PAM. N. AMER. jncnrmt issiorarj) Assmiatkm* PAMPHLET No. 3. THE Three Despised Races IN THE UNITED STATES; OB, The Chinaman, tie Mian, anil tie Freeflman. AN ADDRESS, BY JOSEPH COOK Hew ImIi: Published by the American Missionary Association, Office, 56 Reade Street. 1878. American isstonatj) Assoriaiion. PAMPHLET No. 3. THE Three Despised Races IN THE UNITED STATES; Tie Clinamai, tie Indian, and tie Freedman. AN ADDRESS, BY JOSEPH COOK. Published by the American Missionary Association, Office, 56 Reade Street. 56 READE STREET, N. Y. PRESIDES T. Hon. E. S. TOBEY, Boston. VICE-PRESIDENTS. Hon. F. D. Parish, Ohio. Rev. G. F. Magoun, D.D., Iowa. Rev. Jonathan Blanchard, 111. Col. C. G. Hammond, 111. Hon. E. D. Holton, Wis. Edward Spaulding, M.D., N. H. Hon. William .Claflin, Mass. David Ripley, Esq., N. J. Rev. Stephen Thurston, D.D., Me. Rev. Wm. M. Barbour, D.D., Ct. Rev. Samuel Harris, D.D., Ct. Rev. W. L. Gage, Ct. Rev. Silas McKeen, D.D., Vt. William C. Chapin, Esq., R. I. Rev. W. T. Eustis, Mass. Hon. A. C. Barstow, R. I. A. S. Hatch, Esq., N. Y. Rev. J. H. Fairchild, D.D., Ohio. Rev. II. A. Stimson, Minn. Rev. J. W. Strong, D.D., Minn. Rev. Thatcher Thayer, D.D., R. I. Rev. Geo. Thaciier, LL.D., Iowa. Rev. Ray Palmer, D.D., N. Y. Rev. A. L. Stone, D.D., Cal. Rev. J. M. Sturtevant, D.D., 111. Rev. G. H. Atkinson, D.D., Oregon, Rev. W. W. Patton, D.D., D. C. Rev. J. E. Rankin, D.D., D. C. Hon. Seymour Straight, La. Rev. A. L. Chapin, D.D., Wis. Rev. D. M. Graham, D.D., Mieh. S. D. Smith, Esq., Mass. Horace Hallock, Esq., Mich. Rev. H. M. Parsons, N. Y. Rev. CyrusW. Wallace, D.D.,N.H. Peter Smith, Esq., Mass. Rev. Edward Hawes, Ct. Dea. John Whiting, Mass. Douglas Putnam, Esq., Ohio. Rev. William Patton, D. D., Ct. Hon. Thaddeus Fairbanks, Vt. Hon. J. B. Grinnell, Iowa. Samuel D. Porter, Esq., N. Y. Rev. M. M. G. Dana, D.D., Minn. Rev. H. W. Beecher, N. Y. Gen. O. 0. Howard, Oregon. Rev. Edward L. Clark," N. Y. Rev. William T. Carr, Ct. Rev. Horace Winslow, Ct. Sir Peter Coats, Scotland. [Eng. Rev. Henry Allon, D.D., London, William E. Whiting, Esq., N. Y. J. M. Pinkerton, Esq., Mass. corresponding secretary, Rev. M. E. STRIEBY, 56 Reade Street, N. Y. DISTRICT SECRETARIES, Rev. CHARLES L. WOODWORTH, Boston. Rev. G. D. PIKE, New PTork. Rev. JAMES POWELL, Chicago. EDGAR KETCHUM, Esq., Treasurer, N. Y. H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., Assistant Treasurer, N. Y. Rev. M. E. STRIEBY, Recording Secretary. Alonzo S. Ball, A. S. Barnes, Edward Beecher, George M. Boynton, William B. Brown, executive committee. Clinton B. Fisk, A. P. Foster, Augustus E. Graves, S. B. Halliday, 'Samuel Holmes, S. S. Jocelyn, Andrew Lester, Charles L. Mead, John H. Washburn, G. B. Willcox. ADDRESS. It were a felicity in our discussions to-night, if this au- dience could be assembled in the Chinese quarter of San Francisco, or among the birchbark wigwams of some In- dian reservation, or in the freedman’s lonely school-house in the Florida everglades, or under the moss-liung pines of the Carolinas or Louisiana. Professor Tyndall endorses the assertion that the ner- vous influence travels through the human body at the rate of seventy feet a second. Thus, if the floating island we call a whale, thirty-five feet long, is struck in the flukes with a harpoon, a full second will pass before any muscu- lar movement can take place, in response to the irritation of the sailor’s weapon. Now, in spite of the nervous threads we call telegraphic wires and telephones, modern civilization has a great circumference, and our country may be harpooned on the Pacific and not know the fact on the Atlantic Coast ; we may feel that we are struck by some weapon of fate or accident, and yet, so do we roll in strength and size in the ocean of time, that it is our greatest danger that distance may make us apathetic to our own wounds. The breadth of our land gives most of 3 4 DESPISED RACES IN us the impression that the Chinese question is a bagatelle. The length of it, from North to South, gives some of us the feeling that the condition of the freedmen has been set- tled by the war, and if not by that, then, of course, by the ballot. That settles everything ! It is a panacea for all human ills. By and by, when men can vote three times a day, there will be no demand for work ! It is necessary for me, therefore, to ask you to assemble, in imagination, in places yet more sacred than the Chi- nese quarter of San Francisco, or any camp of painted sav- ages, or any lonely quarter of the South. There may be in this audience some soldier with an empty sleeve. Ask him to go back to the battle-field where he lost his arm. It must be that in this gathering there is represented many a family bereaved by the far-reaching scythes of our Civil War. Every such household I ask to go to the spot where it made a sacrifice for the Union. In short, let us assemble on the battle-fields of the war. It is fitting that men of my age should insist, with deep earnestness, upon saving all we gained in our civil struggle. My generation in this country is a remnant. Look at the tomb-stones you decor- ate in May, and read the inscriptions on them, and you will find that a great proportion of those who gave up their lives in the Civil War were between twenty-five and thirty- five years of age. My class in the American population is decimated, and such of us as remain alive must not be accused of lack of patriotism, if we put our hands a little roughly on the collar of scoundrelism in America ; a little roughly on political indifference to the duties of the present hour ; a little roughly on the Church itself, if she is not permeated with the desire to save all that has been THE UNITED STATES. 5 gained by washing America in blood. It will not be long, at the longest, from now until the roll-call after the battle. We younger men shall soon see onr brethren who have al- ready given up their lives that the dolorous and accursed ages might a little change their course. May our tongues cleave to the roofs of our mouths, and our right hands for- get their cunning, if we ever forget that our brethren died, not merely to establish the Union, but to purify it, and if we ever fail in the endeavor to sell our lives, in the purifica- tion of America, as dearly as they sold -theirs in its unifica- tion ! In the Chinese quarter of San Francisco we are walking up and down, and, undoubtedly, it must be admitted that Chinese civilization is not quite equal to American. We have heard that the Chinese in California have brought over the vices of paganism. Of course, those are much worse than anything of the sort in London or Paris or Vienna ! This has been affirmed by mayors on the Pacific Coast, by politicians, by men who certainly must be called honorable, in the sense in which a certain play of Shak- speare calls renowned characters in Rome “honorable men.” It has been bruited abroad, in newspapers, that there is nothing on the globe like the vices the Chinese have brought to California. “For ways that are dark, and tricks that are vain, The Heathen Chinee is peculiar ; ’’ but the Californian is not, and the Viennese and the Pari- sians are not! Nevertheless, as we walk up and down this Chinese quarter, we are suddenly arrested by overhearing a conversation between roughs : , “ I would kill a Chinaman as quick as a dog.” 6 DESPISED EACES IF The first day of May, 1876 — our Centennial year — the Chinese village of Antioch, in California, was burned to the ground, and the inhabitants were told to leave the place, on penalty of death, if they remained. The anti-Coolie clubs of San Francisco, and the “ Young Men’s Universal Reform Club ” of the same city, passed resolutions, and sent copies of them to leading officials at Washington, de- claring that a similar fate awaited the Chinese quarter in San Francisco, unless the General Government should make strenuous efforts to repress Chinese immigration. Therefore we must beware, as we pass up and down this quarter, lest the torch of the incendiary he our chief lamp ; however, it is not a Chinese hand which holds that flame. We look into shops, and here is Ah Sin, sometimes gam- bling, hut oftener throwing cold aspersions upon clean linen. He wishes to get his living as a washerman ; he has come to California hungry, and it may be he has a little meat every day for dinner — a thing he did not have in China. He has his rice here, and he has brought his chop- sticks with him. But he really has meat every day for dinner ! and letters in strange characters cross the Pacific, giving the marvelous news on the rivers of China that a man in America may have meat to eat every day, and that not made up of vermin ! But he is not drunk on the streets; and, certainly, some Irishmen do imbibe too much ! Even Americans have oc- casionally been known to do so, especially if they belong to the classes represented by low-paid labor. A Chinaman never is on the street intoxicated. Yes! hut here is a dark corner ; and we pass through a porch, and find, on couches in an inner room, some inebriates of opium. Well, there THE UNITED STATES. has been something, but never enough, said of the greed of English merchants, which forced upon China the opium trade. We do not care to remember the origin of that Chinese habit. We are too proud ourselves to admit that our race, if exposed as much as China has been in that particular, would have shown an equal tendency to physical transgression. Wendell Phillips says: “If you wish to know the true character of a race, you must first find out what their heaven was when they were Pagans, and made a mythology.” Now our forefathers had a heaven, and the chief enjoyments there were the hacking of heroes in pieces by each other, and drinking mead out of skulls. Thus, our old heaven indicated our tendency to pillage, our love of physical excitement, and the intemperate blood in our veins. We need to walk softly in this Chinese quarter, if we are to detest all Chinamen because of their vices ; for, as doctors know, iu some highly fashionable quarters in Paris may be found those who are enervated through and through by the use of absinthe. The Chinaman is alto- gether to blame, of course, and we are to be excused ! But let us be lenient at first ; let us look at all sides of this Chinese quarter, before we condemn it for one sore spot. Undoubtedly the Chinaman has his faults, but we must be very careful how we kill him as a dog, until we are as- sured that he is no better than that animal. But, why is the Irishman afraid of the Chinaman ? The latter does not get drunk, and can live on less a day. Here is competition, no donbt, in the ranks of low-paid labor. And that is the bottom of the trouble in this Chinese quar- ter. We have collisions, sometimes, of bachelor and family wages. Lately, such a collision occurred in this country, 8 DESPISED EACES 1 1ST and it flamed up all the way from Baltimore to San Fran- cisco, on the line of our railroads. A thin, wavering, yet intense and very ominous flame burst up from the soil of low-paid labor. The roughs, incendiaries and tramps, gathered in our great cities, caught fire. Our riff-raff riot- ers, our petroleum Communists, our street loafers, were in- flamed, not by the will of the workingmen, but by their own indolence and rapacity. James and John have differ- ent conditions in life, and need different wages, for John has a family, and James is a bachelor. Now the man who receives bachelor wages comes to the man who receives family wages, and says, “ I am willing to work for eighty cents a day. You are not. You have a dollar and a half. Your wages are reduced to a dollar and a quarter, and you have struck. I will take your place.” So James says to John. And John replies, “If you do that, James, I will kill you.” And James replies, “ If you kill me, the soldiers will shoot you.” And John meditates a moment, and says, “ Well, I will stop the trains ; you shall not work.” And he is as good as his word. Just so in the Chinese quarter. The heathen Chinee says, “ I will work for eighty cents a day ;” and your Irish laborer, who has a family to support, and cannot live on that, feels like killing the Chinaman, because the wolf is at his own door, it may he. That is what it is — a conflict between different grades of low-paid labor. And if Antioch was burned, and if threats were made, which the Mayor of San Francisco needed to speak sternly to put down, it was because of a certain phase of the question between capital and labor coming to the front on the Pacific Coast, as it came to the front last summer on our railways. THE UNITED STATES. 9 The question is one of wages, largely. And yet the fault of the Chinaman is, chiefly, that he wants to live economically ; that he will not get drunk; that he is industrious; and if, in the large conflicts of high-paid and low-paid labor, or different ranks of low-paid, we are not to stand on the side of the temperate, on the side of the orderly, on the side of the generally honest, we are then to stand on the side of the rough, the tramp and the sneak. We must choose which. These men who threaten assassination, these men who make themselves incendiaries, are to be treated, if they attack the Chinaman, with the sort of mercy with which Napoleon treated the riff-raffs of the French Revolution. He was asked why the Church of Saint Roche was splin- tered, and he replied, “ It is false that we fired first with blank charges ; it would have been a waste of life to do that.” If the Chinaman, while he is orderly, is not to have police protection, I pray Cod to send us some man who will not fire blank charges on the Pacific Coast. We are altogether too easy with this question, for the rights of labor are concerned, and they are our rights. The question concerning the Chinese and the freedman — • everything touching the lower strata of society in America — touches the upper, because of the mobility of American society. In discussing here the Chinaman, the Irishman, the freedman, and the low-paid laborer, we are discussing, it may be, the condition of our own grandchildren; and the question comes home to us, whether law shall or shall not be executed on the Pacific Coast ? But we are meditating too long on this Chinese street. Here is a school ; the Chinaman is in it, and what does he learn ? Co into it,, and listen, and you discover a great fact. 10 DESPISED RACES Ilf The thing the Chinaman wants to know is the English language ; and here is a man with a spelling-hook in one hand, and a New Testament in the other. He is baiting a Gospel hook with the English alphabet. He is an agent of the Society for which I have the honor to speak to-night. Is he doing any good ? Well, when Antioch was sacked, he received some of the refugees into his own house. When Ah Sin’s hut was burned the other night, here in the Chinese quarter, he found Ah Sin some cham- bers the next day, and helped him through the pinch. The flaming articles against the Chinese, in the city press, this man sometimes answers, and does it eloquently. He is opening schools wherever he can in the Chinese quar- ters, and it is found that his position soothes the waters. He is, of course, respected by all the better class in San Francisco ; and little by little the Chinese come to believe in him. I open the report of this agent, and I find that a hundred young men have been converted in his schools, and were drawn in by their desire to learn the English language — first, into the Sabbath-school, then into the Young Men’s Association, and little by little into service in Christian families; and they have exhibited excellent traits. Twelve of them, this agent says, have gone home to China with enthusiasm for Christian civilization in their hearts; and letters come back, stating that the Chinese are curious to know what American civilization is under the strange religion called Christianity. Nine-tenths of the population of China have never heard the fundamental principles of Christian civilization. This agent seems to be in a very strategic position. What is the trouble with him ? He ought to open twenty schools. Why has he not THE U.NTTED STATES. 11 done so ? He has twenty Ah Sins that he might succor, if he could ; why does he not ? He is a man of enter- prise; he looks sagacious. What is the trouble with him? His 'pockets are empty ! Where does the trouble begin ? Eight here in Syracuse, which is just one hundred miles from everywhere; and, therefore, let us say it begins in Boston, Hew York, Buffalo, Albany. The more we meditate upon the work of this man in the Chinese quarter, the more we, as general observers of society in Chinese San Francisco, feel that he ought to be sup- ported. The school should be kept up ; the desire of the Chi- naman to know the English language should be fostered; in every way that craving should be made a door to the Gospel. We put our ear down at the edge of the Pacific, we listen to the song of the waves, and in some strange man- ner we hear the sounds of coming ages! Five hundred millions of weary feet passing up and down on that slope, between the Japan Sea and the mountains, which cast their shadows towards Central Asia as the sun riseth! Poor men, most of them, unaccustomed to any form of luxury, they are crowded in the vast cities ; and yet they are orderly. The most peaceful empire of all the world was founded by Confucius when he made the basis of all religion, and all politics, respect for ancestors, parents and schools. That is the government of China, and your poor heathen there has learned to be respectful towards his superiors. And now, as we listen, we ask ourselves what may happen if commerce builds a bridge between that land of suffocated, low-paid laborers, and this land full of hope for the workingman ? We know what happened when the Pacific Kailroad was built. The instant the call arose for n DESPISED EACES IN physical labor, China heard it through the sea, and in some way 100,000 Chinamen came over here. We mobbed them ; we burned their hovels ; we have always treated them harshly. And yet they are here, a hundred thou- sand to-day, on the Pacific slope. And although the emi- gration from China is temporarily checked by our barbari- ties, and by the finishing of the Pacific Pailway, that whole coast is yet to make demand for labor. The facility of crossing the Pacific is increasing, and an over-populated China is likely to send a multitude to the Pacific Coast before another century closes. It is said that the question concerning the savage is not of present importance ; he is fading out. The question con- cerning the negro has very much diminished in im- portance ; but the Chinaman is likely to be heard of at our second Centennial. When Japan shall have Christian- ized herself, and when China shall be open not only to commerce but to European and American literature ; when the Pacific Sea becomes — as it may some day, to an English-speaking alliance — what the Mediterranean was to the Roman Empire, we may hear more of the “ Heathen Chinee ” whose “ ways are peculiar.” I wish, therefore, that precedents of the right sort should be set in our time. After listening to the Pacific, we find good advice in the hum of those millions beyond the Yellow Sea. That is sufficient justification for the work of this Society. It would be a sufficient justification for the work of twenty such societies, ten times better supported than this one is now. California is the door to China. If we transfer ourselves to an Indian reservation, we shall find the interest of our topic not diminished, pro- THE UNITED STATES. 13 vided we have not taken up the notion that the Indian is likely to disappear soon. Is it true that the American savage is on the verge of evanescence ? Have we authority for saying that the reservations are slowly becoming empty ? You know we spend about $5,000,000 a year in gifts to the Indians, or in the support of soldiers to keep them in order. The question as to the Indian is whether we shall civilize him or fight him. In the official statistics pub- lished by the Society for which I am speaking, and now lying before me, I find that the Indian "War in Florida cost $50,000,000 ; the Sioux War of 1852 and 1854, $40,000,000 ; the Oregon Indian War of 1854 and 1855, $10,000,000; the Cheyenne War of 1864 and 1865, $35,000,000; the Indian War of 1866 with the Sioux, $10,000,000; thd war of 1867 with the Cheyennes, $40,000,000. General Sherman says that the cost of caring for the Indians of Hew Mexico by the army, from 1846 to 1860, was $100,000,000; so that the fact stands out here, with em- phatic vividness, that for the past forty years military operations of the nation against the Indians have cost $12,000,000 annually! We have 60,000 Cherokees, who are civilized and quiet, and they cost us very little. But we have 10,000 wild Apaches, and the government pays the army that takes care of them $2,000,000 yearly. Which is the cheaper — to civilize these people, or to fight them? In 1864 the number of schools among the In- dians was only 89, and in 1873 it was 2,600. In 1864, the number of scholars among the Indians in the United States was 261 ; ten years later it was 9,000. In 1864, the number of acres farmed by the Indians was only 1,800 ; in 1873 it was 297,000. In 1864, the number 14 DESPISED RACES IX of bushels of wheat raised by the Indians in the United States was 44,000 ; ten years later, 288,000. The value of their animals in 1864 was $4,000,000; in 1873 it was $8,900,000. The truth is that the closest observers understand very well that the poor Indian, who has been on the point of vanishing, has made up his mind not to vanish. If a just policy could prevail, if the advice given by the honored Executive of this nation to the Indian chiefs a few days ago at the White House could be followed, we should find the figures astounding us ten years hence more than they do now, by indicating an increase of more than ninety per cent, in the number of acres farmed by people who were once savages or half-breeds. There is a popular misapprehension on the point of the decadence of the Indian race. It is true that they are unwilling to cultivate the land. It is certain that they are haughty at the hoe handle; but when we walk among their wigwams, and study their condition now as contrasted with what it was ten years ago, a few marvelous facts must fix our attention. Here we are in an encampment on the Eed Lake Agency in Minnesota. The Indians at the Agency number 1,100, and the reservation contains 3,000,000 acres of land. How these Indians have raised — I am reciting an official report — in the last year, 7,000 bushels of corn ; 1,100 Indians— say about 1,000 of them, counting out the very young and the very aged — a thousand persons that can handle an agricul- tural implement have raised 7,000 bushels of corn, an excess of 1,000 bushels over any preceding year; 2,000 bushels of potatoes, and 430 bushels of other vegetables; have cut 250 THE UHJTED STATES. 15 tons of liay; made 5,000 pounds of maple sugar — I wish I were there ; gathered 600 bushels of berries ; caught 750 pounds of fish — all of them probably as beautiful as those we catch in the Adirondacks ; and taken $14,000 worth of furs, and made 1,000 yards of matting. One thousand people, 7,000 bushels of corn — that is seven bushels apiece; $14,000 worth of furs — $14 the result of the trapping of each man. Well, they have done better at trapping than at most other things. But have you, farmers of this fat Cen- tral New York, done better with your corn or with your potatoes ? No doubt that is a rather favorable specimen. But we transfer our audience to the Lake Superior Agency in Wisconsin. We find the Indians extremely anxious to have their reservation improved. They express themselves willing to do without clothing and blankets, if they can have a school-house and teacher. One of them has built a house himself, and furnished it as white men’s houses are furnished. He has a bedstead, cups and saucers, plates, knives, forks and spoons, and a No. 8 cook-stove. What does this indicate ? “ He brushes his hat o’ mornings ; What should that bode ?” — Shakspeare. Should not an abundance of encouragement be given to such enthusiasm ? There is undoubtedly a change, when we compare the present time with ten years ago. Here is an officer, whose language we had better quote verbatim : “ Two things were noticeable ; first, the cleanly appearance of all the Indians. I saw no sights from which to turn with disgust, as upon former visits, and I could not but remark this change. Three years ago, when I first 16 DESPISED RACES IN visited these bands, I found them dirty, ragged and filthy, lazy and ignorant, in a degree beyond anything I had ever imagined. Their blankets, clothing and hair were perfectly alive with vermin, and they had the woodlands covered with birchbark wigwams. To-day, I found them generally dressed in civilized costume, their hair combed, and their faces and clean white shirts showing that some one has taught them the use of soap and water/’ First chapter of the Gospel ! “ The absence of the birchbark wigwam as- sures me that many have taken advantage of the teachings of Mr. and Mrs. Holt, and built houses in which to live and entertain their friends.” But Mr. and Mrs. Holt wanted to institute a manual labor boarding-school, and what was the trouble with them ? Do not laugh, for the laugh is against yourselves. There was nothing in their pockets, because you put nothing there. They wanted a district-school on that Agency, and had to close the little building they possessed, early in June, because of the lack of funds. And all through the Indian reservations we find the desire for little churches and little schools, especially manual labor boarding-schools. We find the better class of the savages desiring these institutions ; and the report that comes, in case after case, is simply, “ Schools closed, no funds.” Here, even in America, is the harpoon again ; and the harpoon is driven by our own agents at times. There have been men employed as Indian agents who were not saints. It has been supposed that the poor Indian has sometimes had the worst of the bargain when he bought beef! Professor Marsh, of Yale College, is com- monly supposed to have told the truth. I beg a thousand pardons ; I did not mean to make a political remark here THE ITHITED STATES. 17 to-night. But in Boston every man is a philosopher, and Boston is so far off that I shall not ruffle any one’s sympa- thies when I say that in that city it is understood com- monly that poor beef was sold to the Indians, and that Bed Cloud had a really murky cloud of just complaint behind him. We know that miserably dishonest men have fleeced the Indians, and counteracted the effect of our missions. The agent is there ; the missionary is there ; your teacher is there; and if there cannot be funds enough put into the hands of the agents who are teaching and preaching, we may be sure that the agents who wish to fleece the Indians will in some way obtain funds enough ; not, of course, from the Indians, but by taking the supplies that come to them through the General Government. For one, I greatly admire the Indian policy of our hon- ored Executive, as expressed in his remarks to the Indian chiefs a few days ago. If you do not, I shall make no apology for being political so far to-night as to say, that better sense has not often been uttered to the savages than President Hayes uttered to those chiefs a few days ago. But that sense wants cents behind it. We are thinking that the General Government can do everything, and lean- ing on Congress in a manner not at all fit for an Anglo- Saxon race. Why, ever since Parliament was founded, it has been the glory of our part of the world’s population to do things for themselves, and to cause the government to obey us besides. We do not lean on paternal Congresses and Parliaments. That is the European plan. It is the Ameri- can custom to carry through great benevolent enterprises by private subscription. We do not want the government to pay our taxes for us, and feed us, as your Communist wishes 18 DESPISED RA.CES IN it to do. The government is fleecing nobody, and we must take care that we fill np the pockets of philanthropic enterprise, and do not depend upon the government. I sup- pose the chief trouble with our Indian affairs, especially with those which are conducted by the agents who preach and teach, is that we have thought the government does all that the Indian can need to have done for him. We have leaned upon Congress; but soon it will be found that our Indian philanthropists, so far as they are governmental, must be inefficacious, must at times be harmful, unless followed up by the broad charities of the Church, unless made effective by the diffusion of that con- scientiousness which alone can prepare the way for the dif- fusion of industry and property. Your savage is not a decreasing quantity. When we re- call that $12,000,000 annually, for the last forty years, have been spent in fighting him, we must conclude that we had better put a little of that money into the pockets of the agents of the honored Society for which I speak. It is policy. It will pay. But now we transfer ourselves to the rice swamps of the South, and face, perhaps, the gravest problem arising after the Civil War. I remember the contests called “ The Wars of the Boses.” I have not forgotten how half the population of Germany was sent to death in the “ Thirty Years’ War ” — yes, half, on battle-fields, or in hospitals, or by famine. But yet I must assert that the problem of rightly reconstructing the Southern States, has not been equaled in complexity in history. We think we have finished the case, but the case has nearly finished us. Did the negro succeed in Missis- sippi, where he had a majority ? I am his friend, but I THE UNITED STATES. 19 must say that he tried to fleece the white man there ; and if I had been in Mississippi, I never would have submitted to the rule of black rascals or white. The negro has gone to the wall in Mississippi, in spite of having a majority there, and the suffrage. And he is likely to go to the wall in South Carolina. I am treading upon ground that has upon it many embers and many flaming fagots, and I pur- posely omit everything of a partisan character, in these giances into the dark region, where all the truth cannot be told in public. But the negro has made mistakes, and he is going to the wall, even when he has a majority ; and his inferiority in politics results from his lack of education. We are in the South now ; look about. This is a glori- ous land. The palmetto, the majestic pine, the cotton plant, the soil that laughs with a harvest every time you tickle it with a hoe — here are the elements of fatness in material civilization. But the land is strangely unfortu- nate industrially. Capital has been gradually centralized here, and the chief change going on at present is its de- centralization. Great estates ruined Borne, Tacitus says, and great estates existed in the South. Some of them are overgrown with weeds so thickly, that if the dead Con- federate soldiers could arise from their graves and come back, they would hardly know their own homes. It may be that I speak to some here who, from personal observa- tion, know of this state of facts. Nevertheless, there is a more encouraging sight. Some young men who accepted the changes that the war brought about, and went to work and subdivided their patrimonies into small farms, and de- centralized capital, and employed machinery, are successful. The small farms lie in the most active regions of the 20 DESPISED BACES IH South, and wherever they spring up the land looks new. Nevertheless, even in the quarters where the small farms indicate the change in the industrial organization of the South, the negro is ignorant; he can vote, hut he cannot read the names on his ballot, always. Indeed, this is a very strange land, the South. We are a haughty people here. We have ruled this nation, and perhaps we shall again; and yet there is an ignorant population here. There is a very intelligent population, too. The astutest politicians on this continent are here. But most of the people are not educated, as in the North. Let us look at the hooks ; here are the statistics. In the Southern States, of the population over ten years of age, twenty -five per cent, are illiterate; in the Eastern States and Middle States, only three and eight-tenths per cent, are illiterate ; in the Western States — I hope Boston will not hear us to-night — three and four-tenths per cent. They are ahead of us ! A quarter of the population over ten years of age cannot read or write in the South, and thirty-nine per cent, of the voters cannot read their bal- lots. A terrible state of things is this ! Who is that man in priestly robes ? This is the town of Macon, Ga. Here is a gathering of freedmen. They are a religious body. They desire aid in their churches. They are passing a resolution, and are about to send it to that man in priestly robes. I give you exactly the language of a resolution passed in Macon, Ga., lately : “Resolved, that this meeting appoint a committee to wait upon the Right Rev. Bishop Gross, who is now in this city, and ascertain his views as to the educational policy of the Catholic Church in regard to the colored people of THE UNITED STATES. 21 the South, and ascertain to what extent we may look to that organization for assistance in the work of educating our children.” A new problem ! There is the negro, and this man in priestly robes is a J esuit. And what is his history ? He has been heard of before in the world. The negro begins to lean on him. Where are we? Politicians put their ear to the ground, and say, “ Will Rome bring together the negro vote and the foreign vote ? If she can mass those two bodies under universal suffrage, and control both of them as a make-weight, will she have small or large political influence here ?” These are serious questions. The other day I met a politician, one of the astutest men of Massachusetts, and he said to me : “ Lately I was in Wash- ington, and went into a Romish church that was almost a cathedral, and found it filled with negro worshippers. Do you think,” he whispered to me — on Beacon street, at the head of that historic mall in Boston Common where Lafay- ette and Washington walked up and down together— “ do you think,” said he, “ that it is possible that the foreign vote and the negro vote may be massed together and ex- ploited by the hand on the Tiber ?” “You know better than I do,” said I. But it occurred to me that no more important question than that was asked by Washington of Lafayette, or by Lafayette of Washington, on that historic ground. I am no alarmist ; but the facts are that in some States a great mass of illiteracy exists among the whites as well as among the blacks, and it has come suddenly to the front. What if a million illiterate voters were turned loose in New England to-night ? Should we not have reason for alarm, or 22 DESPISED RACES 1ST at least for activity to counteract the possible effects of such a change ? What if in the Middle States a million illiterate voters were suddenly created ? You would feel the need of bestirring yourselves ! So the West, were she burdened with a million illiterate votes, would set all her newspaper presses to work at a right exploiting of that dangerous influence. In the South a million votes were created when we gave the negro suffrage, and most of them are illiterate votes, and yet we slumber over that change. And we continue to slumber, even when we are told that side by side with the illiteracy of the blacks, there exists a vast amount of illiteracy among the poor whites, and that the illiteracy of the foreign vote of the North, which we know is exploited by the hand on the Tiber, is being brought into connection with this white and black illiteracy in the South. A great white mass here of voting granite ; a gray mass of voting granite there ; a black mass yonder. And the three, taken up by some giant who might lift his colossal weapon in conflict with the angels — as described by Milton — the three slowly lifted up to a commanding height above our pillows, while we slumber ! The powers that exploit the ignorant vote in this country know what they are about. Our cities are growing. Do you know that New York city is a small village, but will some day be as large as London ? Put Chicago and New York together, and you have not made a London. Put in Brooklyn, and you have not made a London. Even put in Boston, and you have not made a London ! St. Louis, San Fran- cisco, and New Orleans massed there at the mouth of the Hudson would not make a London. Our seven largest cities, taken together, contain only a little over three THE UNITED STATES. 23 million inhabitants, while London claims, officially, just under four million. Now, we are eventually to have a London there. We ultimately shall have a city at the mouth of the Hudson as large as the city that lies on the Thames. We know what New York is now. She is under the heel of our foreign vote. One-fifth of the popu- lation of America lives in cities. Look at this matter search- ingly. Consider the illiterate votes that can be massed in connection with this illiterate vote in the South. In 1790, one-thirtietli of our population lived in cities — by a city I mean any collection of people over eight thousand in number ; in 1800, one twenty-fifth ; in 1870, one-sixth. And to-day it is supposed that more than one-fifth of the popu- lation of the United States live in cities. Once look at these fractions, and you will see how we have gone down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fallen among thieves! But just where we fell among thieves, comes in this Jesuit tiger. I am not a partisan. I have no acerbated feelings towards Rome. She has always treated me well. She has stoned a few of my friends, to be sure. I have a class of ac- quaintances that really have suffered under Rome. It was my fortune to live in Canada to learn French, and to look about a little abroad, and I have seen that wher- ever Rome has had her way, she has made all the life of the peasant population of Europe a prolonged childhood. When, therefore, this negro meeting in Macon sends this resolution to the Jesuit in his official robes, and when I know what is done by the Jesuit party in New York and in Chicago, to exploit politics, and when I listen to the inner whispers in political circles, and find the question asked whether the illiterate Southern and Northern vote 24 DESPISED RACES IK can be a make-weight, I think it time, in the name of our political safety, to call for the education of the whole bal- loted South ! Here is the negro, with all his faults ; and as we here are his friends, it is fitting that we should recognize the in- felicities of the negro’s action. Undoubtedly he has chosen to represent him, in many a Southern legislature, unedu- cated politicians, rather than the virtuous and highly cul- tured persons that we dreamed perhaps he would always like. Undoubtedly his legislators have been guilty of cor- ruption at times. We can blame him roundly and soundly, and still he will only be graded side by side with the blackness of some white legislators. There is a necessity of admitting that the negro has made some mistakes, for we must preserve candor. Never- theless, his mistakes have had their sources in slavery. We know that if he had been educated, his self-interest would have taught him to do better than he did in Mississippi. We have a hope that if he can be trained in school and church, he ultimately will become that good citizen which we have always wished he should be. And yet it is more and more evident that if he is ever to have a school-house and a church, he must build both the one and the other for himself. There is a school law in Kentucky, and the age of children who have white skins who can go to school may be from six to twenty ; but that of children who have black skins may be only from six to sixteen. Practically, nine-tenths of the public school moneys are spent for the white children. Undoubtedly the infelicities are not so much in the law as in the customs of society behind the law. But the unwritten law of the South is that upon THE UNITED STATES. 25 which the negro must live. Go to Washington: ask the men who are inside politics there, what is likely to become of the peasantry and tenantry of the old plantations, in the South. Why, last summer, on Lake Chautauqua, while I had a little leisure, I fell into conversation with one of the acutest members of Washington society — I dare not describe him more definitely — and he said to me : “ The negro is getting in debt. He is a peasant ; he rents land ; he has only very small wages ; he buys his groceries at a store owned by his landlord, and runs up a bill there ; and the silent scheme of the South is to get the negro in debt. Then he cannot very well leave town until his debts are paid. He becomes a fixture, in many cases, because of his indebted- ness ; and, to make the story short, sir/’ said my informant, “ some of us fear that, fifty years hence, a considerable por- tion of the freedmen will be in a state of peonage. They will be bankrupt tenants under the power of landlords. And it is often whispered in the South that this will be the next best thing to the restoration of slavery.” I did not and do not endorse these sentiments. But I have heard them so often in society, representing the average opinion on the border of the old slave States, that I dare not say there is nothing in them. What I dare say is, that, unless work, such as this Association proposes to do, is per- formed, valiantly, courageously, defiantly, there will be much in them to bring America to her knees, after all her exultation. We look with eyes dull, and sometimes glazed, upon these Southern problems, for we do not take the right point of view. Let us gather upon some bloody spot in the South. I do not refer to Andersonville. I will say nothing of the battle- 26 DESPISED RACES IN' fields of the Southern States. But where are the victims of secret assassinations upon both sides ? Black men have killed white men sometimes, hut oftener the white men have killed the black. We are here at the edge of the Dis- mal Swamp. We know that there have been Ku-Klux- Klan s. We know what kept those bands in order in the South for a while ; but the bayonet has been taken off the neck of the Southern States. We did not pierce the veins with that weapon. We laid the bayonet flat upon the necks of the Ku-Klux-Klan. We said there must be order here ; elections must be held, and their results declared ac- cording to law ; military occupation shall continue until we are satisfied that the people have expressed themselves fairly at the polls. But a new policy, whether you approve it or not, has been organized. Whether you adopt the views of those who uphold it or the views of those who at- tack it, it is probable that not even the flat side of the sword or bayonet will soon be laid upon the neck of the South again. We have adopted a new policy, whether we like it or not, and nothing is left but the Sabbath- school and the Church to keep the South in order. That is the danger. You are divided in opinion about taking off the flat side of the sword. That is a proof of the importance of the work of this Society, for the sword will not remain ; only the olive branch is left to wave over these acres that five years ago, three years ago — I fear even two years ago — were soaked in places with the blood of assassination. I am no alarmist, I say again ; but it is true that lawless- ness has filled the South — a lawlessness arising not alone from the military occupation of those States. We have had a conflict of races up to a very recent period, and now, upon THE UHITED STATES. 27 this ground covered with embers, we are to build the school-house for the free dm an, and the church for the negro who has just received the franchise. We must do it, hut how ? Where is the money ? Of course the negro preacher can collect it ! Of course he is received every- where in good Southern society ! Surely if he has a good coat on, and speaks the English language fluently, he will he welcome in any parlor ! In the great, generous South we need not defend him, if he only mind his manners ! Let us listen to fact. The truth is that the Society represented by this gathering to-night has theological students at this moment reading their books by the glare of pitch-pine torches. They are so poor they cannot buy candles. Some of them have money to get through a course of edu- cation ; but they are going out to preach, a dozen of them, and you will find more than half of them walking, if the distance is not more than five or six miles, and they walk because they cannot afford the railway fare. The details concerning the sacrifices of many a theological student' aided in the institutions whose hells this honored Society rings, and whose bells it put into their towers, are sickening. I came up the Mohawk this afternoon. For the first time I looked out upon the face of the central portion of my native commonwealth. I had heard the roar of Niagara ; I had passed down the rapids of the St. Lawrence ; I had seen the meadows of New York, except in this quarter ; and as I gazed upon the transfigured autumn landscape and saw the grazing sheep and kine, and the evidences of fatness in the mellow harvest, I was reading of these pinched stu- dents, these young men who have the misfortune to pos- sess black skins, hut who would he preachers and carry the 28 DESPISED EACES I2ST Gospel of the Lord our God to tlieir brethren on the old rice swamps, and at the edge of the dismal flats, and in the ever- glades of Florida. And in the official documents now ly- ing before me, I find statements as to their penury, as to the impossibility of their obtaining a night’s lodging at times in white households of the average class in the coun- try, as to the danger to which their lives are sometimes ex- posed in rural places, not as far off as Texas ; and the cold condition of the Northern heart toward an enterprise that ought to fire it — this iceberg of Northern opulence over against this torrid want in the South — affected me almost to physical sickness, as I gazed on that fatness of the Mo- hawk Valley, and remembered the fatness there is in the Connecticut region, and how all through this teeming North we are wasteful, have enough and to spare, but for- get the men w r ho, a little while ago, were at the front in our Gettysburgs and Richmonds, and who soaked this soil of America with their blood, as our brothers did with theirs, and who now perish for want of means that you and I are squandering in our luxury and lavishness. This Society asks aid. You think it a dull affair to listen when a man appeals for a cause so obscure as this. It is a cause that ought, in the name of the glare of every bat- tle-field, to be flamed before the heart of Northern opu- lence, until in our fat Mohawk, our Connecticut Valley, and in the sound of the roar of our Niagara, we kneel down and ask that we may be the servants to those men who saved the Union for this world, and would save it now for the next! It is undoubtedly impossible for me to avoid offending some by indicating my political sympathies. Neverthe- THE U HI TED STATES. 29 less, I am emphasizing here simply facts. A majestic Presidential tour has lately been made through the South- ern States, and we know that the acclamations that the party received were founded upon the expectation that all restraint would be taken off from the South. The time has come when we must face facts, whether we like them or not ; and the surety is that if these college hells are to he rung, these fires lighted, and these school-houses of the freedman to he kept open, the North must put its one hand into its pocket, and its other hand upon its heart, not in a ceremonious manner. There should he for these educa- tional institutions in the South just the feeling our George Peahody had in London, when he gave an immense sum to our colleges in the North, and an immense sum for the promotion of education in the South. He was a loyal American, a typical millionaire; and if you and I desire to know how to dispose of our funds, let ns ask what was George Peabody’s example? We brought him across the Atlantic and buried him here on our own shore, hut his spirit is with us yet — or has it fled ? Let George Peahody appear here to-night, and let him appeal for the men to whom he gave a vast portion of his fortune! Let the trustees of that wealth tell you what they have done with it. Let shrewd men who have endeavored to benefit America, instruct you also by exhibiting their perfect accordance with George Peabody in their estimate of the perils of the hour. There is a vast body known as the Methodist Church. It appropriates now nearly as much money for its total work in the South, among the white and colored population, as for the West. I belong, with most of you, to a smaller 30 DESPISED RACES IN' THE UNITED STATES. body, called Oongregationalisfcs. Some of us are giving great sums for the West, hardly knowing that the Civil War has ceased, and that the South is open to us, and is a part of our land. This Association has done for the freed- men a larger and more liberal work of education and moral training than most other Protestant bodies. It is ours to free it from the bondage of its debt. It is ours to equip it, with other societies, to occupy its commanding opportuni- ties. Thank Cod for the power of Christianity, which is prompting America to put its great arms around the three despised races in the United States, and is bringing the flaming heart of the South itself nearer to the flaming heart of the sons of Africa ! THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION. ^Statistics of its Work and Workers— October. 1877. WORKERS. Missionabies — At the South, 59 ; among the Indians, 3 ; in the Foreign field, 3. Total 65 Teachebs — At the South, 134 ; among the Chinese, 17 ; among the Indians, 7 ; in the Foreign field, 4. Total 162 Matbons, 11 ; in the Business Department, 14. Total 25 Total number of Workers 252 CHURCHES. At the South, 59 ; ampng the Indians, 2 ; in the Foreign field, 1. Total 62 CHURCH MEMBERS. At the South, 4,048; among the Indians, 37; in the Foreign field, 42. Total 4,127 Total number of Sabbath-school Scholars 7,036 SCHOOLS. At the South — Chartered Institutions, 8 ; other Institutions, 11 ; Common Schools, 7. Total 26 Among the Chinese, 11 ; among the Indians, 5 ; in the For- eign field, 3. Total 19 Total number of Schools 45 PUPILS. At the South — Theological, 74; Law, 8; Collegiate, 79; Collegiate Preparatory, 154; Normal, 1,333; Grammar, 632; Intermediate, 1,222; Primary, 1,990; (studying in two grades, 88). Total 5,404 Among the Chinese, 1,155 ; among the Indians, 287 ; in the Foreign field, 116. Total 1,558 Total number of Pupils. . 6,962 Scholars in the South taught by our former Pupils estimated at 100,000. * Since these statistic^ were presented at the Annual Meeting, N1RE COLORED MISSIONARIES have been sent to our Mendi Mission in Africa. Educational Institutions, FOUNDED OE FOSXEEED IN THE SOUTH BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION. + CHARTERED INSTITUTIONS. Hampton N. and A. Institute, Hampton, Va. Number of Pupils, 274 ; Boarding accommodations for 180. Bebea College, Berea, Ky. Number of Pupils, 263 ; Boarding accommodations for 180. Bisk University, Nashville, Tenn. Number of Pupils, 246 ; Boarding accommodations for 150. Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga. Number of Pupils, 214 ; Boarding accommodations for 150. Talladega College, Talladega, Ala. Number of Pupils, 214 ; Boarding accommodations for 100. Tougaloo University, Tougaloo, Miss. Number of Pupils, 232 ; Boarding accommodations for 90. Straight University, New Orleans, La. Number of Pupils, 242 ; Boarding accommodations for 75. Normal Institute, Austin, Texas — Number of Pupils, 137. OTHER INSTITUTIONS. "W illiston School, Wilmington, N. C. — Number of Pupils, 93 Washington School, Ealeigh, N. C “ “ 360 Avery Institute, Charleston, S. C. “ “ 268 Brewer Normal School, Greenwood, S. C. “ “ 49 Stores School, Atlanta, Ga. “ “ 791 Lewis High School, Macon, Ga. “ “ 89 Trinity School, Athens, Ala. “ “ 139 Emerson Institute, Mobile, Ala. “ “ 147 Swayne School, Montgomery, Ala. “ “ 445 Burrell School, Selma, Ala. ' “ “ 421 LeMoyne School, Memphis, Tenn. “ “ 211 Chartered Institutions 8 Other Institutions 11 Common Schools 7 Total number of Educational Institutions 26 AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION. No. 56 READE STREET , NEW YORK. LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS relating to the Association should he addressed to the Corresponding Secretary, Rev. M. E. Strieby, 56 Reade Street, New York City. DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, Esq., 56 Reade Street, New York; Rev. C. L. Woodworth, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass. ; Rev. James Powell, 112 West Washington Street, Chicago, 111. Drafts or Checks, sent to New York, should be made payable to H. W. Hubbard, Assistant Treasurer. MEMBERSHIP. A payment of Thirty Dollars, at one time, or several payments to that amount within a year, will constitute a person a Life Member. LEGACIES. Important legacies have been lost to the Association by informality. Care should be taken to give the full name: “The American Mission- ary Association.” The following form of bequest may be used : I bequeath to my executor [or executors] the sum of dollars, in trust, to pay the same in days after my decease, to the person who, when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the “American Missionary Association,” New York City, to be applied under the direction of the Executive Committee of that Association, to its charitable uses and purposes. The Will should be attested by three witnesses (in some States three are required; in other States only two), who should write against their names their places of residence, (if in cities, the street and number). The following form of attestation will answer for every State in the Union: “ Signed, sealed, published and declared by the said (A. B.) as his last Will and Testament, in the presence of us, who, at the request of the said (A. B.) and in his presence, and in the presence of each other, have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses.” In some States it is required that charitable bequests should be made at least two months before the death of the testator. « — THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY is published monthly, at 56 Reade Street. Terms, Fifty Cents per year, payable in advance.