The Reason. (Savannah, GA.) 1908-19??, June 20, 1908, Page 6, Image 6

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Funding for the digitization of this title was provided by Farris Cadle.

Newspaper Page Text6 WE HAVE HAD FALLACIOUS TEACHING. What has become of that old stock phrase that used to he such a familiar sight in the editorial col umns of Southern newspapers up to four or five years ago, which ran about as follows: “The only solution of the race problem is the education of the negro? ’ ’ Until half a dozen years ago no Southern publi cation was regarded as orthodox unless it ran in that stereotyped sentiment at least as often as an issue was put into circulation. In the absence of details and specifications, which, were always omitted, there were many skeptics who could never be brought to see just how education was going to make Ihe negro satisfied to keep to the hoe and the plow and the timber axe. But all tin* dailies and weeklies said it would. So did the statesmen and politiei-ns who were called upon to say something and con! 1 think of nothing else to say. The stock phrase has now gone out of usage cast into the melting pot perhaps, or out of the office window, and is not seen any more. The reason for its discard probably lies in the i fact that evervbodv has noticed that as soon as the • . • negro can recite “Twinkle. Twinkle. Little Star.' and acquires tin 1 ability to figure problems in short division, he achieves an aversion to activity in the cotton field and the turpentine camp and busies him self with manifestations of disapproval of the South ern ideal of the supremacy of the white race. The Southern white taxes himself to educate the negro, then sees the latter embark for the North or West, where he hopes to enjoy the social recognition properly denied to him in tin* South. Some persons, figuring from an industrial and economical viewpoint. see in the exodus of the black's nothing but disaster to the Southern employers of labor, and ask themselves if. after all. some mistake has not been made and if the millions for negro education have not been misspent. These persons fail to take into account the exqui site revenge we of the South are wreaking upon our brethren of th<* North for their vindictive action of fastening the Fourteenth ami Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution upon the Southland at a time when she lay helpless in defeat at arms. We are teaching the negro just enough in our publie schools to render him dissatisfied with his lot of being a negro. 'Phen we ship him North and West to harass with his vote and to exasperate with his ambitions for social equality the very persons who gave him the right of suffrage and instilled in him the ideas of social equality, at a time when these people believed the negro would always reside in the South. Let the good work go on. Let the North have all the discontented blacks we can produce, even if state appropriations shall be made to pay their rail rm d f 're. THE REASON By DAVID P. DYER. Another old time-worn stock phrase which, though decrepit and discredited. still does occasional iutv. if dutv il mav be called, is that fantastic and • • • utterly untrue declaration that now “there is no North, no South, but one united country, devoid of sectional animosity." To be sure, the sentiment of unity prevails all >ver the United States with reference to an interna tional foe. actual or prospective. The country is reunited in a broad political sense, and when Lee’s forces succumbed to numbers and superior resources •it Appomattox, so far as they were concerned, the light was finished. With the opposing and victorious forces the fight was finished, but with them the period of boastful ness and calumniation of the late enemy had just begun. In the year 1908 it endures, undiminished except by reason of mortality in the ranks of the assailants. And mortality would seem to cut an inconsiderable figure when account is taken of the fact that the present federal pension rolls carry mimes exceeding in number the total effective Con federate strength at any given period about three times over. Attend a Confederate reunion, district, state, or comprising representation from all of the thirteen Confederate states, ami you will hear patriotic utter ances and sentences eulogistic of soldier valor regardless of which flag was held aloft by the man of daring. Co North and attend similar exercises of the Grand Army, and you listen mainly to denuncia tions of the niggardliness of Congress because it votes only about one hundred and seventy-five mil lion dollars annually to defenders of the flag. Int erspersed among the criticisms of an ungrate ful republic, you will hear expressions in bitter assault upon the persona! character of Confederate leaders and in denunciation of the magnanimity of the United States government, through which some semblance of the rights of citizenship has been re stored to the South. When at rare intervals an ex-Union soldier pays tribute to Confederate valor, the Southern reads of it. But in the thousands of instances where Lee and all of his devoted followers are characterized as traitm-s and blood-thirsty slave slaughterers, the apostles of good feeling mercifully withhold the news. I he writer heard an Ohio Congressman in the town of Higginsport assert, upon the occasion of a Grand Army reunion, that the historic charge of the immortal Bickett at Gettysburg was conceived and executed in “Dutch courage’’—that is. that General Bitckett and all the men he led were braced up wiib. intoxicants. This expression was received by the old federal soldiers in the audience with prolonged and boister ous manifestations of approval.

Georgia Historic Newspapers

The Reason. (Savannah, GA.) 1908-19??, June 20, 1908, Page 6, Image 6