Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/180

158 Surely here is a field for commerce worth the attention of commercial capitalists in the United States.

"'5. The chief end of the work of the Society to be in the line of enabling and stimulating Liberia to depend less and less upon others and more and more upon herself.

"'Under the pressure of a disheartening and increasing competition the time is coming when, in obedience to one of the great laws of our nature, the more intelligent negroes of the United States, in larger numbers, "will come under the efficient motive which propels man to all enterprises — the desire to better his condition" — and they will turn their faces toward the land whence they came. When quicker and cheaper communication is accomplished, as it surely will be at no distant day, and the passage can be made in eight or ten days, instead of taking a month as it now does, and the people of the two countries can communicate back and forth at short intervals, colonization will begin to take care of itself and Liberia will receive a fresh and powerful impulse. The great gain in time by direct steam communication with readily be seen from a statement of the following distances: "From New York to Liverpool, 3,115 miles; from Liverpool to Liberia, 3,250 miles — making the whole distance from New York to Liberia, by way of Liverpool, 6,365 miles; direct distance from New York to Liberia, 3,720 miles, or only 605 miles greater than the distance from New York to Liverpool."

"'Bishop Henry C. Potter, of New York, is now president of the Society, and Mr. J. Ormond Wilson of this city, is acting as secretary, and Mr. Reginald Fendall, also of this city, as treasurer. The office of