Unfettered Part 22

The weekly church services are held at night, calling for more time from home. In view of all of which it is apparent that we are weak at the foundation, the family life, and strenuous efforts are needed at this point.

Our organization must employ an army of workers to co-operate with Negro mothers in the work of home building. Christian inst.i.tutions where Negro boys and girls are being trained must be induced to pay especial attention to the question of the Negro's home. The laborers' working day must be shortened, so that they may have more time at home. The white families must be induced to have earlier suppers, so that those who cook for them may return to their several homes the earlier.

The scale of wages must be increased so that the mother and children may be exempt from the task of bread winning. With an increase in wages and the consequent ability to save a portion of his earnings for the 'rainy day,'

the lodge will not be the absolute necessity to the Negro that it now appears to him to be. Under these improved conditions the mother and the father can the better co-operate and make the home what it must be. Our racial organization must bend its energies in the direction to accomplish these results. For one thing it must link its great influence to that of the forces laboring for the improvement of the condition of the toiling ma.s.ses.

RELIGION A FACTOR.

In his very brilliant work on "Social Evolution," Benjamin Kidd remarks that "there is not that direct connection between social development and high intellectual development which has. .h.i.therto been almost universally a.s.sumed to exist," and "that the wide interval between the peoples who have attained the highest social development and the lowest, is not mainly the result of a difference in intellectual, but a difference in ethical development."

He further states that the human race "would, in fact, appear to be growing more and more religious, the winning sections being those in which, _caeteris paribus_, this type of character is most fully developed." He is firmly of the opinion that "the evolution which is slowly proceeding in society is not primarily intellectual, but religious in character."

The influence of religion upon a people's life is admittedly so great that any program looking to betterment of their condition must take note of the prevailing religious belief. The Christian religion was ingrafted upon our racial life in the days of slavery. As we were in an abnormal state, it should not occasion surprise if many did not get a normal grasp upon the Christian religion.

In the days of slavery the Negro felt that his lot in this world was a rather hopeless one. No where could he catch a glimmer of hope. To him the earth was without form and void. But his optimistic nature had to be fed, and the glories of the world to come, pictured in the Bible, to him became a living reality. Thenceforth his mind rested not on earth. The death bed, the funeral, the grave, the world to come, received the wealth of his spiritual energies. As a natural result the bearings of religion on this present life were lightly pa.s.sed over, lethargic conditions ensued and the spirit of wise prevision was in large measure absent. The morbid dwelling of the mind of the Negro on antic.i.p.ated worlds must be discountenanced; a more rounded view of religion inculcated.

Without entering into sectarianism our racial organization must foster such conceptions of religion as will make its ethical teachings, applicable to life in this world, more prominent. With the home life cared for and proper religious instruction guaranteed, our racial organization will have laid secure foundations.

TO WEAR WELL OUR CROWN.

Our racial organization must bear in mind that we are struggling for untrammeled freedom in the greatest government that human intellect has ever evolved. Without proper culture we cannot meet the requirements of worthy citizens.h.i.+p. We must pay especial attention to our public schools, and see to it that knowledge shall not be lacking. The value that education will be to the citizen is admirably outlined by Thomas Jefferson, in the following words used in setting forth the purposes of education.

Education is intended:

1. "To give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.

2. "To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing.

3. "To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.

4. "To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either.

5. "To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment. And in general to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed."

In order to insure the education of the ma.s.ses, the following steps must be taken:

1. The Negroes must be stimulated to acquire taxable values to such an extent that the Southern States shall not administer the school funds for the Negroes with the feeling that they are making a charitable donation to the race.

2. Night schools must be fostered for adults.

3. Money must be provided for the lengthening of the school term.

4. Salaries for teaching must be raised that a high order of talent may be the more easily enlisted.

5. Books must be supplied to the children too poor to buy.

6. Means must be inst.i.tuted to prevent the too common habit of withdrawing the Negro child from school at so early an age to help support the family. These and such other measures as close scrutiny may from time to time suggest must be employed to make the public school system among the Negroes what it ought to be.

IN THE UPPER REALMS.

It is not enough to provide elementary training for our people. The great minds of earth choose the devious pathways to be threaded by the wavering feet of humanity. They pa.s.s upon what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong, what is expedient and what is inexpedient.

Tremendous is the influence that has been exerted on human history by the teachings of the great.

Through the training of the intellect the Negroes must develop men capable of interpreting and influencing world movements, men able to adjust the race to any new conditions that may arise. We need men to do for the Negro race what Prof. Henry Drummond sought to do for the Christian religion. In the upper chamber of the house of human knowledge, the congress of scientists presided over by Charles Darwin, and representing the culture of the ages, met to promulgate a new religion; a religion that would establish Nature as our ethical teacher, pointing with the finger of evolution, the way for man to go. By dint of patient, faithful labor and notable achievements in the realm of science, Prof. Drummond secured admittance into this upper chamber and took his seat at the council table. Soon the world heard his voice proclaiming in the tone of one speaking with authority that the new revelations of science contained no poison for Christianity; that the new teacher, Nature, was the friend, not the enemy, of the old teacher, the Bible. He declared that Evolution and Christianity have "the same author, the same end and the same spirit."

Thus Drummond was on hand to seek to stay the Darwinian hand, if, after shattering other conceptions, it had attempted to demolish the one wors.h.i.+p that modern civilization has thus far failed to destroy.

To prepare Negroes for taking care of our interests in the realms of highest thought, our racial organization must found universities, liberally endow scholars.h.i.+ps, provide equipments for original investigations and so foster the cause of higher education that no race can boast of superior intellectual attainments.

"OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END."

Books are the means by which each successive generation comes into possession of the best (of which the records have been kept) that was wrought during all preceding generations of human endeavor. Not only does the art of printing thus connect with all that was good in the past, but it also affords a man the opportunity of becoming a part of all that is being done in his day.

In view of these considerations it is evident that a race that does not read must ever be a laggard race. Our racial organization must, therefore, found libraries throughout the regions in which Negroes dwell, to the end that we may have the benefit of all the elevating influences of good literature.

Our problem is, however, deeper than the mere founding of libraries, as is apparent from the following considerations: During their sojourn in America the great majority of Negroes have had such work a.s.signed to them as required much bodily exercise. But a comparatively few have led sedentary lives. The laboring Negroes have been accustomed to sing as they worked or have relieved the monotony of their labors by jovial bantering. The occupations of a race eventually make themselves felt in more or less marked racial characteristics.

Thus, when a cotton factory was established recently to be operated by Negro labor, it failed, the manager a.s.signing as a partial cause thereof the fact that the Negroes did not make the best operatives, in that sitting still and being quiet caused them to be rather listless and sleepily inclined. While, in other instances, tendencies in that direction have perhaps been overcome, this one case serves to suggest that the inattention to reading on the part of so many may be traceable to the same inherited indisposition to sit still and be quiet, necessary concomitants of the reading habit.

Our racial organization must not, therefore, feel that its labors are complete when the libraries are founded. Systematic efforts must be put forth to create in our people a thirst for reading so that they may have ears to hear what the past and present are thundering at us.

WE EAT TO LIVE.

However brave, brilliant and resourceful a general commanding an army may be, however loyal and enthusiastic are his soldiers, he must inevitably fail if he neglects his commissary department. The cravings of the human stomach must be provided for or there will be no soul left in the emaciated body to aspire for higher things.

In arranging, therefore, for the welfare of the race our racial organization must not neglect the material needs of our people. An advancing army must protect at all hazzards its base of supplies. We now outline a course of action in keeping with this thought.

The man who knows that there is a prejudice against him, owes it to himself to so contrive that he shall be as nearly as possible independent of the workings of this prejudice. Negroes, therefore, should, in the main, seek those callings in which they shall be above the whims and prejudices of men.

The land owner, the farmer, can come as near to being independent of his fellows as a man may in these days attain. The sun, the elements, the soil, his own strong arm, are his chief reliance and these forces are not subject to enslavement, nor can prejudice weaken them. Nature has no favorites among men. The rains fall upon the just and the unjust alike. Back to the farms, therefore, should in a large measure be our cry. With a strong agricultural backbone the position of the race is much the more secure. The conditions that operated to cause the Negroes to so largely abandon the farms must be studied and altered when possible.

Our racial organization shall give due recognition to the following needs, doing all that is necessary to see that they are attained:

1. The Negro must become the owner of the soil he tills.

2. He must be placed above the conditions of dire necessity that causes him to resort to the credit system of buying and the mortgaging of his crops, which things have hitherto wrought his ruin.

3. Provisions must be made whereby he may secure modern appliances with which to farm.

4. He must be educated so that he may know how to obtain the best possible results from the soil.

5. He must be taught to keep fully posted upon the important happenings in the commercial world bearing upon his interests.