visible signs of our endeavors to learn a business while conducting
it. Yet it is quite gratifying to notice an improvement. Our ventures
are taking on more and more the general character of business, and
losing the less desirable ones of race peculiarities.
What are the causes of so many failures among our enterprises,
especially those that gave promise of great success? This question
like the historic ghost will not down, but walks at unseemly hours,
both by day and by night, calling for an adjustment of our commercial
and economic sins, that it may go to its rest.
Our men do not have that thorough grasp of business principles, that
comes with years of experience. One cause for our mistakes is that we
do not have the opportunity of apprenticeship. The white youth enters
an establishment, and step by step learns a business before he starts
in it for himself. He thereby places a large factor of success to his
credit.
The Negro goes into business without that intimate knowledge that is
so essential, and stumbles into success or into failure. But this
condition is gradually changing. We have been in active life long
enough to have somewhat of an apprentice class of our own. Here and
there we find men, who have, through this system gained a knowledge
that gives them a decided advantage. It is through these means that we
hope to improve the personnel of our merchant class, the character of
our enterprises, and increase our patronage because of the excellency
of the service.
One great need of our enterprises is the freedom of location.
Experience and capital are both seriously hampered by want of proper
place to house business. I have seen a prosperous merchant move across
a street and fail. I have seen a splendid business carried around a
corner and utterly destroyed.
If this is so with those who have choice of places, how much more must
it be so with us who must take what we can get, and what wonder is it
that we utterly fail, or that we imbibe the squalor and shiftlessness
of the miserable places we must occupy. All life is subject to the
same general physiological influences. Man and plant alike flourish in
the sunshine, and fade and weaken in the damp and dark. Our business
languishes as much from environment as from any other cause. Trade is
a sensitive thing and increases or decreases according to fixed laws,
and there must be more than goods to attract active patronage. Grant
us this freedom of location and our road to success through business
ventures would be much shortened.
I do not lay our failures to external causes alone. There are other
and as grave ones within. Certain economic exactions must be complied
with before success is ever assured. Some do not choose the pursuits
for which they are best fitted, but strike out boldly and confidently,
forgetful that adaptability is always an essential factor in success.
Some are unable to carry out their plans from lack of capital. This
has also kept many from getting the business training that is so
necessary, and we therefore have less merchants and more storekeepers.
We must know that business is progressive and demands an ideal. The
whole system of Southern commercial life has been revolutionized, but
the revolution is the product of a great evolution.
Under these conditions, have our business and professional men done
their best to attract and hold the patronage of our people, or have
they been content to drift along and catch whatever may come their
way? Have they realized that they have obligations as well as those to
whom they would sell? They have not done all of their duty, nor have
they been as progressive as they might have been. Yet when we think of
the severe handicaps they have had, we feel that they have done
remarkably well. Life is a continual comparison, to-day with
yesterday, this year with last. In the comparison we see better
merchants, better stores, and higher business ideals among us. These
appeal to us very sensibly, and we give more and more liberally of our
patronage.
We are apt to forget the terrible handicaps that faced us as a people
not so long ago, and the commercial ones that face our business men of
to-day. We grow impatient with their mistakes and twit them because
they are unable to display as large and as valuable a stock as some
one else, or because of their shabby establishments. We are too
exacting. We are not as generously inclined towards our enterprises as
we should be, and it is only when we put ourselves in places that
require patronage, that we can understand why so many fail. The power
to discriminate between the useful and useless is born of experience
and is of slow growth. The struggle between the right and wrong, the
necessary and unnecessary is the heritage that came to us with our
sudden birth of racehood. All fields of endeavor are new to us, and
even when there are no restrictions, our adjustment must be slow.
For us to rally to our enterprises simply because they are ours, would
bring temporary but not permanent success. The latter can only come by
normal means. Abnormal conditions are not lasting. They may hold for a
time and even prosper, yet they must ultimately fail, and then affairs
will follow their natural tendency, and seek the normal. The
restrictions that press us so, must in time yield to this law, and all
efforts to rally to our enterprises from pride, and not from reason,
must follow the same fate. There are a hundred cents in a dollar but
no sentiment. Lessen its purchasing value and you lessen the desire to
purchase.
We may rally to enterprises simply because Negroes are the projectors,
but we soon begin to cast about for reasons for our patronage, and if
we find none to outweigh self-interest we soon drop off. But if we
find good reason for our support, we soon lose the idea of race pride,
in the greater idea that our merchant is a splendid business man.
The best agents for securing active support for our enterprises are
the attractions that these enterprises hold within themselves. Our
intelligent and thrifty merchants, with their well appointed stores,
and enlarged stock are to settle this problem of patronage, because
they have within their keeping, the means to develop the normal
conditions of trade and to build up a demand for their wares.
TOPIC XII.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY MRS. WARREN LOGAN.
[Illustration: Mrs. Warren Logan]
MRS. WARREN LOGAN.
Mrs. Warren Logan, whose maiden name was Adella Hunt, was
born in a Georgia village after the close of the Civil War.
When asked for this sketch, she said: "There is little to
tell, as my busy life has been without romantic event. I was
not born a slave, nor in a log cabin. To tell the truth, I
got my education by no greater hardship than hard work,
which I regard as exceedingly healthful."
It is known that she has an inheritance of blood, tradition
and history of which any American woman might be proud.
Her early education was of a private nature. In 1881 she was
graduated from Atlanta University as a bright member of one
of its brightest classes.
Two years of teaching in an American Missionary School in a
South Georgia town, where she was also a city missionary,
prepared her for more advanced work, which opened to her at
Tuskegee, Ala.
In 1883 Miss Hunt joined Mr. Washington, Olivia Davidson,
Warren Logan and the handful of teachers who were the
originators of the now famous Industrial School.
From the first she fitted into the activities and spirit of
the school and became Miss Davidson's right hand helper. She
succeeded to the position of Lady Principal when Miss
Davidson became Mrs. Booker T. Washington. In this position
Miss Hunt emphasized the academic side of the school and
also urged the physical development of the girls. Her own
line of teaching was the normal training of student
teachers. Her services were constantly in demand for Peabody
and other teachers' institutes in Georgia and Alabama.
In 1888 Miss Hunt was married to Warren Logan, treasurer of
the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Since that
time she has ordered her household, written a little, read
much, completed the Chautauqua Course, and kept abreast with
the times. While she has given her best thought to her
husband and children, she has kept in touch with the school
and has lent a hand to the Woman's Club.
In these days of specialists among physicians and of specialists among
students of social science it seems rather presumptuous for a teacher
to attempt any formal discussion of causes and remedies for the high
death rate among Negroes in the cities of the South. A few
suggestions, however, may serve to draw more attention to this vital
subject.
The sections of the cities inhabited by Negroes are generally the most
unsanitary. The house in which the average Negro family lives is
poorly built and too small. Frequently old houses are set aside as too
far gone for any except Negro tenants. In many instances these
dilapidated houses contain germs of disease which it is practically
impossible for the young and the feeble to withstand. The food, fuel,
clothing and general comforts of a family thus housed are
insufficient. Food plays too large a part in the havoc made by death
among Negroes. In many instances, there is great intemperance in both
eating and drinking. With another large class there is actual scarcity
of food and that, too, often of poor quality. Add to this,
irregularity of meals and poor cooking and one can not wonder at the
low state of health nor even at the excessive mortality.
One of the most serious phases of ignorance is criminal carelessness
in regard to nutrition. Cooking is that part of household work which
almost every woman undertakes and very few understand, and herein lies
the foundation of disease.
The long death-roll among Negroes contains an excessive number of
infants. Careful investigation shows that this slaughter of innocents
is due in large measure to improper feeding. Some mothers must be away
from their babies earning bread and shelter. Others leave their little
ones for less worthy and less honorable purposes. Others neglect their
offspring because they have a fancied or cultivated dislike of
children. It is a sad day for a people when happy motherhood
declines. Man has devised successful substitutes for natural food for
babies, but these should be used only when the best good of all
concerned can be subserved thereby. Nature's ways are wisest and best,
and parents must try to walk in those ways if they would have their
children have life and have it abundantly.
Far be it from us here to attempt a technical discussion of
tuberculosis, but in plain simple language, let us cite a few facts in
regard to lung diseases among Negroes.
The oft repeated statement that the Negro slave did not have
consumption, cannot be verified, for lack of authentic records on the
subject. The Negro free, however, is dying of consumption and kindred
diseases in appallingly large numbers.
Many theories in regard to consumption have been exploded, but it is
acknowledged by all, to be an infectious disease. As such, ignorant
people do not understand how to escape it; indeed, until anti-spitting
laws are more universal and more rigidly enforced, every one may be
exposed to these deadly germs. They respect neither race lines nor
intellectual grades. The Negro, however, seems to be peculiarly
susceptible to this class of ailments. 1. Because of comparatively
small lung capacity. 2. Because of general low nutrition. 3. Because
of lack of bath rooms and their proper use. 4. Immorality. 5. General
indifference to the incipient stages of the disease. Colds and coughs
are passed by as matters of course with little or nothing done to
prevent or cure them.
The physical life and death of man has a much more intimate connection
with his moral life than is at first thought apparent. Too many
children are robbed by Sin of a child's first right, viz.: the right
to be well born. If parents have lived lives of shame and thereby
weakened their bodies, the effects of this will be a sad legacy of
weakness in the persons of their children. Men and women given to
social impurity will hardly escape the notice of those about them.
Their characters are imitated and shame and weakness, physical as well
as moral, multiplied. "Sin conceived and brought forth Death."
Among people of low intellectual development and low moral standards,
family love is below normal. With this defective class, there is much
indifference to the life and death of their dependent relatives. The
young and the aged are shamefully neglected. It is sufficient to be
bereaved--better, the relieved, to say: "The Lord's Will be done."
Remedies for these sad and unfortunate conditions are much more easily
suggested than applied.
Better environment, greater comfort in the homes, come only as a
return for money. Money will come as a return for labor. Money will
come to those who earnestly desire it, because they will work for it.
They will do whatsoever their hands find to do, accepting the pay such
labor brings, but fitting and aspiring for something better. There is
usually plenty of work for all honest, industrious Negroes in Southern
cities.
Even money may not cause the old shanty to give place to a good house
nor raise the standard of general comfort very materially, except as
the demands of the family are enlarged as a result of education. No
one factor will have such weight in the decrease of suffering and the
reduction of the high death rate as enlightenment of mind.
The system of education in vogue in Southern cities will work slowly
because up to the beginning of the twentieth century, school
attendance has not been made compulsory. There are no truant schools,
no reform schools. Idleness tends to vice. Idleness and vice are in no
way conducive to health and longevity.
Many Negroes do not want education for themselves nor for their
children. These people swell the death lists in Southern cities'
health offices to such distressingly large numbers. They are often
cared for and buried by funds from the city treasury. Would it not pay
to try compulsory education? To try teaching them to help themselves,
to save themselves?
To say that the home life of the masses must be improved is but
another way of saying they must be educated.
Among the most potent forces in the uplift of a people are the school,
the press, the courts and the church.
Under a system of compulsory education, the Negro would much sooner
learn to observe the laws of health and thus to extend his life.
When newspapers in Southern cities are fairer in their attitude toward
the black citizen, he will become a better citizen. It will increase
his respect for others and greatly increase his self respect. He will
then make more effort to live and to live well, because his life will
seem more worth living.
Every state included under the "Land of the free and the home of the
brave" should strive to make its criminal laws reformative rather than
revengeful. A very considerable number of Southern Negroes come to
their life's end in the prisons, which in no Southern state are all
that prisons should be. From a health standpoint, most of them are all
that prisons should not be.
It pays the municipality better to educate and reform its citizens
than to convict and execute them.
A cultivated, spiritual ministry will emphasize the best teaching of
the schools.
An active church will sustain a fair press; will uphold law and order;
will supplement the work of the good doctor and in various ways try to
reduce the number of funerals among the Negro population in Southern
cities.
SECOND PAPER.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?
BY HON. H. A. RUCKER.
[Illustration: Hon. H. A. Rucker.]
MR. H. A. RUCKER.
Out of the Southland--that awful crucible of prejudice and
proscription,--like steel tempered by fire, and hardened for
the practical uses of mankind, has come numerous valiant
spirits, whose advent was so timely as to have seemed
divinely inspired. Price and Cain, Elliott and Bruce,
Cailloux, and others, who have joined the silent majority,
did noble work and lived to see the race's redemption, but
it has been left for newer and younger men to complete the
structure on the foundation that was furnished by the "Old
Guard." The modern age of politics and business in the sunny
South--the home of nine-tenths of the Negroes--offers no
brighter luminary than the Hon. Henry A. Rucker of Georgia.
Young as years go, but mature in all the attributes that
command success and popular esteem, the life of Henry A.
Rucker is a priceless text-book for the aspiring
Afro-American youth. Guided upward by nothing save the lofty
counsel of a good mother and the inherent qualities of a
true gentleman, he has scaled the heights, and for himself,
has solved the problem of "how the fittest" may survive, and
is giving to the whole race the key by which he wrought out
so clear a solution. No _legerdemain_ has worked his upward
flight. The ingredients that he has utilized are simple,
even if rare, and are within the reach of the least favored
of human beings--honesty of purpose, fidelity to every trust
and adherence to the golden rule. He has always been able to
secure what was justly his without encroaching upon the
sacred rights or legitimate possessions of another.
Harboring no malice in his own bosom he has softened the
wrath of his neighbor and demonstrated how clever diplomacy
and a manly appeal to the finer instincts of a possible
enemy yields richer returns than all the force and invective
that a century could bring to bear. If the battle is to be
fought out on lines of mental competition and personal worth
rather than by balls and bayonets, Mr. Rucker has grasped
the situation and the best evidence of the wisdom of his
policy of inter-racial coöperation is the results he has
individually achieved, and the commendation freely offered
by the white and colored people who greet him day by day in
the routine of duty. Atlanta owes much to the indefatigable
energy and inexhaustible public spirit of Henry A. Rucker.
He has been active in promoting all of her interests and
that his services have been valuable is cheerfully admitted
in the Board of Trade and industrial circles. He was
conspicuous in advancing the prospects of the famous
exposition of 1895, and is now striving to round out the
work of securing a commodious federal building for the
enterprising Georgian capital. He bore the brunt of the
fight against the "Hardwick bill" and was potent in
defeating both that infamous measure and the "Payne
resolution." He has been repeatedly elected a delegate to
the national conventions of the Republican party.
Since July 26, 1897, Mr. Rucker has been collector of
internal revenue for the District of Georgia with
headquarters in his own city, Atlanta. The receipts for the
last fiscal year were more than double those of preceding
years and exceeded in the same proportion the revenues
gathered in any single year since the organization of the
state. This marvelous showing is due partially to Mr.
Rucker's prompt, thorough and painstaking plan of operation
and of course in large measure to the national prosperity,
growing out of President McKinley's shrewd financial
policies. Brilliant as has been the past of this progressive
Afro-American, the future holds out the promise of grander
achievements. The race honors Mr. Rucker and holds him close
to its heart, because he has proven himself a leader that
can be trusted. When he commands "close ranks, steady,
march," the Georgia populace goes forward in one conquering
phalanx, determined, aggressive and undaunted, remembering
that enduring power comes not by "fits and starts," but by
clinching with mailed hand the rewards that have been won.
One who has never been taught to appreciate what health is and to
understand hygienic laws can not become a safe guardian of his or her
physical being. For when this being is attacked, as is constantly the
case, by its millions of enemies, if all of its portholes have not
been properly guarded it easily falls prey to disease and death.
As a race the Negro has had neither the time nor the opportunity to
inform himself on the principles of health saving or in those of
health getting--if there be such. Both prior to and since his
emancipation his time, except nominally, has been the property of
others from whom he has barely eked out an existence, and, from a
humanitarian standpoint, has had but little interest in caring for his
health.
During the years of his enslavement, his mortality, in proportion to
his numbers and his environments, was no less than it has been since
he became a free man--and the bald statement that his death-rate
during the past thirty-eight years has greatly increased, may not be
founded on facts. Fair play in discussing this phase of the subject
demands careful and patient inquiry into the past history of a
people concerning whom little or no minute data of a national
character was kept. However, this question may not properly enter into
the subject, the contention being that the mortality among the race is
excessive, which, if true, may be accounted for in part in the
existence of certain acknowledged conditions.
Wherever the Negro has been cared for either by himself or by others
he has enjoyed the same immunity from disease and death that those of
other races have. And whenever neglected or abused, whether the
failure or fault rests with himself or others, impaired health, decay
of mind and body and death have ensued.
Compared with the masses but few Negroes at any time within the
history of the life of the race in this country, have been properly
guarded against exposure--the few who in ante bellum days were
selected as house servants and to fill other kindred places, were
measurably protected. And now the same classes and that of the more
fortunate or business classes have limited protection from more than
ordinary exposure.
The masses have always done the drudgery. And that too without
knowledge or reference to health keeping. A common practice of
employed Negroes is to go or be sent on short quick errands, leaving
warm and, in this respect, comfortable places of employment without
hat or wrap to breast chilling winds or atmospheric conditions many
degrees removed from their places of services. In this practice is the
exposure from sudden changes of temperature without preparation. The
drayman, the cartman, the man in the ditch and others whose employment
is in the open air are exposed not alone by the character of the work
in which they are engaged but also by reason of the fact that six days
of the week, those in which they labor, of necessity, their clothing
is poor and shabby and their persons are ill kept. While the seventh
day finds them as a rule well clad and well shod. Then their
homes--no, their houses, partly because of circumstances beyond their
control and partly on account of their improvident natures, are little
more than shelters or huts.
These houses are built in what is known or accepted as Negro tenant
districts, and those acquainted with the localities need no evidence
to convince them that they are not sought as either health or pleasure
resorts. They are the city alley ways and the low malarial districts
where the noxious gases and foul vapors rise from emptying sewers.
More than two hundred years' application has made the Negroes
agriculturists; they have been accustomed to labor and to plenty of
nature's fresh, invigorating air; they have, because of conditions not
proper to treat here, drifted from the farms and fields into the
crowded cities, thence into the slums, to be infected with disease.
They have been thrust into prisons where they were provided with the
poorest of covering and meanest food for their bodies; where scurvy
and other loathsome diseases have made their impress upon them and
where incentive to cleanliness is as distant as the North and South
poles. Freed from prison life they have gone forth mingling with a
class of people infecting them with their scales and spreading disease
and death.