country life. Born in the country he is free, his thoughts and ambitions
can feed on a pure atmosphere, but he thinks his conditions and his
surroundings are circumscribed; he longs for the city, with its
bigness, its turmoil, and its conflicts. He leaves the old homestead,
the quiet village, the country people, and hies himself to the city. He
forgets to a large extent the good boy he used to be, in the desire to
keep up with the fashions and to make the people forget that he was once
a country boy. City life, as is often the case, breaks up his youth,
destroys his morals, undermines his character, steals his reputation,
and finally leaves the promising youth a wrecked man. Was the game worth
the candle?
Young men, never be ashamed of the old log-cabin in the country, or the
old bonnet your mother used to wear, or the jean pants your father used
to toil in. I had rather be a poor country boy with limited surroundings
and a pure heart than to be a city man bedecked in the latest fashions
and weighted down with money, having no morals, no character. I had
rather have the religion and faith of my fathers than to have the
highest offices. I had rather have glorious life, pure and lofty, than
to have great riches. Sir Walter Scott was right when he said:
"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim:
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
There are two old Dutch words which have resounded through the world,
"_Neen nimmer_," "No, never." The fleets of Spain heard it, and
understood it fully, when they saw the sinking Dutch ships with the
flags nailed to the shattered mainmast, crying, "_Neen nimmer_," which
indicated that they would never surrender.
Will the young men who are to be the leaders, spend their hours in
riotous living? No, never! Will they be false to duty? No, never! Will
they shirk? No, never! Will they be disloyal to self, to home, to
country, and to God? No, never!
Croesus was a rich man, a king. One day Croesus said to Solon, the
philosopher, "Do you not think I am a happy man?" Solon answered, "Alas,
I do not know, Croesus; that life is happy that ends well." A few years
later when Croesus had lost his wealth, his kingdom, and his health, and
had been deserted by those who in his days of glory ran to do his
slightest bidding, Croesus in anguish and misery exclaimed, "Solon,
Solon, thou saidst truly that life is well and happy that ends well."
O BLACK AND UNKNOWN BARDS
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?
Heart of what slave poured out such melody
As "Steal away to Jesus"? On its strains
His spirit must have nightly floated free,
Though still about his hands he felt his chains.
Who heard great "Jordan roll"? Whose starward eye
Saw chariot "swing low"? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
"Nobody knows de trouble I see?"
What merely living clod, what captive thing,
Could up toward God through all its darkness grope,
And find within its deadened heart to sing
These songs of sorrow, love, and faith, and hope?
How did it catch that subtle undertone,
That note in music heard not with the ears?
How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown,
Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears.
Not that great German master in his dream
Of harmonies that thundered 'mongst the stars
At the creation, ever heard a theme
Nobler than "Go down, Moses." Mark its bars,
How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir
The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung
Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were
That helped make history when Time was young.
There is a wide, wide wonder in it all,
That from degraded rest and servile toil
The fiery spirit of the seer should call
These simple children of the sun and soil.
O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed,
You--you alone, of all the long, long line
Of those who've sung untaught, unknown, unnamed,
Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.
You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings;
No chant of bloody war, no exulting pean
Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings
You touched in chord with music empyrean.
You sang far better than you knew; the songs
That for your listeners' hungry hearts sufficed
Still live,--but more than this to you belongs:
You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.
THE GREATEST MENACE OF THE SOUTH
WILLIAM J. EDWARDS
In every age there are great and pressing problems to be solved. Perhaps
no section of this country has been confronted with more difficult
problems than the South. I therefore wish to present what I consider to
be the greatest menace of this section.
The one thing to-day, in which we stand in greatest danger, is the loss
of the fertility of the soil. If we should lose this, as we are
gradually doing, then all is lost. If we should save it, then all other
things will be added. Our great need is the conservation and
preservation of the soil.
The increased crops which we have in the South occasionally, are not due
to improved methods of farming, but to increased acreage. Thousands of
acres of new land are added each year and our increase in farm
production is due to the strength of these fresh lands. There is not
much more woodland to be taken in as new farm lands, for this source has
been well nigh exhausted. We must then, within a few years, expect a
gradual reduction in the farm production of the South.
Already the old farm lands that have been in cultivation for the past
fifty or fifty-five years are practically worn out. I have seen in my
day where forty acres of land twenty or twenty-five years ago would
produce from twenty to twenty-five bales of cotton each year, and from
800 to 1000 bushels of corn. Now, these forty acres will not produce
more than eight or nine bales of cotton and hardly enough corn to feed
two horses. In fact, one small family cannot obtain a decent support
from the land which twenty years ago supported three families in
abundance. This farm is not on the hillside, neither has it been worn
away by erosion. It is situated in the lowlands, in the black prairie,
and is considered the best farm on a large plantation. This condition
obtains in all parts of the South today. This constant deterioration of
land, this gradual reduction of crops year after year, if kept up for
the next fifty years, will surely prove disastrous to the South.
Practically all the land in the black belt of the South is cultivated by
Negroes and the farm production has decreased so rapidly during the last
ten or fifteen years that the average Negro farmer hardly makes
sufficient to pay his rent and buy the few necessaries of life.
Of course, here and there where a tenant has been lucky enough to get
hold of some new land, he makes a good crop, but after three or four
years of cultivation, his crop begins to decrease and this decrease is
kept up as long as he keeps the land. Instead of improving, the tenant's
condition becomes worse each year until he finds it impossible to
support his family on the farm. Farm after farm is being abandoned or
given up to the care of the old men and women. Already, most of these
are too old and feeble to do effective work.
Now, the chief cause of these farms becoming less productive is the
failure on the part of the farmers to add something to the land after
they have gathered their crops. They seem to think that the land
contains an inexhaustible supply of plant food. Another cause is the
failure of the farmer to rotate his crop. There are farms being
cultivated in the South today where the same piece of land has been
planted in cotton every year for forty or fifty years. Forty years ago,
this same land would yield from one bale to one and a half per acre. And
today it will take from four to six acres to produce one bale.
Still another cause for the deterioration of the soil is erosion. There
is no effort put forth on the tenant's part to prevent his farm from
washing away. The hillside and other rolling lands are not terraced and
after being in use four or five years, practically all of these lands
are washed away and as farm lands they are abandoned. Not only are the
hillside lands unprotected from the beating rains and flowing streams,
but the bottom or lowlands are not properly drained, and the sand
washed down from the hill, the chaff and raft from previous rains soon
fill the ditches and creeks and almost any ordinary rain will cause an
overflow of these streams.
Under these conditions an average crop is impossible even in the best of
years. At present the South does not produce one-half of the foodstuff
that it consumes and if the present conditions of things continue for
the next fifty years, this section of the country will be on the verge
of starvation and famines will be a frequent occurrence. Of course,
Negro starvation will come first, but white man starvation will surely
follow. I believe, therefore, that I am justified in saying that there
is even more danger in Negro starvation than there is in Negro
domination.
I have noticed in this country that the sins of the races are
contagious. If the Negro in a community be lazy, indifferent, and
careless about his farm, the white man in the community will soon fall
into the same habit. On the other hand, if the white man is smart,
industrious, energetic and persevering in his general makeup, the Negro
will soon fall into line; so after all, whatever helps one race in the
South will help the other and whatever degrades one race in the South,
sooner or later will degrade the other.
But you may reply to this assertion by saying that the Negro can go to
the city and make an independent living for himself and family, but you
forget that all real wealth must come from the soil and that the city
cannot prosper unless the country is prosperous. When the country fails,
the city feels the effect; when the country weeps, the city moans; when
agriculture dies, all die. Such are the conditions which face us today.
Now for the remedy.
It is worth while to remember that there are ten essential elements of
plant food. If the supply of any one of the elements fails, the crop
will fail. These ten elements are carbon and oxygen taken into the
leaves of the plant from the air as carbon dioxide; hydrogen, a
constituent of water absorbed through the plant roots; nitrogen, taken
from the soil by all plants also secured from the air by legumes. The
other elements are phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and
sulphur, all of which are secured from the soil. The soil nitrogen is
contained in the organic matter or humus, and to maintain the supply of
nitrogen we should keep the soil well stored with organic matter, making
liberal use of clover or other legumes which have power to secure
nitrogen from the inexhaustible supply in the air.
It is interesting to note that one of the ablest chemists in this
country, Prof. E. W. Clark of the United States Geological Survey, has
said that an acre of ground seven inches deep contains sufficient iron
to produce one hundred bushels of corn every year for 200,000 years,
sufficient calcium to produce one hundred bushels of corn or one bale
of cotton each year for 55,000 years, enough magnesium to produce such a
crop 7,000 years, enough sulphur for 10,000 years and potassium for
2,600 years, but only enough phosphorus for 130 years. The nitrogen
resting upon the surface of an acre of ground is sufficient to produce
one hundred bushels of corn or a bale of cotton for 700,000 years; but
only enough in the plowed soil to produce fifty such crops. In other
words, there are enough of eight of the elements of plant food in the
ordinary soil to produce 100 bushels of corn per acre or a bale of
cotton per acre for each year for 2,600 years; but only enough of the
other two, phosphorus and nitrogen, to produce such crops for forty or
fifty years.
Let us grant that most of our farm lands in the South have been in
cultivation for fifty or seventy-five years, and in many instances for
one hundred years, it is readily seen that practically all of the
phosphorus and nitrogen in the plowed soil have been exhausted. Is it
any wonder then that we are having such poor crops? The wonder is that
our crops have kept up so well. Unless a radical change is made in our
mode of farming, we must expect less and less crops each year until we
have no crops, or such little that we can hardly pay the rent.
To improve and again make fertile our soils, we must restore to them the
phosphorus and nitrogen which have been used up in the seventy-five or
more crops that we have gathered from them. This is a herculean task but
this is what confronts us and I for one believe we can accomplish it. By
the proper rotation of crops, including oats, clover, cowpeas, as well
as cotton and corn, and a liberal use of barnyard manure and cotton seed
fertilizer, all of the necessary elements of plant food can be restored
to our worn-out soil. But the proper use of these requires much
painstaking study.
If the Negro is to remain the farming class in the Black Belt of the
South, then he must be taught at least the rudiments of the modern
methods of improving farming. He must have agricultural schools and must
be encouraged to attend them. The loss of the fertility of the soil is
the greatest menace of the South. How can we regain this lost fertility
is the greatest question of the hour.
THE ENCHANTED SHELL
H. CORDELIA RAY
Fair, fragile Una, golden-haired,
With melancholy, dark gray eyes,
Sits on a rock by laughing waves,
Gazing into the radiant skies;
And holding to her ear a shell,
A rosy shell of wondrous form;
Quite plaintively to her it coos
Marvelous lays of sea and storm.
It whispers of a fairy home
With coral halls and pearly floors,
Where mermaids clad in glist'ning gold
Guard smilingly the jeweled doors.
She listens and her weird gray eyes
Grow weirder in their pensive gaze.
The sea birds toss her tangled curls,
The skiff lights glimmer through the haze.
Oh, strange sea-singer! what has lent
Such fascination to thy spell?
Is some celestial guardian
Prisoned within thee, tiny shell?
[Illustration: The Enchanted Shell]
The maid sits rapt until the stars
In myriad shining clusters gleam;
"Enchanted Una," she is called
By boatmen gliding down the stream.
The tempest beats the restless seas,
The wind blows loud, fierce from the skies;
Sweet, sylph-like Una clasps the shell,
Peace brooding in her quiet eyes.
The wind blows wilder, darkness comes,
The rock is bare, night birds soar far;
Thick clouds scud o'er the gloomy heav'ns
Unvisited by any star.
Where is quaint Una? On some isle,
Dreaming 'mid music, may she be?
Or does she listen to the shell
In coral halls within the sea?
The boatmen say on stormy nights
They see rare Una with the shell,
Sitting in pensive attitude,
Is it a vision? Who can tell?
BEHIND A GEORGIA MULE
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
Now if you wish to travel fast,
I beg you not to fool
With locomotion that's procured
Behind a Georgia mule.
When I was teaching school in the backwoods of Georgia I had, one day,
to attend to some business in Mudville, an embryo city about eleven
miles from my school. Now you must know that a country school teacher
can do nothing without first consulting his Board of Trustees; so I
notified that honorable body that there was some business of vast
importance to be attended to, and asked them to meet me on Friday
afternoon; they all promised to be on hand "two hours b'sun." Friday
afternoon, after school was dismissed, they came in one by one until
they had all gathered.
As the chairman called the meeting to order, he said: "Brederen, de
objick ob dis meeting is to consider de ways ob pervidin de means ob
transposin de 'fessar to Mudville." Now, by the way, the chairman of the
Board was undoubtedly intended by nature for a smart man. He had a very
strong weakness for using big words in the wrong place, and thought it
his special duty to impress the "'fessar" at all times with his
knowledge of the dictionary. Well, after much debate it was finally
decided that "Brudder" Whitesides would "furnish de mule" and "Brudder
Jinks de buggy" and that I should start early the next morning.
The next morning I was up quite early, because I wished to start as soon
as possible in order to avoid the heat of the day. I ate breakfast and
waited--six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock--and still that
promised beast had not put in appearance. Knowing the proclivity of the
mule to meander along as his own sweet will dictates, especially when
the sun shines hot, I began to despair of reaching Mudville at all that
day; but "Brudder" Jinks, with whom I boarded, seeing my melancholy
state of mind, offered to hitch up Gypsy, an antiquated specimen of the
mule, whose general appearance was that of the skeleton of some
prehistoric animal one sees in a museum.
I accepted this proposition with haste, and repented at leisure.
I could see a weary, long-suffering look in that mule's eye, and I could
imagine how his heart must have sought the vicinity of his tail, when
they disturbed his dreams of green fields and pleasant pastures, and
hitched him to an old buggy, to encounter the stern realities of a dusty
road. "Verily, verily," I soliloquized, "the way of the mule is hard."
But, putting aside all tender feelings, I jumped into the buggy and
grasping a stick of quite ample proportions began to urge his muleship
on his way.
Nothing of much consequence hampered our onward journey except the
breaking down of three wheels and the excessive heat of the sun, which
great luminary seemed not more than ninety-five miles away.
I arrived at Mudville sometime between 12 M. and 6 P. M. After having
finished my business and having bountifully fed my mule on water and
what grass he could nibble from around his hitching post, I bought a
large watermelon and started for home. Before I was out of sight of the
town, I began to have serious misgivings about reaching home before a
very late hour. In the morning by various admonitions and applications
of the hickory, I had been able to get my mule into a jog trot, but on
the homeward journey he would not even get up a respectable walk. Well,
we trudged on for two hours or more, when to my dismay he
stopped,--stopped still. As the hour was getting late and it was growing
dark, I began advising him--with the hickory--that it was best to
proceed, but he seemed to have hardened his heart, and his back also,
and paid me no heed. There I sat--all was as still as the grave, save
for the dismal hoot of the screech-owl. There I was, five and a half
miles from home with no prospect of getting there.
I began to coax my mule with some words which perhaps are not in the
Sabbath School books, and to emphasize them with the rising and falling
inflection of the stick across his back; but still he moved not. Then
all at once my conscience smote me. I thought perhaps the faithful beast
might be sick. My mind reverted to Balaam, whose beast spoke to him when
he had smitten him but three times and here I had smitten my beast about
3,333 times. I listened almost in expectation of hearing him say,
"Johnson, Johnson, why smitest thou me 3,333 times?"
I got out of the buggy and looked at the mule; he gazed at me with a sad
far-away expression in his eye, which sent pangs of remorse to my heart.
I thought of the cruel treatment I had given him, and on the impulse of
the moment I went to the buggy, got out my large, luscious melon, burst
it open and laid it on the ground before the poor animal; and I firmly
resolved to be a friend of the mule ever after, and to join the Humane
Society as soon as I reached Atlanta.
As I watched that mule slowly munching away at my melon, I began to
wonder if I had not acted a little too hastily in giving it to him, but
I smothered that thought when I remembered the pledge I had just taken.
When he had finished he looked around with a satisfied air which
encouraged me; so I took hold of his bridle and after stroking him
gently for a moment, attempted to lead him off. But he refused to be
led. He looked at me from under his shabby eyebrows, but the sad,
far-away expression had vanished and in its stead there was a
mischievous gleam, born of malice afore-thought. I remonstrated with
him, but it only seemed to confirm his convictions that it was right
for him to stand there. I thought of my melon he had just devoured; then
I grew wrathy, and right there and then renounced all my Humane Society
resolutions, and began to shower down on that mule torrents of abuse and
hickory also, but all to no effect. Instead of advancing he began to
"revance." I pulled on the bridle until my hands and arms were sore, but
he only continued to back and pull me along with him. When I stopped
pulling he stopped backing, and so things went on for the space of about
half an hour.
I wondered what time it was. Just then the moon began to rise, from
which I knew it was about 9 o'clock. My physical exertion began to tell
on me and I hungered. Oh, how I hungered for a piece of that watermelon!
And I hit the mule an extra blow as a result of those longings.
I was now desperate. I sat down on the side of the road and groaned;
that groan came from the depths of my soul, and I know that I presented
a perfect picture of despair. However, I determined to gather all my
remaining strength for one final effort; so I caressed him up and down
the backbone two or three times as a sort of persuader, then grasping
the bridle with both hands, I began to pull, pull as I had never pulled
before and as I never hope to pull again. And he began to back. I
continued to pull and he continued to back.
How long this order of things might have gone on I do not know, but
just then a brilliant idea struck me so forcibly as to come near
knocking me down. I took the mule out, and by various tying, buckling
and tangling, I hitched him up again, upside down, or wrong side out,
or, well, I can't exactly explain, but anyhow when I got through his
tail pointed in the direction I wanted him to go. Then I got back in the
buggy and taking hold of the bridle began to pull, and he began to back;
and I continued to pull, and he continued to back; and will you believe
me, that mule backed all the way home! It is true we did not travel very
fast but every time he would slow down, I would put a little extra force
into my pull and he would put a little extra speed into his back. Ever
and anon he would glance at me with that mischievous, malicious twinkle,
which seemed to say "I've got you tonight," and I would smile back a
quiet, self-satisfied smile and give an extra pull.
But when we got home, that mischievous, malicious twinkle changed, and
he looked at me in a dazed sort of way and I smiled back quite audibly.
And do you know, that mule has been in a dark brown study ever since. He
is trying to get through his slow brain how I managed to make him pull
me home that night.
As I jumped out of the buggy the clock struck twelve. And there at that
solemn hour of the night, as the pale moon shed her silvery beams all
around and as the bright stars peeped down upon me from the ethereal
blue, and the gentle zephyrs wafted to me the odor of a hog-pen in the
near distance, I vowed a vow, an awful vow, that so long as I breathed
the vital air, never, no, never again, would I attempt to drive a
Georgia mule.
HAYTI AND TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE
W. E. B. DUBOIS
It was in the island of Hayti that French slavery centered. Pirates from
many nations, but chiefly French, began to frequent the island, and in
1663 the French annexed the eastern part, thus dividing the island
between France and Spain. By 1680 there were so many slaves and
mulattoes that Louis XIV issued his celebrated Code Noir, which was
notable in compelling bachelor masters, fathers of slave children, to
marry their concubines. Children followed the condition of the mother as
to slavery or freedom; they could have no property; harsh punishments
were provided for, but families could not be separated by sale except in
the case of grown children; emancipation with full civil rights was made
possible for any slave twenty years of age or more. When Louisiana was
settled and the Alabama coast, slaves were introduced there. Louisiana
was transferred to Spain in 1762, against the resistance of both
settlers and slaves, but Spain took possession in 1769 and introduced
more Negroes.