and fear through
which it passes there still rests with the great heart of the race an
abiding trust in God. Around us everywhere are commercialism,
politics, graft--sordidness, selfishness, cynicism. We need faith and
hope and love, a new birth of idealism, more fervent faith in the
unseen; and the stone that the builders rejected is become the head of
the corner. Already the work of some members of the race has pointed
the way to great things in the realm of conscious art; but above even
art soars the great world of the spirit. This it is that America most
sadly needs; this it is that her most fiercely persecuted children
bring to her.
IX
A PLEA FOR A MORALIST
The preceding pages have more than once emphasized the need of reforms
to be made in our American life. Before all reforms, however, there
must be the guiding-star of high idealism. Only through the
inspiration of lofty spiritual motive are changes likely to be
permanent.
If now we look into our American life we are brought face to face with
the fact that in our haste to get rich or even to meet new conditions
that must legitimately be met we are in danger of losing all of our
old standards of conduct, of training, and of morality. America is
still _bourgeois_. We have hardly begun to reap the real fruits of
rich, abiding culture, and because we have not we are still wasteful,
superficial, and insincere, in our economic life, in our church life,
in our courts, in literature, in education, in every phase of
activity.
Consider national organization. We were beguiled into thinking that
our country as a whole was rich, well arrayed, amply prepared to take
care of itself, invincible beyond question. As the first six months of
the war slowly dragged by in their agonizing course, the conviction
gradually forced itself upon us that we were only in the elementary
class in economics, that we were neither organized nor prepared, and
that it was after all vitally necessary for the government to assume
official charge of the railroads. With our ideas of democracy we had
slowly drifted into crass individualism, and sooner or later that was
forced to mean selfishness. One year after the opening of the war we
still had the sad spectacle of senators fiercely assailing the
administration because of the tardiness of its shipping and airplane
programs. We should not be too hasty in finding a scapegoat for what
after all is a national delinquency. We had indeed produced such
masters in large organization as Morgan and Hill and Harriman; but the
talents of such men had not been utilized in Washington. Slowly we
have learned that our country needs its very best brains, needs them
always, and that it is folly to play petty politics when questions of
great national interest are at stake. To _politics_ as we have long
understood the term the present war should give the death-blow. Let
responsibilities gravitate to those who are able to shoulder them
without the endless coil of officialdom. Let democracy mean the
perfect freedom of the individual, the _equal_ freedom of _all_
individuals, but _not_ license, and not that the rights of one
individual shall endanger the rights of most. When the war began we
availed ourselves of the talents of Thomas Alva Edison. Suppose we had
done this ten years before. No, we were rich, comfortable, safe,
invincible. Suddenly our smug self-complacency received a shock. One
great result of this war is going to be to give us new ideas of
efficiency in our national government. We shall place greater emphasis
on having not only experts in important minor positions, but also men
of supreme business talents in the places of greatest responsibility.
We shall have a new searching of our whole system of party government,
with its arbitrary exits and entrances, and its despicable spoils
system. We shall have a glorified, a chastened, a regenerated United
States--a country about whose greatness there shall be no doubt, and
on whose honor there shall be no stain, a country that shall in the
highest sense stand for law and efficiency and justice, and one for
which not some, but _all_, would be willing to die, because all would
know that the government was thinking wisely for every one of its
citizens.
So in our courts. The same principle would work. The average citizen
in America knows only this about our courts, that he wants to keep
away from them. So far we have not been assured of justice. The poor
man has not stood an equal chance with the rich, nor the black with
the white. Money has been freely used for the changing of laws, if
need be. In South Carolina a white man stole an automobile and was
sentenced for thirty days; on the same day and by the same judge a
Negro who stole a bicycle was sent to the chain-gang for three years.
Such a travesty on justice can not much longer abide in a country that
has passed through fire. Let us turn our faces to the morning.
Our churches need a new baptism. About thirty years ago the conviction
began to force itself that somehow the church as an organization was
becoming too set and staid in its ways, that it was in fact a
beautiful antique, regarded with somewhat amused condescension by the
young men and women who played golf on Sunday or the crowds that went
to a baseball game. Suddenly we became fearfully introspective; we
studied sociology; we read "The Inside of the Cup"; we were ashamed of
the impotency of the old sermons on justification and regeneration;
and we swung to the other end of the pendulum. Our churches began to
be "institutional"; the most famous evangelist in the country became
the one who was outstanding for his use of slang; the music in Sunday
Schools became rag-time; and in general in religious services there
developed a tendency to attract the crowd by using the methods of the
vaudeville stage. Evening services in Protestant churches partook more
and more of the nature of socialistic conferences, and, in general,
dignity and reverence suffered. After a few years of this we have
found that we are just at much at fault in another way as we were
thirty years ago. We have done away with Puritanism, it is true; but
in its stead we have placed irreverence and worldliness. Such is the
situation in the church, in organized, conventional religion; when we
look at the still larger principle of vital Christianity, at the heart
of things of which mere churchgoing is only a symbol, we are still
more appalled. Neither bigotry nor irreverence is right. Young people
will not tolerate cant; but neither will they be attracted to a
worship that features what they can find better done in a theater.
Simple goodness and kindness, however, never fail to command respect.
Love is never hissed off the stage; and the love of Christ, pure and
simple, is sufficient even for the sorrow of such a sad world as ours.
What has been said about our economic life, our courts, and our
churches applies also in our home-life, in education, and in
literature. The family altar is almost extinct; children are not
properly trained in respect for their elders; and all too generally
young girls learn the lessons of extravagance and immodesty in dress.
Many of our modern methods of training have so simplified and made
easy the lessons to be learned that the boy who goes to school is in
danger of receiving little stout mental development. Excessive
emphasis on illustrations and pictures has resulted in the
"moving-picture mind" that has only a modicum of initiative on its own
account. In literature we have stodginess in style and decadence in
morals, and _vers libre_, that is to say, no verse at all. In hardly
anything does it seem that we have any art, any standards, any
_taste_. Any passing fad is sufficient to gain followers and to pose
as worthy achievement. I quote from a representative review of a
representative novel by one of the most popular writers in America:
"The reader first meets X when he is still a youth of twenty-four
enjoying a trip around the world. In Y he meets an American miss of
fifteen who falls wholly and entirely in love with him, and he, being
somewhat in love with the idea of love, imagines himself in love with
her and they become engaged. Afterward, in Paris, and a year or so
later on the way home across the Atlantic, the author makes known the
instability of the hero's character in the grosser forms of love.
Nevertheless he marries the child, barely past her middle teens, and
forthwith sets out upon a career of escapades and license.... With the
coming of the war he becomes first an ambulance driver and then an
aviator, and his long-suffering and much-forgiving wife enters a
military hospital as a nurse. But the author is discreetly silent as
to the extent to which she is impressed by his assurance that he is
going to be a good husband." This story was published by one of the
oldest, most respectable, and supposedly most conservative firms in
the United States.
It is customary for those who are brought face to face with this
irreverence, this injustice, this extravagance, and this loosening of
the moral code to pass upon the matter lightly as a mere passing
phenomenon of our industrial advance; more recently the blame has been
placed on that bearer of all burdens, the war. Such an explanation is
hardly sufficient. Even before the war we were beginning to be
influenced by continental standards. Now that the crisis is upon us
all the more do we need to think clearly and conserve our energies for
the future. Germany, under the guidance of her military philosophy,
has destroyed the sanctity of the tenderest of all institutions, the
home, encouraging temporary unions of men and women as a patriotic
duty; and France in her hour of trial has further fallen prey to
debauchery. We plead that American womanhood shall be preserved sacred
and inviolate.
All of this has very close connection with our chief subject, the
Negro. Such characteristics and tendencies in America as we have
sketched have resulted in a peculiar brand of snobbishness that has so
developed as very largely to undermine our fundamental conception of
morality. Mr. Alfred Booth Kuttner has recently written in the _Dial_
"A Study of American Intolerance," showing how the tradition of
tolerance was upset by "the aftermath of the Civil War and by the
sudden large influx of diversely alien immigrants which began during
the seventies and eighties of the last century. The first of these is
the more fundamental, and to a great extent it explains the second.
Our hostility towards the foreigner was fostered by a comparison with
the relations already existing towards a people in our midst." This
spirit of hostility of course accounts for the Chinese Exclusion bill,
for the alien land law against the Japanese in California, for the
literacy test, and even for the American attitude toward the people of
Latin-American countries; thus logically the Negro problem becomes the
final test of our democracy, the crux on which all other great social
problems have turned. We say that certain aliens are diseased or
illiterate, that they are incipient anarchists or that they make
working conditions intolerable; but let us suppose that in the main
they become otherwise, as many of every race are already. Is the
American white man, in the face of the rising brotherhood of man the
world over, going to take the position that other races, and
especially the colored races--the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindu,
the Negro--shall not occupy places of dignity and responsibility in
this country? Does he expect to maintain the position that any person
not an Anglo-Saxon, no matter how cultured or educated or talented he
may be, must forever maintain a politically and socially inferior
status in the greatest republic in the world? Such a position, we
hold, in view of the great events now taking place in Europe, is
utterly untenable. If it were the correct point of view, it would be
better that we had never fired a single gun against Germany.
THE END
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The following pages contain
advertisements of a few of the
Macmillan books on kindred subjects.
_OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS_
Each Sixty Cents
The World War and
the Road to Peace
BY T.B. McLEOD
With an Introduction by
DR. S. PARKES CADMAN
_Boards, 12mo_
This volume contains a judicial consideration of the pacifist
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An Appeal to Conscience
BY KELLY MILLER
Mr. Miller discusses the Negro problem in this book, stating
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Wake Up, America!
BY MARK SULLIVAN
There is no more pressing problem of the hour than the shipping
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Mr. Sullivan makes clear just what the present situation is,
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War Bread
BY ALONZO E. TAYLOR
This is a clear statement of the vital importance of wheat
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Where Do You Stand?
An Appeal to Americans of German Origin
BY HERMANN HAGEDORN
"A piece of reasoned justice, of kindliness and fair play, a
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The Forks of the Road
BY DR. WASHINGTON GLADDEN
Awarded the prize offered by the Church Peace Union for the best
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Americanization
BY ROYAL DIXON
What are we doing to Americanize the alien? How can we make sure
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Mobilising America
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"The book of the hour."--_New York Times._
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The Heritage
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BY WILLIAM BROWN MELONEY
A direct, uncompromising demand for a new American merchant
marine.
"In terse, thrilling, forceful language, the author of
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What's the Matter
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BY CASPAR WHITNEY
"A vital question answered intelligently, fully and without
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The Pentecost
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BY OWEN WISTER
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Their True Faith
and Allegiance
BY GUSTAVUS OHLINGER
With an Introduction by Owen Wister.
"A highly edifying exhibit of the political intrigues of Germany
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BY FRANCIS A. KELLOR
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an enlightened and united nationalism."
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
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