PROGRESS AMONG THE NEGROES. T HE problems, moral and political, connected
with the seven millions of Negroes who inhabit the Southern States of the Union, and who in Louisiana, Missistsippi, and South Carolina constitute a majority of the popula- tion, are in many aspects so formidable and so full of danger and difficulty for the Republic, that it is a relief to find that there is a good deal to be said for the prospect of a satisfactory solution, and to hear that the coloured element in America need not be looked on as altogether hopeless, from the point of view of progress. The twenty-first annual report of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute —a sort of technical school, mentioned with praise by Mr. Bryce—which is reviewed in a recent number of the Nation, shows how much can be done for the Negro if care is bestowed on his education. General Armstrong, an old Northern soldier, who is the head of the Institution, dwells with just pride on its progress. In twenty years, the number of pupils has grown from 15 to 600,—of these, 460 being Negroes, and 140 Indians. The fundamental principle of the school is the instruction of the inmates in such knowledge as will fit them to earn their own living as civilised human beings, and to act as missionaries of civilisation in the wild country districts where they may happen to settle down as farmers. In this way, "the graduates" of Hampton are intended to inoculate, as it were, the uneducated portions of the coloured race with the desire to rise above their present low social standard.
More important, however, than the account of the suc- cessful application of technical training to the Negroes, is General Armstrong's general view of "the Negro Question." Since the emancipation, very large sums have been spent on education both by religious and philanthropic Societies in the North and by the Southern whites, who have, to their great credit, taxed themselves heavily to teach the blacks. Since 1868, the Southern States have spent in all $37,000,000 on Negro education. It is calculated, how- ever, that of every $100 paid. in taxation in the South, $91.50 is paid by white people. That this expenditure has not been thrown away, can be shown, says General Arm- strong, by noticing the improvement that has taken place in the maintenance of law and order. While there are still certain districts given over to the curse of lawlessness, even the "black belts" of the Gulf States show "a steady if slow advance towards good government, the gain in every ten years being noticeable." General Armstrong admits that the ordinary talk about the Negro is, notwithstanding, still pitched in a very hopeless key. To the direct question, however, "'Are the labourer's pigs and poultry and crops safer than ten years ago ? are the loafer and thief more likely to get their due ? are the Negroes inclined to get homesteads P' the answer is usually, 'Yes.'" In spite of the very large numbers of the " low-down " Negroes, and of the existence of many wretched neighbourhoods, intelli- gent whites admit that "the line between the good and the bad is every year more distinctly drawn,—a sure proof of progress." On the whole, General Armstrong considers the results achieved very important, and he believes that "this basis of hope is beyond the reach of any political pressure." Politics, indeed, he thinks, had better be dismissed from the consideration, as he holds that time and education are the real cures of the remaining evils. "Increasing enterprise in the South and the new industrial life of the people," he says, "are helpful conditions, and, where they are supple- mented by education, are pushing the better part of the Negro race into prosperity, giving them a place and making them a power. The talk of disfranchisement is idle ; it comes too late ; the Negro is not what he was twenty-five years ago, and the next half-century will see great changes. As prosperity creates social distinctions, political divisions will follow, and the human nature of both races may be trusted to adjust the relations, which are, indeed, to-day, generally amicable. In those localities where lawlessness and injustice have repelled capital and immigration, the penalty of impoverishment is the swift result, and Govern- ment can do little ; the people must finish the work of recon- struction." To enforce this hopeful declaration, the Nation quotes from a newspaper which has just been started in Charlestown under the name of the New South, which is printed, written, and edited entirely by coloured men. The doctrine it preaches is in agreement with that of General Armstrong :—" We believe," it says, "that the future of the Negro depends infinitely more upon his own efforts than upon any other agency at work in his behalf. There is no railroad for the Negro. He must ascend the ladder of moral, material, and intellectual development as other races have done ; and it seems to us that it is high time for him to cease following the ignis fatuus of politics, and begin the work of development upon those lines only on which real progress is possible. The politician has long since exhausted his storehouse in the Negro's behalf." Though we would gladly accept the optimistic views of General Armstrong and of the New South, we must admit that we cannot help seeing very considerable dangers and difficulties ahead. That the Negro is capable of becoming civilised when carefully taught and trained, we fully believe, and if the whites were numerically stronger, or the blacks numerically weaker, we should have little fears for the ultimate result. As long as the coloured people are not so numerous as to prevent them from being thoroughly got hold of by persons of European descent, and drilled into what our older writers would have called " civility," there is no danger of Louisiana becoming a second Hayti. If, however, the restraining force of the whites from any cause diminishes, or their civilising influence is able in the end to reach only a small proportion of the African population, there will, we cannot help thinking, be a great risk of a relapse. At present the whites, by a flagrant warping of the spirit of the Constitution, more or less winked at in the North, manage to deprive the blacks of all political power. No doubt, as long as this lasts, social disintegration is not to be feared. When, however, the present Negro boys become of full age, can we expect that they will tolerate illegal political extinction ? It is far more likely that in those States where the Negroes are in a majority, they will, sooner or later, insist on some- thing like political emancipation, and that under their auspices all that the European races value most in civilisa- tion will suffer. Unfortunately, too, this prospect of • a dominant black population cannot be expected to be con- fined to the three Southern States in which the blacks now outnumber the whites. The Negroes, as has so often been pointed out of late, increase far more rapidly than do the native whites, and thus there is no small reason to fear that the whole of the Southern States may practically fall into the hands of a half-educated coloured popula- tion. To realise what this means, we must remember that one of the most appalling things about the condition of Hayti is the fact that men and women belonging to the educated classes, and possessed of a fairly thick veneer of cultivation, indulge in secret in the most hideous practices of barbarism. To eradicate the propensity towards relapsing into the wild condition which is shown by the Negroes, just as it is by many garden flowers and plants, is a matter of time. We fear, however, that with the blacks of the South, time will not be given, and that the careful hand of the gardener will be removed too soon. To say that a degraded population of English race such as the "mean whites" will, if left alone, in time work out its own salvation, is probably sound enough. To say it of persons only three or four generations removed from Guinea savages, is quite another matter. It must never be for- gotten that at this very moment serpent-worship flourishes in Louisiana, and that the hideous and obscene free- masonry of the Obeah rites often appeals to the strongest feeling in the Negro's nature. He may be able to read and write, may be apparently a sincere Methodist, and yet what really touches him is not the piety he jabbers about, but some horrible and secret incantation in the cane-swamp. That the Union will ultimately conquer and live down these, and a hundred other difficulties, we do not doubt ; but that they will be surmounted by giving one, or even three generations of Negroes the rudiments of educa- tion, we utterly disbelieve. People imagine that the Negro is merely an illiterate who happens to have a black skin. They forget that his great-grandfather, perhaps his grandfather, was an actual cannibal, and his cousins in Hayti are cannibals still, though sometimes cannibals who can read and write. The European, on the other hand, however much untaught, is always forty generations or more removed from pure barbarism, and two hundred generations from cannibalism.
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