Suez Canal, Importance to British Interests. WELLHAUSEN, JULIUS. Scientific Study of Old Wheat-Growing, Competition in. Quarterly Re view 9 VALUES and Prices. W. H. Mallock. 1 Victorian Literature. Edward Dowden. 79 529 40 111 517 Vincent, J. H. Chautauqua...... Vitzhum von Eckstadt, Count. The Czar Nicholas 475 41 WAGES, How Affected by Free Trade.. 188 Washington's Idea of a National University. Prof. Herbert B. Adams.. 330 ..... 264 276 45 391 William, The Emperor. Spectator.. 145 202 436 191 Swinburne, Algernon Charles. The Jubilee-1887. 575 Will-o'-the-Wisp, A, and the Blue Flower. Elwyn TAYLOR, W. M. Ray Palmer.. Tennyson, Lord. Carmen Sæculare.. Turkey, The Present and Future of. Murray's UNITED STATES, Wheat Acreage of. 7 Wisdom of Babes and Sucklings. Saturday Review 20 Woman is fitted for, What. THE LIBRARY MAGAZINE. SEPARATE OR MIXED SCHOOLS AND CHURCHES AT THE SOUTH. [The following is (with a few omissions) a paper read before the National Educational Association at Washington, by Hon. S. M. Finger, State Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina. It has just been printed by order of the U. S. Secretary of the Interior in the "Circulars of Informa tion of the Bureau of Education."-ED. LIB. MAG.] Add to this the circumstance that I was taught by my father to look with suspicion upon the institution of slavery, and that consequently I had a degree of sympathy for the slaves. In view of these facts, I trust that I can enter upon the discussion of the negro question with freedom from prejudice against the colored people, and with sufficient opportunity to have learned. something about them from actual contact and to enable me to keep up with changing public sentiment about the negro, both North and South. Since the storms that beat upon our ship of state subsided, we find her anchored in the harbor of freedom and equality of all men before the law. But with all these opportunities to Twenty-one years have elapsed, and as study and observe the negro, I am free the clouds clear away, it becomes us to confess that I do not know that I to take our reckonings. Almost a fully understand him; and I cannot, generation has passed away, and other with satisfaction to myself, forecast his men control, other ideas prevail. It future or form a definite conclusion as is wise that we lay aside all sectional to his capabilities. So far he is an feelings, and without crimination or undetermined quantity in the problem recrimination discuss all the great of civilization. Whether the size of problems that confront us, and espe- his brain and his other peculiarities cially the negro problem, which, I mark him as the white man's natural submit, is perhaps the most difficult of them all. inferior, or only emphasize his want of opportunity, is an unanswered question, and it must remain an unanswered question until he shall have been tried and cultivated for more than one generation. Born and reared in the South, having a southern ancestry antedating the Revolution of 1775, the son and the grandson of an owner of slaves, I have had opportunity of studying the negro History is against the claims of the in his home in the South, before and negro to equality with the white since the late war between the States. nations. He would seem to be immovEducated in New England, and having able, incapable of progress, except as had business intercourse with the he is brought into immediate personal people of the northern section of the contact with the whites. However Union, I have had opportunity of this may be, the white people of the studying the negro in the North also, southern section of the United States, both before and since his freedom. as well as those of the northern, desire In to give him a fair trial. In this there puted, but his equality or inferiority seems now to be very fair unanimity of need not now enter into the discussio t sentiment. So far as the thing to be as to how he should be educated. done is concerned, there is not much a practical point of view, there is diversity of opinion. He is a citizen, common ground enough to stand upon. equal before the law to any other citi- The ground upon which this discussion zen in all the States of this Union. should proceed is his real status now. The conclusion is, therefore, irresistible We should recognize his intellectual that he must be educated, intellectu- and moral condition as it is, and not ally, industrially, and religiously, not too eagerly inquire what it will be after alone for his benefit, but for the pro- some generations of training shall have tection of our government. But when been given him. The future will take we come to consider how this is to be care of itself if we faithfully take care done, intelligent and good people have of the present. different plans and theories. These Let us now inquire what his real plans and theories have foundation, in status is. I do not think that any man the minds of those who hold them, who has not lived in the South for many according to the glasses through which years and observed the negro in his the negro is seen. One man sees in country home, as well as in the cities him capabilities equal to those of the and towns, will be likely fully to underwhite man, and he fits his plans and stand his real condition, intellectual, theories of education to his estimate of moral, and religious. He may read the negro's natural ability. Another all the literature touching upon it; he man sees the negro as an inferior may travel through the South, and being, and he fits his plans and theories even sojourn for years in the South, to his belief. Still another man sees and not comprehend it. Far the him as an untried and unknown factor greater part of the negroes live in the in civilization, now far behind in country, on the plantations, and a intelligence, morality, and religion, traveler would be apt to form his and so his ideas as to how to educate opinions by what he saw in the cities him take shape. and towns, where the most intelligent of the negroes congregate, and where their educational and religious opportunities are better than in the country. One man says, The race line is providential, and therefore it ought to be perpetuated. Another replies that the race line has already been broken down, Consider the case as it is. A race and he goes on to argue that all laws of the most barbarous people on the that favor the separation of the races face of the earth, and perhaps the most in schools, and all laws that forbid ignorant, brought to the United intermarriage between the races, ought States but a few generations ago at to be repealed. Still another man most; sunk into the lowest depths of says, This race question can never be heathenism; bound in all their worsettled until by intermarriage between ships by the most abject fear and the races the white race is made to degrading superstition; subjected to absorb the colored race; and he advo- slavery without any effort, worth the cates mixed schools, and mixed name, to cultivate their intellects; churches, because he thinks this policy will lead to mixed marriages. Whether or not the negro is naturally equal or inferior to the whites is dis suddenly released from their bondage in the condition of paupers; suddenly made citizens equal before the law to their old masters; who had been-civil izing and developing for a thousand Then, too, we have in the South a years; taught for twenty years in the large number of old negroes, industrious bad schools of politics; embittered and well behaved-good men and against their former owners and for a women. The schools have elevated time virtually ruling them; with only quite a goodly number into respectable a few years of limited education by the teachers and preachers, and some have impoverished South-with this history advanced in other walks of life. But and this treatment, what in the very all of these compose but comparatively nature of the case must be their condi- a small proportion of the great mass. tion and disposition now, even if we assume their natural equality with the whites? In this connection it should be noted, too, that in those sections of the South where the farms were small before the Their surroundings and home life slaves were freed, and where the whites are, as a rule, of the most unfavorable labored with the slaves, the negroes are kind. In the country, as well as in far more advanced in intelligence, the cities and towns, in many cases good manners, and good morals, than whole families-fathers and mothers, are those who lived on the large cotton, brothers and sisters-live in small rice, and sugar plantations. The houses, often containing but one room, difference is marked both as to the the parents exercising no restraint, or older negroes and their children. But an impatient and passionate restraint, I cannot now examine the different over their children, and the children sections of the Sou 1 detail. I having no elevating companionship. have time to draw on y a general Of course there are exceptions, but I picture of what the negro's condition am not now noting the exceptions. is in the South, and I desire to draw it With such surroundings in the forma- strictly in the light of facts. I am tive, family life of the colored children. before they reach the school age, and with such companionship, they have a most unfavorable start for the formation of character. Add to these home the bottom round of the ladder of influences the physical inheritances transmitted to them-inheritances that are apparent to the sight, and add to these still the inheritances of mind and soul which are invisible to mortal sight, but which are no less real than the physical, and we can have some appreciation of the real condition of these children. I have drawn the general picture. I am glad that I can note many exceptions. As we visit the hotels and barber shops, we find almost all the services performed by well-behaved, intelligent, and decent colored persons, whose very service has brought the elevating contact with the white people, just as it does in the northern States. willing to concede that the negroes, as a whole, are improving slowly intellectually, and yet I want to impress the fact that the great mass of them are at civilization, and that there are hereditary tendencies which any proper system of education must take into consideration. One of the great mistakes many northern teachers made when they came South and took charge of colored schools was, not to take note of these hereditary tendencies, both physical and mental. These teachers had seen the negro in the North only, where the brightest of them had found their homes before the War; where they did, not number one in fifty of the population; where, from the very fact of there being comparatively so few of them, contact with the whites was a necessity in the daily labor of the |