Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/165

Rh against him, and where head and hands may help one another to profit of mind and pocket—in business of varied kinds where he may get money, and with it the station that, in the common view, nothing else will afford him; in good work done for his race such as will give him the dignity in the eyes of all men that the master of Tuskegee has won. It is very much better for a negro youth, and for his race, that he should be a successful blacksmith, farmer or engineer, than a lawyer or physician, hindered and shunned, sorely burthened as he is sure to be by the cross that his fellowmen force him to bear. Therefore, unless they are willing to betake themselves to countries where the government is in the control of mixed peoples, thereby escaping the worst evils of race prejudice, it seems best for negroes not to seek the so-called learned professions, but to win their way on the lines where they will find less resistance—on ways quite fit for a man, even if not the highest.

It has been suggested that our colonies may afford a field for professionally educated negroes; but there, if they are to be ruled by the home government, it is likely that they will find a white caste in control. We may thus expect that the same essential disfranchisement will be found there as at home. Moreover, as before remarked, this project of sending to far lands the individual of ability who is needed at home, can not commend itself to those who feel the need which is with us, a need that calls for all the capacity we can hope to develop among the black people. It is clearly not a time to consider a proposition to export these abler youths of the black population.

Back of all our projects to bring the negroes of the South to the full station of citizens, to get rid of the contempt and the consequences of the contempt in which they are, as a race, so generally held, is the grave question as to the practicability of framing a social and political system in which men of such diverse origin may have a substantially equal chance. It must be granted that in no modern state of high grade has this problem been fairly solved. The instances from the tropical colonies of Great Britain are not really apposite; but there seems no fundamental difficulty to contend with in order to attain this end. With cultivated people of their own race about them the better negro youth would not be deprived of that element of education. We have taken into our political family races scarcely less different in motives from our own than are the negroes, making no kind of objection to their sharing the commonwealth with us. In certain ways it is true that a nation loses strength where it fails to have its elements closely knit together. But it may be doubted whether these losses are not more than compensated for by the gains that arise from diversities such as would come from the introduction into our system of a body of folk with the capacities which our Africans are likely with thorough training to develop.