taxes, possesses the intelligence and substantial character, is the one which is going to exercise the greatest control in government, whether he lives in the North or whether he lives in the South." 11

"I would teach the race that in industry the foundation must be laid that the very best service which anyone can render to what is called the higher education is to teach the present generation to provide a material or industrial foundation. On such a foundation as this will grow habits of thrift, a love of work, economy, ownership of property, bank accounts. Out of it in the future will grow practical education, professional education, positions of public responsibility. Out of it will grow moral and religious strength. Out of it will grow wealth from which alone can come leisure and the opportunity for the enjoyment of literature and the fine arts.'

12

Booker Washington believed fully in higher learning for his race, but thought that the greater present need was practical education for the masses. He said: "I believe most earnestly that for years to come the education of the people of my race should be so directed that the greatest proportion of the mental strength of the masses will be brought to bear upon the everyday practical things of life, upon something which they will be permitted to do in the community, in which they reside." 13

"There is danger that a certain class of impatient extremists among the Negroes, who have little knowledge of the actual conditions in the South, may do the entire race injury by attempting to advise their brethren in the South to resort to armed resistance or the use of the torch, in order to secure justice. All intelligent and well-considered discussion of any important question or condemnation of any wrong, both in the North and the South, from public platform and through the press, is to be commended and encouraged; but ill-considered, incendiary utterances from black men in the North will tend to add to the burdens of our people in the South rather than relieve them." 14

Dr. R. R. Moton, the successor to Washington at Tuskegee, holds that the Negro problem is one for the Negro himself to solve by lifting himself to a higher level of culture, and is fundamentally a moral one.

"Whatever question there may be about the white man's part in this situation, there is no doubt about ours. Don't let us delude our

"The Future of the American Negro, p. 132.

"The Negro Problem, by representative Negroes, New York, 1903, p. 18. 13 Ibid., p. 17.

14 The Future of the American Negro, p. 206.

selves but keep in mind the fact that the man who owns his home and cultivates his land and lives a decent, self-respecting, useful, and helpful life is no problem anywhere. We talk about the 'color line,' but you know and I know that the blackest Negro in Alabama or Mississippi or Africa or anywhere else who puts the same amount of skill and energy into his farming gets as large returns for his labor as the whitest Anglo-Saxon. The earth yields up her increase as willingly to the skill and persuasions of the black as to the white husbandman. Wind, wave, heat, steam, and electricity are absolutely blind forces, and see no race distinction and draw no 'color line.' The world's market does not care and asks no question about the shade of the hand that produces the commodity, but it does insist that it shall be up to the world's requirements.

"I thank God for the excellent chance to work that my race had in this Southern country; the Negro in America has a real, good, healthy job, and I hope he may always keep it. I am not particular what he does, or where he does it, so he is engaged in honest, useful, work.

...

"The race problem in this country, I repeat, is simply a part of the problem of life. It is the adjustment of man's relation to his brother, and this adjustment began when Cain slew Abel. Race prejudice is as much a fact as the law of gravitation, and it is as foolish to ignore the operation of one as of the other. Mournful complaint and arrogant criticism are as useless as the crying of a babe against the fury of a great wind. The path of moral progress, remember, has never taken a straight line, but I believe that unless Democracy is a failure and Christianity a mockery, it is entirely feasible and practicable for the black and white races of America to develop side by side, in peace, in harmony, and in mutual helpfulness each toward the other; living together as 'brothers in Christ without being brothers-in-law,' each making its contributions to the wealth and culture of our beloved country.'

" 15

Paul Laurence Dunbar offered no special recipe for the uplift of the Negro race, but believed that the conditions underlying the advancement of the Negro "are the same that account for the advancement of men of any other race: preparation, perseverance, bravery, patience, honesty and the power to seize the opportunity." 16

Address delivered at Tuskegee, May, 1902, printed in Dunbar, Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence, p. 367.

16

The Negro Problem, by representative Negroes, p. 209.

He differs from most other Negro authors in laying little emphasis upon political propaganda, and he was not an admirer of the Negro politician. "The street corner politician," he says, "who through questionable methods or even through skillful manipulation, succeeds in securing the janitorship of the Court House, may be written up in the local papers as representative, but is he? . . . The rabid agitator who goes about the land preaching the independence and glory of his race, and by his very mouthings retarding both, saintly missionary, whose only mission is, like that of 'Pooh Bah!' to be insulted; the man of the cloth who thunders against the sins of the world and from whom honest women draw away their skirts, the man, who talks temperance and tipples high-balls-these are not representative, and whatever their station in life, they should be rated at their proper value, for there is a difference between attainment and achievement.

"Under the pure light of reason, the ignorant carpet-bagger judge is a person and not a personality. The illiterate and inefficient black man, whom circumstance put into Congress, was a representative but was not representative." 17

"To have achieved something for the betterment of his race rather than for the aggrandizement of himself, seems to be a man's best title to be called representative." 18

Dunbar goes on to say "that for the last forty years the most helpful men of the race have come from the ranks of its teachers, and few of those who have finally done any big thing, but have at some time or other held the scepter of authority in a school." 19

He gives high praise to Booker Washington, W. H. Council of the Normal School of Alabama, R. R. Wright of the State College of Georgia, Kelly Miller of Howard University, and W. E. B. DuBois of Atlanta University. He also points with pride to Negroes who have achieved distinction in art, and he believes that it will be through individual achievements of something "definite and concrete" that "the race problem will gradually solve itself." 20

Booker Washington, in his celebrated Atlanta speech in 1895, expressed the point of view of the Southern Negro when he said, "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." At this time Booker

"The Negro Problem, by representative Negroes, p. 192.

1 Ibid., p. 189.

"Ibid., p. 200. 30 Ibid., p. 206.

Washington was at the head of an industrial school for Negroes in Tuskegee, Alabama, and his address was a plea for more general industrial education for his race; his remark about social separation of the two races was only incidental. The practical philosophy of the address, and its incisive and forceful style, as well as its fine spirit, made an electrical impression on his audience, and Booker Washington was at one bound a famous man.

The part of his address referring to social separateness, however, did not meet the approval of mulattoes in the North. They regarded Booker Washington's figure of speech as a compromise, and in all of their references to his Atlanta address they still call it the "Atlanta Compromise." The Northern mulattoes, because they cannot associate with the whites, and do not want to associate with the blacks, are hypersensitive on the subject of social opportunities and privileges. The different points of view of the Northern and Southern Negroes in reference to social equality are brought out in their attitude toward an address delivered by President Harding at Birmingham, Alabama, October 26, 1921.

The President began his speech with a quotation from an article in the Edinburgh Review by F. D. Lugard as follows: "Here, then, is the true conception of the interrelation of color-complete uniformity in ideals, absolute equality in the paths of knowledge and culture, equal opportunity for those who strive, equal admiration for those who achieve; in matters social and racial a separate path, each pursuing his own inherited traditions, preserving his own purity and race pride; equality in things spiritual, agreed divergence in the physical and marital."

Concerning this statement of Mr. Lugard's the President said: "Here, it has seemed to me, is the suggestion of the true way out. Politically and economically there need be no occasion for great and permanent differentiation, for limitations of the individual's opportunity, provided that on both sides there shall be recognition of the absolute divergence in things social and racial. When I suggest the possibility of economic equality between the races, I mean it in precisely the same way and to the same extent that I would mean it if I spoke of equality of economic opportunity as between members of the same race. In each case I would mean equality proportioned to the honest capacities and deserts of the individual."

The President could not have said anything more in line with the views of Booker Washington.

Dr. R. R. Moton, in an article in the Outlook, November 9, 1921, commending very highly the President's address, said: "The President has proposed a platform upon which black and white, North and South, can stand without sacrifice, on the one hand, of any traditions of the white race, and, on the other, without sacrifice, of any fundamental rights of the Negro as an American citizen.

"Furthermore, the President has asked for the Negro nothing more than what leading men of both races in the South are asking, and we are grateful to him for having delivered the address in the South where the problem is most acute. His address comes at the opportune time when not only the leading white people of the South, but the average white person as well, are more determined than ever before that the Negro shall have an equal chance with other Americans."

The Southern Negro leaders and the rank and file of Southern colored people, were highly pleased with the President's speech. But the Negro leaders in the North were thrown into a rage by its utterance on the social question. For example, William A. St. Clair, writing to the Guardian, a Negro paper of Boston, said: "The speech delivered by President Harding in Birmingham, Alabama, yesterday is fraught with the most dangerous, pernicious, destructive and hell-born doctrines that have ever been uttered in the fifty years of our development, not only by a president of the United States, but by any responsible Cabinet Minister.

"The colored race cannot afford to ignore these utterances; unquestionably great harm has already been done our race as indicated by remarks made by some white people in my hearing, and incalculable injury to our race will certainly follow.

"President Harding exploits in Birmingham, in the heart of the South, and in the very toils of the serpent of racial prejudice, the doctrines of amalgamation, social equality and the question of the Colored ballot; and as I see it, simply to gain the favor of those whites in the South who have been the oppressors of our race, and who have used their every power to destroy us as American citizens."

Even Theodore Roosevelt, while he was President, came in for severe denunciation from the Northern mulattoes on account of his utterances on the race problem before a Southern audience. He was held up as turning traitor to the Negroes because he emphasized the Negroes' duties more than their rights in a speech to colored people at Jacksonville, Florida, in 1905. He said: "It seems to me that it is true of all of us that our duties are even more important than our