Chapter D: Webster Davis (11)

Some young men start life with the idea that every dollar made requires that one dollar and a half shall be spent; in order to be noticed they must make a big show, give big dinners, carriage drives, and parties, invite friends to the theatres, and have a "swell" time; must do like Mr. "So-and-So." They forget in their desire to copy, that Mr. "So-and-so," their pattern, has already made his fortune; that he began to save before he began to spend. But no, his name appears often in the papers and they think also that theirs must. So they begin their careers. A few years pass. The young men marry; their debts begin to accumulate and to press them, their countenances are always woe-begone; where once were smiles, now are frowns, and the homes are pictures of gloom and shadows. The lesson is plain.

Debt is the greatest burden that can be put upon a man; it makes him afraid to look honest men in the face. No man can be a leader in the fullest sense who is burdened by a great debt. If there is any young men in the audience who is spending more than he is making let him ask himself the question, Is the game worth the candle?

I know another young man who believed he could be happy by spending one-third of what he made and saving the other portion. He said to me, "some day I want to marry and I want to treat my wife better, if possible, than she was treated at home. I want the respect of my fellow man, I want to be a leader, and I know I can only do so by saving a part of what I make." It was my good pleasure, a few weeks ago, to visit the city where this young man is practising medicine. He carried me over that town in an automobile, he entertained me in his $5000 home, he showed me other property which he owned. Ah, my friends, his indeed was a happy home. Life to him was blessedly real.

Some young men start life with the idea that Sunday school is a place for children, the church for old people and the Y. M. C. A. a place for young men with no life. What a wrong idea! Why, the young men who are alive in all walks of life, and who are in the forward ranks, are found in these places. The other young men with distorted views of life think that they must frequent places where the social glass is passed. They do so; after a while it becomes a necessity, the drink habit grows upon them; they die drunkards. Do you remember the story of Robert Ferguson who, better known as the "laureate of Edinburgh," was the poet of Scottish city-life? His dissipations were great, his tavern and boon companions hastening him on to a premature and painful death. His reason gave way. He was sent to an asylum for the insane. After about two months' confinement he died in his cell. What a sad climax to a promising career!

Young men, be masters of yourselves. Dare to do the right. Dare to say No. Have strong faith not only in yourself but faith in the Unseen Power, who holds the destinies of all in His hands. The world needs you.

A good many young men think that to be great they must go into the broad fields of politics, waiting for an office, waiting on the changing whims of men, instead of waiting upon self; waiting for something to turn up instead of turning up something; going to the Capital "because I helped to elect someone." "I leave behind me a good job but I have been promised something better." So the poor fellow starts out to the capital of the nation, spends what little money he has saved at home, because he is going to get a job and make barrels of money. The Mecca of his hopes is reached. He finds himself a little man at the great center of the nation, the few dollars he brings with him soon melt away; his friends run when they see him coming because he wants to borrow a dollar. At home he was a little king, but at the Capital he is a "would-be statesman seeking a job." Was the game worth the candle?

My friends, good men are needed in politics, men who are safe and tried, men who will not yield to prejudice or sentiment, but will do the right as they see the right. God give us such men. Politics for a helpless, dependent race will never prove a relief or blessing until we have strong, safe leaders who, losing sight of self and a few self-constituted leaders, will see the whole people. The race will never come into its own until we have such a condition.

A young man starts out in life with the determination to fight his way by physical force to the front ranks. Bruised, disfigured, or killed, he is forced back even beyond the lines again. A religiously inclined youth asked his pastor, "Do you think it would be wrong for me to learn the noble art of self-defense?" "Certainly not," replied the pastor, "I learned it in youth myself, and I have found it of great value in my life." "Indeed, sir, did you learn the Old English system or the Sullivan system?" "Neither; I learned Solomon's system!" replied the minister. "Yes, you will find it laid down in the first verse of the fifteenth chapter of Proverbs, 'A soft answer turneth away wrath'; it is the best system of self-defense I know."

Too many of us starting out on life's journey have a warped ambition. This ambition is a love of self in the desire that self might gain the ascendency over our fellows, not that we might be of benefit to humanity, but that we aim to derive personal gain only. We follow the standard of this or that man, not because we believe in him or his policies, but because he is on the successful top round of the ladder now, so away with principles, away with conscience, away with right,--I must follow the man who will give most! A sad awakening comes, the idol tumbles or else turns against you, and you are left like a stranded ship on some vast ocean, alone, amidst the lashing of the billows and the roaring of the waves. Remember Cardinal Wolsey's experience. You may recall these lines,

"Would that I had served my God
With half the zeal I served my king,
He would not in mine old age
Have left me naked to my enemies."

Was the game worth the candle?

Another young man starts life with a wrong idea regarding city and 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."

Young men, what is the basis of your life and what is its goal? Have you digged deeply and thrown out all the waste material of follies and vice and built upon a substantial foundation of honest manhood and sterling character? If not, you are a failure. However, chords that are broken may vibrate once more; take up the angled threads again and weave another pattern. The book that will always be the best and safest guide for weaving life's pattern is the Bible,--the truest and best friend any young man can have. If you want oratory, you need not talk about Demosthenes walking along the shores of Greece with pebbles in his mouth, nor about that great American orator, Daniel Webster, but if you turn almost to the beginning of that wonderful Book and listen to the pleadings of Jacob's sons as they begged for the life of their father, it will surpass your Demosthenes or Webster in true eloquence. If you want logic, even though Aristotle may be world famous as the "father of logic," yet if you listen to the hunch-backed, red faced, crooked nosed, baldheaded Jew, Saul of Tarsus, you will find his logic stands unsurpassed in all the ages of the world. The history of four thousand years and more you will find there. You will discover the beginnings and the end of things. Reason, with her flickering torch, cannot point to any such sublime truths as are found in the Bible. Philosophy with her school stands amazed when confronted with the philosophy of the Bible. Science, itself the greatest contributor to the happiness of man, having penetrated the arcana of nature, sunk her shafts into earth's recesses, measured the heights of its massive pillars to the very pedestal of primeval granite, tracked the tornadoes, uncurtained the distant planets, and foretold the coming of the comets and the return of the eclipses, has never as yet been able to lift up a degraded man and point him to a higher path. I commend the Bible to you.

No life is great unless that life is good. Each day is a life, and that day is wasted that is not filled with lofty desire, with actual achievement, that does not bring us nearer to God, nearer to our fellow-man and nearer to the things God has created. In such a plan of life will we find real and lasting happiness. God means every man to be happy. He sends us no sorrows that have not some recompense.

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!

I close with an illustration. 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."

SOME ELEMENTS NECESSARY TO RACE DEVELOPMENT[42]

BY ROBERT RUSSA MOTON

_Commandant of Cadets, Hampton Institute, Virginia_

[Note 42: An address delivered at the Tuskegee Commencement, May, 1912.]

_Students, Friends:_

Among the most highly developed races we observe certain dominant characteristics, certain very essential elements of character, by which they have so influenced mankind and helped the world that they were enabled to write their names in history so indelibly as to withstand and endure the test of time.

Your education, your observation, your occupation, have brought you into close touch and into personal and vital relations with the fundamental problems of life. We may call it the truth problem, the labor problem, the Indian problem, or perhaps the Negro problem. I like to call it the "Human Race Problem."

The dawn of history breaks upon a world at strife, a universal conflict of man at war with his brother. The very face of the earth has been dyed in blood and its surface whitened with human bones in an endeavor to establish a harmonious and helpful adjustment between man and man. There can be no interest more fundamental or of greater concern to the human family than the proper adjustment of man's relations to his brother.

You and I belong to an undeveloped, backward race that is rarely for its own sake taken into account in the adjustment of man's relation to man, but is considered largely with reference to the impression which it makes upon the dominant Anglo-Saxon. The Negro's very existence is itself somewhat satellitious, and secondary only, to the great white orb around which he revolves. If by chance any light does appear in the black man's sphere of operations, it is usually assumed that it is reflected from his association with his white brother. The black is generally projected against the white and usually to the disadvantage and embarrassment of the former. It becomes very easy, therefore, to see in our minds and hearts what is so apparent in our faces, "Darkness there and nothing more."

But you must keep in mind that the Negro is a tenth part of a great cosmopolitan commonwealth; he is a part of a nation to which God has given many very intricate problems to work out. Who knows but that this nation is God's great laboratory which is being used by the Creator to show the rest of the world, what it does not seem thoroughly to understand, that it is possible for all God's people, even the two most extreme types, the black and the white, to live together harmoniously and helpfully?

The question that the American nation must face, and which the Negro as a part of the nation should soberly and dispassionately consider, is the mutual, social, civic, and industrial adjustment upon common ground of two races, differing widely in characteristics and diverse in physical peculiarities, but alike suspicious and alike jealous, and alike more or less biased and prejudiced each toward the other. Without doubt the physical peculiarities of the Negro, which are perhaps the most superficial of all the distinctions, are nevertheless the most difficult of adjustment. While I do not believe that a man's color is ever a disadvantage to him, he is very likely to find it an inconvenience sometimes, in some places.

We might as well be perfectly frank and perfectly honest with ourselves; it is not an easy task to adjust the relations of ten millions of people who, while they may be mature in passion and perhaps in prejudice, are yet to a large extent children in judgment and in experience, to a race of people not only mature in civilization, but the principles of whose government were based upon more or less mature judgment and experience at the beginning of this nation; and when we take into also account the wide difference in ethnic types of the two races that are here brought together, the problem becomes one of the gravest intricacy that has ever taxed human wisdom and human patience for solution. This situation makes it necessary for the Negro as a race to grasp firmly two or three fundamental elements.

The first is _race consciousness_.

The Negro must play essentially the primary part in the solution of this problem. Since his emancipation he has conclusively demonstrated to most people that he possesses the same faculties and susceptibilities as the rest of human mankind; this is the greatest victory the race has achieved during its years of freedom. Having demonstrated that his faculties and susceptibilities are capable of the highest development, it must be true of the black race as it has been true of other races, that it must go through the same process and work out the same problem in about the same way as other races have done.

We can and we have profited very much by the examples of progressive races. This is a wonderful advantage, and we have not been slow to grasp it. But we must remember that we are subject to the same natural factor in the solution of this problem, and that it cannot be solved without considering this factor. The Negro must first of all have a conscientious pride and absolute faith and belief in himself. He must not unduly depreciate race distinctions and allow himself to think that, because out of one blood God created all nations of the earth, brotherhood is already an accomplished reality. Let us not deceive ourselves, blighted as we are with a heritage of moral leprosy from our past history and hard pressed as we are in the economic world by foreign immigrants and by native prejudice; our one surest haven of refuge is in ourselves; our one safest means of advance is our belief in and implicit trust in our own ability and worth. No race that despises itself, that laughs at and ridicules itself, that wishes to God it were anything else but itself, can ever be a great people. There is no power under heaven that can stop the onward march of ten millions of earnest, honest, inspired, God-fearing, race-loving, and united people.

Secondly, we must have a _high moral ideal_.

With a strong race consciousness and reasonable prudence, a people with a low, vacillating, and uncertain moral ideal may, for a time, be able to stem the tide of outraged virtue, but this is merely transitory. Ultimate destruction and ruin follow absolutely in the wake of moral degeneracy; this, all history shows;--this, experience teaches. God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous all together."

Not long ago I stood in the city of Rome amid its ruined fountains, crumbling walls, falling aqueducts, ancient palaces, and amphitheatres, to-day mere relics of ancient history. One is struck with wonder and amazement at the magnificent civilization which that people was able to evolve. It does not seem possible that the Roman people, who could so perfect society in its organic and civic relations and leave to the world the organic principles which must always lie at the base of all subsequent social development,--it does not seem possible that such a people should so decay as to leave hardly a vestige of its original stock, and that such cities as the Romans erected should so fall as to leave scarcely one stone upon another. Neither does it seem credible that a people who could so work out in its philosophical aspect man's relation to the eternal mystery, and come as near a perfect solution as is perhaps possible for the human mind to reach, that a people who could give to the world such literature, such art, such ideals of physical and intellectual beauty, as did the Greeks, could so utterly perish from the face of the earth; yet this is the case not only with Rome and Greece, but with a score or more of nations which were once masters of the world. The Greeks, Romans, Persians, Egyptians, and even God's chosen people, allowed corruption and vice to so dwarf their moral sense that there was, according to the universal law of civilization, nothing left for them but death and destruction.

It is no reproach to the Negro to say that his history and environment in this country have well-nigh placed him at the bottom of the moral scale. This must be remedied, if the Negro is ever to reach his full status of civilized manhood and womanhood. It must come through the united efforts of the educated among us. We must be united to stop the ravages of disease among our people; united to keep black boys from idleness, vice, gambling, and crime; united to guard the purity of black womanhood and, I might add, black manhood also. It is not enough to simply protest that ninety-five out of every hundred Negroes are orderly and law-abiding. The ninety-five must be banded together to restrain and suppress the vicious five.

The people must be impressed with the idea that a high moral character is absolutely essential to the highest development of every race, white quite as much as black. There is no creature so low and contemptible as he who does not seek first the approval of his own conscience and his God; for, after all, how poor is human recognition when you and your God are aware of your inward integrity of soul! If the Negro will keep clean hands and a pure heart, he can stand up before all the world and say, "Doubtless Thou, O Lord, art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not."

Thirdly, and lastly, _the Negro needs intelligent industry_.

Slavery taught the Negro many things for which he should be profoundly thankful--the Christian religion, the English language, and, in a measure, civilization, which in many aspects may be crude in form, but these have placed him a thousand years ahead of his African ancestors.

Slavery taught the Negro to work by rule and rote but not by principle and method. It did not and, perhaps, could not teach him to love and respect labor, but left him, on the contrary, with the idea that manual industry was a thing to be despised and gotten rid of, if possible; that to work with one's hands was a badge of inferiority. A tropical climate is not conducive to the development of practical energy. Add to the Negro's natural tendency his unfortunate heritage from slavery, and we see at once that the race needs especially to be rooted and grounded in the underlying scientific principles of concrete things. The time when the world bowed before merely abstract, impractical knowledge has well-nigh passed; the demand of this age and hour is not so much what a man knows,--though the world respects and reveres knowledge and always will, I hope,--what the world wants to know is what a man can do and how well he can do it.

We must not be misled by high-sounding phrases as to the kind of education the race should receive, but we should remember that the education of a people should be conditioned upon their capacity, social environment, and the probable life which they will lead in the immediate future. We fully realize that the ignorant must be taught, the poor must have the gospel, and the vicious must be restrained, but we also realize that these do not strike the "bed-rock" of a permanent, lasting citizenship.

If the Negro will add his proportionate contribution to the economic aspect of the world's civilization, it must be done through intelligent, well-directed, conscientious, skilled industry. Indeed, the feasible forms of civilization are nothing but the concrete actualization of intelligent thought applied to what are sometimes called common things.

The primary sources of wealth are agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and commerce. These are the lines along which the thoughtful energy of the black race must be directed. I mean by agriculture, _farming_--the raising of corn, cotton, peas, and potatoes, pigs, chickens, horses, and cows.

Land may be bought practically anywhere in the South almost at our own price. Twenty years hence, with the rapidly developing Southern country and the strenuous efforts to fill it up with foreign immigrants, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for us to buy land. God gave the children of Israel the "Land of Canaan" but, Oh, what a life and death struggle they had to take possession of it and hold on to it. God has given to the Negro here in this Southern country two of the most fundamental necessities in his development--_land_ and _labor_. If you don't possess this land and hold this labor, God will tell you as He has often told other races--"to move on."

The Creator never meant that this beautiful land should be forever kept as a great hunting-ground for the Indian to roam in savage bliss, but he intended that it should be used. The Indian, having for scores of generations failed to develop this land, God asked the Anglo-Saxon to take possession and dig out the treasures of wheat, corn, cotton, gold and silver, coal and iron, and the poor Indian was told "to move on."

The Negro in Africa sits listlessly in the sunshine of barbarous idleness while the same progressive, indomitable, persevering, white man is taking possession; the same edict has gone forth to the native African--he is being told "to move on."

The same God will tell the white man in America and in Africa, if he does not mete out absolute justice and absolute fairness to his weaker and less-advantaged brother, black or red or brown, if he cannot do justly and love mercy, just as he told the patricians of Rome, he will tell the white man "to move on."

Whatever question there may be about the white man's part in this situation, there is no doubt about ours. Don't let us delude ourselves but keep in mind the fact that the man who owns his home and cultivates his land and lives a decent, self-respecting, useful, and helpful life is no problem anywhere. We talk about the "color line," but you know and I know that the blackest Negro in Alabama or Mississippi or Africa or anywhere else who puts the same amount of skill and energy into his farming gets as large returns for his labor as the whitest Anglo-Saxon. The earth yields up her increase as willingly to the skill and persuasions of the black as of the white husbandman. Wind, wave, heat, stream, and electricity are absolutely blind forces and see no race distinction and draw no "color line." The world's market does not care and it asks no question about the shade of the hand that produces the commodity, but it does insist that it shall be up to the world's requirements.

I thank God for the excellent chance to work that my race had in this Southern country; the Negro in America has a real, good, healthy job, and I hope he may always keep it. I am not particular what he does or where he does it, so he is engaged in honest, useful work. Remember always that building a house is quite as important as building a poem; that the science of cooking is as useful to humanity as the science of music; that the thing most to be desired is a harmonious and helpful adaptation of all the arts and sciences to the glory of God and the good of humanity; that whether we labor with muscle or with brain, both need divine inspiration. Let us consecrate our brain and muscle to the highest and noblest service, to God, and humanity.

* * * * *

There is no reason why any Negro should become discouraged or morbid. We believe in God; His providence is mysterious and inscrutible; but his ways are just and righteous altogether. Suffering and disappointment have always found their place in divine economy. It took four hundred years of slavery in Egypt and a sifting process of forty years in the "Wilderness" to teach Israel to respect their race and to fit them for entrance into the "Promised Land." The black man has not as yet thoroughly learned to have the respect for his race that is so necessary to the making of a great people. I believe the woes that God has sent him are but the fiery furnace through which he is passing, that is separating the dross from the pure gold, and is welding the Negroes together as a great people for a great purpose.

There is every reason for optimism, hopefulness. The Negro never had more the respect and confidence of his neighbors, black and white, than he has to-day. Neither has he because of his real worth deserved that respect more than he does to-day. Could anybody, amid the inspiration of these grounds and buildings, be discouraged about the future of the Negro? The race problem in this country, I repeat, is simply a part of the problem of life. It is the adjustment of man's relation to his brother, and this adjustment began when Cain slew Abel. Race prejudice is as much a fact as the law of gravitation, and it is as foolish to ignore the operation of one as of the other. Mournful complaint and arrogant criticism are as useless as the crying of a baby against the fury of a great wind. The path of moral progress, remember, has never taken a straight line, but I believe that, unless democracy is a failure and Christianity a mockery, it is entirely feasible and practicable for the black and white races of America to develop side by side, in peace, in harmony, and in mutual helpfulness each toward the other; living together as "brothers in Christ without being brothers-in-law," each making its contributions to the wealth and culture of our beloved country.

* * * * *

I close with these lines, from an anonymous poet, on "The Water Lily":

"O star on the breast of the river,
O marvel of bloom and grace,
Did you fall straight down from heaven,
Out of the sweetest place?
You are white as the thought of the angel,
Your heart is steeped in the sun;
Did you grow in the golden city,
My pure and radiant one?

"Nay, nay, I fell not out of heaven;
None gave me my saintly white;
It slowly grew in the blackness,
Down in the dreary night,
From the ooze of the silent river
I won my glory and grace;
While souls fall not, O my poet,
They _rise_ to the sweetest place."

THE TWO SEALS[43]

BY PROFESSOR GEORGE WILLIAM COOK

_Secretary of Howard University_

[Note 43: An address delivered at a banquet given in his honor, May 21, 1912.]

_Mr. Toastmaster and Friends:_

Let me first thank the Committee and you all for your generosity in tendering me this evidence of good wishes and good will. It is stated in your invitation, "In honor of George William Cook, Secretary of Howard University"--a double compliment, at once personal and official. Surely it is an honor to find so many men of varied occupations and duties turning aside to spend time and money to express appreciation of one's character. Dull indeed must the creature be who cannot find gratitude enough to return thanks; for grateful minds always return thanks. To be direct I deeply feel the personal and non-official side of the compliment you pay me, but will you pardon me, gentlemen, if I confess that to compliment me as Secretary of Howard University touches me in a tender and vulnerable spot. "I love old Howard," and always have been and am now anxious to be in the team to tug at the administrative phase of Howard's movements. Accept then, my sincere thanks.

Now let us then turn aside in sweet communion as brothers to talk about our alma mater. Let us trace her from foundation to present eminence; re-affirm our family pledges and form resolutions new. Howard men will spring up with both money and spirit, not far in the future, when the mother's cry in want will be met with a generous hand from her sons and daughters. A little more time for preparation and accumulation; then will be the time when endowment will precede request for preferment. When black philanthropists can turn desert spots into oases of learning and build halls of culture, then will Howard be reaping the reward in her own harvest and justify her being in the great family of Universities.

Though I wax warm in sentiment, I crave your indulgence but for a short while, for I pledge you my honor, and I say it seriously, that there is an affection underlying my words that makes Howard but second in love to my wife and child. She has been a gracious mother to me, supplying my necessities and defending me in my adversities, for which I have ever sought with might and main to return loyalty and service. When I am referred to as a Howard man, I have an uplift in the consciousness of relationship and fealty to an institution which to honor is but to be honored.

Visible manifestations of thought and idea have ever marked the purposes of man. Monuments and cities but express precurrent mental objects. God, in His message to Moses, directed that a tabernacle be built and that it should be the sign of his pleasure and approbation, a veritable indwelling of the spirit of God. Living thought can be said to have habitation. Greek and Roman art, Egyptian architecture, Catholic grandeur, or Quaker simplicity, all speak some great and noble soul-moving and world-moving power. Within the temple area was centered the devotion of the Jew, both political and religious. The Hebrew theocratic system of government made it so. St. Peter's at Rome, no more nor less than St. Paul's at London, speaks of God and the mission of His son. The Mosque of Omar, Saint Sophia at Constantinople, point that Allah is God and Mohammed is His Prophet; the Taj-Mahal is at once the emblem and creation of love; the Sistine Chapel teaches the glories and joys of maternity and God incarnate in man. The Pan-American Building at Washington, the Carnegie Peace Building at The Hague, teach unity of mankind, and but heighten the angelic chorus of "Peace and good will to men."

From yon Virginia hill, a galaxy of institutions may be discerned, bringing lessons to a listening world. As one may stand on Arlington's sacred heights, looking about him, he will find the indices in the graves and monuments there of sacrifice for a national union "indissoluble and forever"; and as his eyes sweep the horizon, scanning through mist and sunshine, the emblem and insignia of thought and policy will block the view. He will see the gold-tipped dome of the Library of Congress glinting in the light, and know its scintillations but herald the purpose to keep the light of learning and knowledge bright. Yon stately Capitol dome interrupts his line of vision but to remind him that it covers the chancel of legislation, and that representative government is a fixed and permanent fact. That single towering shaft on yon Potomac bed speaks of individual and unselfish devotion to a nation--Washingtonian patriotism, unique in history--and at the same time reflects the appreciation of a grateful and worshipful people. Hast thou seen it in its lonely grandeur on a moonlight night? It is well worth a trip across the ocean to read its message. Sweeping westward, the eye sees planted on a hill-top Georgetown College, the outward symbol of tenet and propaganda. Raising the visual angle and dropping back to the northwest, the white marble walls of the American University come to view, planted that Methodism with justification by faith might preach the Gospel for the redemption of man. Turning to the northeast, the great Catholic University presents itself as a repository and, at the same time, a vehicle of Catholic love of learning; and in juxtaposition towers high in alabastine whiteness the Spanish architecture of the Soldiers Home; though standing mute in immaculate marble, expressing to the defenders of a country an appreciation of their patriotism and sacrifice; the _ensemble_ preaching to an active world. Then, the line of vision is obtruded upon by the stately main building of Howard University, of her structures the noblest. Observed from the high palisades or the low bed of the Potomac, that ever-present object of view from any point of the District is veritably "a city on a hill that cannot be hid,"--symbolic and typical of her mission. And then the inquiry comes as to her significance. Why standeth thou there absorbing space?

Vying in sunshine and moonshine with the Capitol in conspicuous aspect, the two stand as twin sentinels on opposite ramparts of the Potomac Valley, overlooking in midnight vigil the slumbering city, each challenging the attention of the wayfarer. What art thou to justify thyself to man? What mission hast thou to excuse thy being? What road of profit? What principle of uplift hast thou to send forth? Thy halls resound to the murmur of what message from the Divine? What, we ask, is thy mission? The answer is echoed from the archives: "Consult her founders; learn of them if thou wouldst know." Therefore, friends, we turn to the records of Howard University and the declaration of her founders--her founders, men fresh from the fortunes of war, battle-scarred and blood-stained, desiring further to perpetuate the object of their militant victories by the forces of peace and brotherhood; men who failed to die at Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, and Lookout Mountain, and continued the fight on this hill; men who, not satisfied with loosening the shackles of bondage, turned their powers to driving darkness from human souls, though encased in ebony; men who wrought under God's hand, and dying dissatisfied that the full fruition of their labors were not yet come to pass, leaving to survivors and posterity an unmistaken task and warfare.

Howard has had two seals. The first reading "Equal rights and knowledge for all"; the second, "For God and the Republic"; the former breathing the spirit of the Civil War period and the Pauline doctrine declared before the Areopagus, announced in the preaching and work of Christ and emphasized by the Declaration of Independence; the latter pregnant with reverence, piety, and patriotism; the twain compassing man's duty higher than which human conception is lost. Privileged indeed is one to live under the aegis of such twin declarations. Fortunate indeed to have the authorization of official acts blessed by the benediction of such battle-cries.

The preamble to the charter explains comprehensively, though not in detail, the great purpose of Howard University:

"Section 1. That there be established, and is hereby established in the District of Columbia, a university for the education of youth in the liberal arts and sciences, under the name, seal, and title of Howard University," stated as simple and plain as the decalogue itself.

I glean from the Fourth Annual Report on Schools for Freedmen for July 1, 1867, by J. W. Alvord, then General Superintendent of Schools, Bureau for Refugees and Abandoned Lands, what I conceive to be the first catalogue of Howard University, and, if you will bear with me, I will read the entire catalogue.

"Howard University. A charter has been granted by Congress for the Howard University, which is to be open to all of both sexes without discrimination of color. This institution bids fair to do great good. Its beautiful site, so opportunely and wisely secured, is an earnest of success. Large and commodious buildings are soon to be erected thereon. The normal and preparatory departments of the university were opened on the first of May, under the instruction of Rev. E. F. Williams, an accomplished scholar and a thorough teacher. At the close of the month the school numbered thirty-one scholars; it has now increased to about sixty. Miss Lord, so long a popular teacher of this city, has been appointed assistant. The grade of this school is low for its name, but the students are making good advancement."

It may be thought by casual consideration, as was said by eminent men, that the name was the largest thing about it, but I prefer to disagree and to say that the purpose as set forth in the charter is the greatest thing about it. These are the words:

"We urge all friends of the freedmen to increasing confidence and to look forward with assured expectation to greater things than these. This people are to be prepared for what is being prepared for them. They are to become a 'people which in time past were not a people'; and there is increasing evidence that 'God hath made of one blood all the nations of men.' Equal endowments substantially, with equal culture, will produce that equality common to all mankind."

In them we get the quintescence, we get the crystallization, we get the high purpose, we get the spiritual foundation, of Howard University.

Conceived in prayer, born of the faith and convictions as embodied in its original seal which reads, "Equal rights and knowledge for all," an offspring of Plymouth Rock, Howard University is set before you--a cross between religious fervor and prophetic educational enthusiasm. She is, then, the essence filtrating from the declaration of Paul at Athens, that "of one blood hath God created all men to dwell upon earth."

For forty-five years, Howard has been living her life. She has been more or less doing her work as circumstances allowed and dictated, but now we ask of you "Watchman, what of the night?" How far has this work been progressing along the line of basal principles that we find embodied in all these authoritative extracts? Unfortunate I think it is that the discussions in the early meetings of the Board of Trustees were not preserved in stenographic report, for the time will come when the spiritual history of Howard University must be written as well as its material history, and then the historian will be at a loss to find the true afflatus that gave birth to our alma mater, unless we keep it in evidence.

The imagination has oft painted Howard University as a temple--a temple of knowledge,--a temple for the teaching of justice; a temple for the upbuild of mankind. Let us then hold its form to our imagination, pearly white as the palaces of the South, straight in its construction as rectitude, and let us present it to an admiring world, not only for aesthetic culture but ethical grandeur, religious progress, and political righteousness; and let us say to all, be he high or low, "who touches a stone in yon God-given edifice" is guilty of vandalism, is an iconoclast not at any time to be tolerated. He is tampering with the rights and privileges of a worthy people and deserves to have visited upon him the excoriation of a fiery indignation. Howard was created to meet the dire needs of a meritorious class, and insensible indeed must the man be who for sentimental or personal reasons or for profit, swerves one degree from the line of the highest form of education in administration or instruction. There should be launched upon him the anathema of an outraged people.

Sound the alarm that no man must hinder the true mission of Howard University. It were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck and that he be cast into the deep. For him there is punishment even after death in the sure infamy that will attach to his name.

The old motto, "Equal rights and knowledge for all," is a necessary constituent of the Howard University life and purpose. There can be no Howard University without equal rights and highest culture for all, based upon merit and capacity. To be plain, we know of no Negro education. Political rights and civic privileges are accompaniments of citizenship and are therefore part of the warp and woof of Howard University's curricula; the salt and savor without which wherewith will it be salted? Mathematics has no color; ethics and philosophy are of no creed or class; culture was not fashioned for race monopoly; knowledge is in no plan or department an exclusive goal; justice is universal. Freedom in striving for the acquisition of God's bounty as revealed by nature is the birthright of all and an inalienable right of all. These are God-given privileges, and any contravention of them is born of evil and belongs to the evil powers.

Our privileges have imposed a trust and we are the trustees. Let no man deceive himself. Whatever the opportunity of approval now for betrayal of trust bequeathed to us, the time will come for the court of public opinion to find whom to blame and whom to thank. What the founders demanded for Howard, we must still demand. What William Clark and Martha Spaulding by their gifts meant, must still be meant by Howard's activities. Being justified in the past, it must be maintained in the future. Then to-night let us re-baptize in Howard spirit and issue the mandate of loyalty and endeavor.

* * * * *

Let no Howard man ever expatriate himself. Necessity driving him from Howard, let him consider himself domiciled elsewhere, but his scholastic citizenship intact in Howard.

We will sing the old song of Howard, though there be other songs greater. Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, and Leipsic may sing their songs, but, for me and my house, we will sing "Howard, I love old Howard."

Let us imitate the psalmist: "We will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings." We will exalt Howard and delight in her good work. Where she is weak we will endeavor to strengthen, and where she is strong we will direct to the uplift of the race. She may be lacking in equipment; that can be tolerated; but as to principle, she must not be weak at any point. From stem to stern she must carry the marks of her purpose, and at mast-head must float the pennant of her seals.

Neither time nor purpose can ever erase the fitness of "Equal rights and knowledge for all," "For God and the Republic,"--_the two seals_.

A SOLUTION OF THE RACE PROBLEM[44]

BY J. MILTON WALDRON, S. T. D.

J. MILTON WALDRON, D.D., _of Washington, D. C. Noted as having erected and operated the first Institutional Church among Negroes in America in Jacksonville, Florida, 1890-1907._

[Note 44: Delivered at Cooper Institute, New York, 1912.]

That fearless, able, and broad-minded author of "The Negro and the Sunny South"--a book, by the way, every American citizen should read--Samuel Creed Cross, a white man of West Virginia, takes up an entire chapter in giving with the briefest comments even a partial list of the crimes committed by the whites of the South against the Negroes during the author's recent residence of six months in the section. Last year eighty or ninety colored persons, some of them women and children, were murdered, lynched, or burned for "the nameless crime," for murder or suspected murder, for barn-burning, for insulting white women and "talking back" to white men, for striking an impudent white lad, for stealing a white boy's lunch and for no crime at all--unless it be a crime for a black man to ask Southern men to accord him the rights guaranteed him by the Constitution.

Within the last twelve months Georgia disfranchised her colored citizens by a constitutional subterfuge and Florida attempted the same crime. And within the same period almost every white secular newspaper, and many of the religious journals, of the South contained in every issue of their publications abusive and malicious articles concerning the Negro in which they inflamed the whites against the brother in black and sought to justify the South in robbing him of his labor, his self-respect, his franchise, his liberty, and life itself. Many of the officials of Southern States, including numerous judges and not a few Christian ministers, helped or sanctioned these Negro-hating editors and reporters in their despicable onslaught upon the Negro, while tens of thousands of white business men of the South fattened upon Negro convict labor and the proceeds of the "order system."

Not satisfied with the wrongs and outrages she has heaped upon the colored people in her own borders the South is industriously preaching her wicked doctrine of Negro inferiority, Negro suppression, and Negro oppression everywhere in the North, East, and West. And yet, in the face of this terrible record of crime against the liberty, manhood, and political rights and the life of the colored man which is being rewritten in the South every day, there are those in high places who have the temerity to tell us that "The Southern people are the Negro's best friends," and that the Negro problem is a Southern problem and the South should be allowed to solve it in her own way without any interference on the part of the North.

The North and the South together stole the black man from his home in Africa and enslaved him in this land, and this whole nation has reaped the benefits of his two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil, and this whole nation must see to it that the black man is fully emancipated, enfranchised, thoroughly educated in heart, head, and hand, and permitted to exercise his rights as a citizen and earn, wherever and however he can, an honest and sufficient living for himself, his wife, and children--this the South cannot do alone and unaided.

Nearly three millions of the ten million Negroes in this country live north of Mason and Dixon's line, and thousands of others are coming North and going West every month; over four hundred thousand of the three millions mentioned above live in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis, and Chicago; if the Negro problem was ever a Southern problem, the colored brother has taken it with him into the North and the West and made it a national problem.

The life, liberty, and happiness of the black man and of the white man of this country are so wrapped up together that it is impossible to oppress the one without eventually oppressing the other. The white man of the South was cursed by slavery as much almost as the black man whom he robbed of life, liberty, and virtue. In many parts of the South to-day the masses of poor white men are no better off in any sphere of life than the colored people, with the single exception that their faces are white. The rights and liberties of the common people of this entire country have grown less secure, and their ballots have steadily diminished in power, while the colored man has been robbed of his franchise by the South. The trusts and the favored classes of this country have seen the rights of millions of loyal black citizens taken from them by the South in open violation of the Federal Constitution, and that with the indirect approval of the highest courts of the land. And these trusts and interests have come to feel that constitutions and laws are not binding upon them, and that the common people--white and black--have no rights which they are bound to respect. The South alone cannot right these gigantic wrongs nor restore to the white people (not to mention the Negroes) within her own borders the liberties and privileges guaranteed them by the Constitution of the United States.

In discussing the South's attitude towards the colored man we seek only to hold up to scorn and contempt the spirit which pervades the majority of the people who live in that section; and we desire to condemn only the men of the South who hate their fellow men; we wish to bear testimony now and here to the truth that there is an undercurrent in the South which is making for righteousness, and that there are a few noble and heroic souls in every Southern State who believe that the Negro ought to be treated as a man and be given all the rights and privileges accorded any other man. This righteous spirit must, however, be encouraged and strengthened, and the number of noble and fair-minded men and women in the South must be greatly augmented, or the battle for human liberty and the manhood and political rights of both races in that section will never be won.