The man who limits himself to become a skilled workman, or a successful
tradesman anywhere, must drop his personal grievances, and not attempt
to father the evils and troubles of the race upon himself.
Who cares about the downtrodden condition of Ireland? The Irishman who
is constantly calling attention to the heel of the oppressor upon his
neck, makes a poor workman and remains stationary in the lower level.
The Jew who talks about the sufferings of his race receives but little
sympathy because he is referring to ancient history. So it is with the
others and so it is with everybody who attempts to take upon his own
shoulders the ills and burdens of the whole. In the first place, it is
not his business, and in the second place, people around him are
fighting their way up, while he is always looking down to see how far he
must fall, and he gets dizzy and does fall.
It is an old but true saying applicable to Colored Americans as it is
applied to everybody else: “Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep,
and you weep alone.”
There is one subject of the greatest importance to Colored Americans,
because the opportunities are enormous, but they will be lost in the
course of time, and can never be regained.
That subject is the land question; the farm problem.
It is almost like sounding a tocsin to repeat what everybody is saying,
every economist urging, and every civic reformer giving as the remedy
for overcrowded cities, and a cure for vice and crime: “Back to the
farm.”
In the “Wise man’s philosophy,” every Colored American is advised to
become a land owner. Get an acre, two acres, ten acres, twenty acres,
forty acres, and so on. Why? There are two good reasons why:
1. Every man must have a home of some kind unless he prefers to be a
tramp or a beggar with his hand held out for pennies.
2. There is no possible uplift without being a producer of something,
and land offers the easiest solution of the production problem.