True to his word, Mr. Thomas applied to Mr. Hastings, the merchant, of
whom he had spoken to his young friend. He went to his counting-room and
asked for a private interview, which was readily granted. They had
kindred intellectual and literary tastes and this established between
them a free masonry of mind which took no account of racial differences.
"I have a favor to ask," said Mr. Thomas, "can you spare me a few
moments?"
"I am at your service," Mr. Hasting replied, "what can I do for you?"
"I have," he said, "a young friend who is honest and industrious and
competent to fill the place of clerk or cashier in your store. He has
been a cashier for Hazleton & Co., and while there gave entire
satisfaction."
"Why did he leave?"
"I cannot say, because he was guilty of a skin not colored like your
own, but because a report was brought to Mr. Hazleton that he had Negro
blood in his veins."
"And what then?"
"He summarily dismissed him."
"What a shame!"
"Yes, it was a shame, but this pride of caste dwarfs men's moral
perception so that it prepares them to do a number of contemptible
things which, under other circumstances, they would scorn to do."
"Yes, it is so, and I am sorry to see it."
"There are men, Mr. Hastings, who would grow hotly indignant if you
would say that they are not gentlemen who would treat a Negro in a
manner which would not be recognized as fair, even by ruffians of the
ring, for, I believe, it is their code of honor not to strike a man when
he is down; but with respect to the colored man, it seems to be a
settled policy with some not only to push him down, but to strike him
when he is down. But I must go; I came to ask a favor and it is not
right to trespass on your time."
"No; sit still. I have a little leisure I can give you. My fall trade
has not opened yet and I am not busy. I see and deplore these things of
which you complain, but what can be done to help it?"
"Mr. Hastings, you see them, and I feel them, and I fear that I am
growing morbid over them, and not only myself, but other educated men
of my race, and that, I think, is a thing to be deprecated. Between the
white people and the colored people of this country there is a unanimity
of interest and I know that our interests and duties all lie in one
direction. Can men corrupt and intimidate voters in the South without a
reflex influence being felt in the North? Is not the depression of labor
in the South a matter of interest to the North? You may protect yourself
from what you call the pauper of Europe, but you will not be equally
able to defend yourself from the depressed laborer of the new South, and
as an American citizen, I dread any turn of the screw which will lower
the rate of wages here; and I like to feel as an American citizen that
whatever concerns the nation concerns me. But I feel that this prejudice
against my race compresses my soul, narrows my political horizon and
makes me feel that I am an alien in the land of my birth. It meets me in
the church, it confronts me in business and I feel its influence in
almost every avenue of my life."
"I wish, Mr. Thomas, that some of the men who are writing and talking
about the Negro problem would only come in contact with the thoughtful
men of your race. I think it would greatly modify their views."
"Yes, you know us as your servants. The law takes cognizance of our
crimes. Your charitable institutions of our poverty, but what do any of
you know of our best and most thoughtful men and women? When we write
how many of you ever read our books and papers or give yourselves any
trouble to come near us as friends and help us? Even some of your
professed Christians are trying to set us apart as if we were social
lepers."
"You draw a dark picture. I confess that I feel pained at the condition
of affairs in the South, but what can we do in the South?"
"Set the South a better example. But I am hindering you in your
business."
"Not at all. I want to see things from the same standpoint that you do."
"Put yourself then in my place. You start both North and South from the
premise that we are an inferior race and as such you have treated us.
Has not the consensus of public opinion said for ages, 'No valor redeems
our race, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the
ban which clings to us'; that our place is on the lowest round of the
social ladder; that at least, in part of the country we are too low for
the equal administrations of religion and the same dispensations of
charity and a fair chance in the race of life?"
"You bring a heavy verdict against us. I hardly think that it can be
sustained. Whatever our motives may have been, we have been able to
effect in a few years a wonderful change in the condition of the Negro.
He has freedom and enfranchisement and with these two great rights he
must work out his social redemption and political solution. If his means
of education have been limited, a better day is dawning upon him. Doors
once closed against him in the South are now freely opened to him, and I
do not think that there ever was a people who freed their slaves who
have given as much for their education as we have, and my only hope is
that the moral life of the race will keep pace with its intellectual
growth. You tell me to put myself in your place. I think if I were a
colored young man that I would develop every faculty and use every power
which God had given me for the improvement and development of my race.
And who among us would be so blind and foolish as to attempt to keep
down an enlightened people who were determined to rise in the scale of
character and condition? No, Mr. Thomas, while you blame us for our
transgressions and shortcomings, do not fail to do all you can to rouse
up all the latent energies of your young men to do their part worthily
as American citizens and to add their quota to the strength and progress
of the nation."
"I am conscious of the truth and pertinence of your remarks, but bear
with me just a few moments while I give an illustration of what I mean."
"Speak on, I am all attention. The subject you bring before me is of
too vital importance to be constantly ignored."
"I have a friend who is presiding elder in the A.M.E. Church and his
wife, I think, is capable of being a social and intellectual accession
in any neighborhood in which they might live. He rented a house in the
city of L. and being of a fair complexion I suppose the lessee rented to
him without having a suspicion of his race connection. When it was
ascertained that he and his family were colored, he was ordered to
leave, and this man, holding among the ministers of that city the
position of ambassador for Christ, was ordered out of the house on
account of the complexion of his family. Was there not a screw loose in
the religious sentiment of that city which made such an act possible? A
friend of mine who does mission work in your city, some time since,
found a young woman in the slums and applied at the door of a midnight
mission for fallen women, and asked if colored girls could be received,
and was curtly answered, 'no.' For her in that mission there was no room.
The love of Christ constrained no hand to strive to rescue her from the
depths of degradation. The poor thing went from bad to worse till at
last, wrecked and blighted, she went down to an early grave the victim
of strong drink. That same lady found on her mission a white girl;
seeing a human soul adrift, regardless of color, she went, in company
with some others, to that same mission with the poor castaway; to her
the door was opened without delay and ready admittance granted. But I
might go on reciting such instances until you would be weary of hearing
and I of relating them; but I appeal to you as a patriot and Christian,
is it not fearfully unwise to keep alive in freedom the old animosities
of slavery? To-day the Negro shares citizenship with you. He is not
arraying himself against your social order; his hands are not dripping
with dynamite, nor is he waving in your face the crimson banners of
anarchy, but he is increasing in numbers and growing in intelligence,
and is it not madness and folly to subject him to social and public
inequalities, which are calculated to form and keep alive a hatred of
race as a reaction against pride of caste?"
"Mr. Thomas, you have given me a new view of the matter. To tell you the
truth, we have so long looked upon the colored man as a pliable and
submissive being that we have never learned to look at any hatred on his
part as an element of danger, and yet I should be sorry to know that by
our Southern supineness we were thoughtlessly helping create a black
Ireland in our Gulf States, that in case the fires of anarchy should
ever sweep through our land, that a discontented and disaffected people
in our midst might be as so much fuel to fire."
"But really I have been forgetting my errand. Have you any opening in
your store for my young friend?"
"I have only one vacancy, and that is the place of a utility man."
"What are the duties of that position?"
"Almost anything that comes to hand; tying up bundles, looking after the
mails, scattering advertisements. A factotum whose work lies here, there
and everywhere."
"I am confident that he will accept the situation and render you
faithful service."
"Well, then send him around tomorrow and if there is anything in him I
may be able to do better by him when the fall trade opens."
And so Charley Cooper was fortunate enough in his hour of perplexity to
find a helping hand to tide him over a difficult passage in his life.
Gratefully and faithfully did he serve Mr. Hastings, who never regretted
the hour when he gave the struggling boy such timely assistance. The
discipline of the life through which he was passing as the main stay of
his mother, matured his mind and imparted to it a thoughtfulness past
his years. Instead of wasting his time in idle and pernicious pleasure,
he learned how to use his surplus dollar and how to spend his leisure
hours, and this knowledge told upon his life and character. He was not
very popular in society. Young men with cigars in their mouths and the
perfume of liquor on their breaths, shrugged their shoulders and called
him a milksop because he preferred the church and Sunday school to the
liquor saloon and gambling dens. The society of P. was cut up and
divided into little sets and coteries; there was an amount of
intelligence among them, but it ran in narrow grooves and scarcely
one[10] intellect seemed to tower above the other, and if it did, no
people knew better how to ignore a rising mind than the society people
of A.P. If the literary aspirant did not happen to be of their set. As
to talent, many of them were pleasant and brilliant conversationalists,
but in the world of letters scarcely any of them were known or
recognized outside of their set. They had leisure, a little money and
some ability, but they lacked the perseverance and self-denial
necessary to enable them to add to the great resources of natural
thought. They had narrowed their minds to the dimensions of their set
and were unprepared to take expansive[11] views of life and duty. They
took life as a holiday and the lack of noble purposes and high and holy
aims left its impress upon their souls and deprived them of that joy and
strength which should have crowned their existence and given to their
lives its "highest excellence and beauty."