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Tuesday, June 16, 1D03. THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER 9 side finish, the setting so to speak of the picture. I want one of these days to see the rooms neat and clean, with properly tinted walls and ceilings ; I hope we may see upon these walls a few repro ductions of great masters; I hope we shall have in the corners of these rooms a few good books, not many, carefully selected, intelligently read. I hope the local communities will do all the things I have mentioned for themselves. I hope the municipalities will bewilling to furnish the grounds,1 the walls, and the buildings. Then I want to see this whole thing put in shape by the parents and the teachers and the children, and I want to see it done a little now, and a little later, and in the end I want to see it all combined." The Henderson Gold Leaf, which has strenu ously opposed the "Ogden movement" in Southern educational work, comments as follows on the ad dress cf Dr. Lyman Abbott at the recent Rich mond Conference: ''If contact with the South and observation of the situation as it is, results in causing men like Dr. .Abbott to have a better understanding of the subject and change their views on the negro prob lem and suffrage question, we shall believe that some good may come from this new movement af ter all." This is just what "contact with the South" through these Southern Educational Conferences has done for many others besides Dr. Abbott. In all the North, the South ha3 no abler friends than such men as Dr. Abbott, Dr. Albert Shaw, of the Review of Reviews, and other members of the General and Southern Educational Boards. Some body has wisely said that if more Southern men would go North and cool off their passions and more Northern men would come South and thaw out their prejudices, both sections would bo im measurably benefited. BOOK NOTICE. INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS IN NORTH CAROLINA PREVIOUS TO 1860. By Charles Clinton Weaver, Ph.D. 95 pages. Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Md. This is an interesting story of the great schemes for turnpike building and river navigation in North Carolina from 1815 to 1850 and the pro jected railway enterprises prior to 1860. As side lights there are suggestions of the long drawn out contest between the eastern counties with their large slave plantations and with navigable rivers as commercial outlets and the western counties where slaves were unprofitable and where the absence of river transportation made the prob lem of internal improvements of vital importance. And there are suggestions of "castles in the air" that long ago vanished into nothingness the dream that we might rival New York in the con test for Western trade and that Beaufort might become the great city of the Atlantic seaboard. Dr. Weaver has brought together much valuable historical matter, and we hope that his booklet will have a large circulation. If we shall meet all Southern problems and na tional problems with the same spirit-that charac terized this Conference, if we can bring to them the same national spirit, the same magnanimity, the same open-mindedness, we shall see the com ing of a great day in Southern life. No one can have too high a hope of what may be achieved within the next quarter of a century. Freed from the limitations that have so long hampered us and bouyant with the energy of a new life cours ing through our veins we shall press forward to the desjtiny that awaits us. If, to the senti ment, the chivalry and the hospitality that have characterized Southern life shall be added the in tellectual keenness, the spiritual sensitiveness and the enlarged freedom of the modern world, the time is not far off when scholarship, literature and art shall flourish among us and when all things that make for the intellectual and spiritual mancipation of man shall find their fit home 'if rc- Dr. Edwin Mims at Richmond Educational Conference. The Mulatto Factor in the Negro Problem. The large part played by the mulatto factor in the American race problem is the subject of a suggestive article in the May Atlantic Monthly by Mr. Alfred H. Stone, of Greenville, Miss., who has studied the negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. Mr. Stone advances the thought that we have greatly underestimated the importance of the mulatto in the race problem. In fact, he thinks that were it not for the mulatto, there would be no race problem. He thinks it a mat ter of regret that the twelfth census did not attempt to enumerate separately the mulatto ele ment. Mr. Stone points out tha the people who have argued hat the negro is capable of unlimited development, proving it by the achievements of individuals of his race, have really forgotten that these individuals were mulattoes, "from Murillo's favorite pupil down to Crispus Attucks, Benjamin Banneker, Douglass, Bruce, Lynch, the late Sir Conrad Reeves, Du Bois, Washington, Chesnutt, and others." Mr. Stone contends that when free from white or mulatto influence, the negro is of a contented, happy disposition. He is docile, tractable, and unambitious, with but few wants, and those easily satisfied. "He inclines to idleness, and though having a tendency to the commission of petty crimes, is not malicious, and rarely cherishes hatred. He cares nothing for the 'sacred right of suffrage,' and when left to his own inclinations, will disfranchise himself by the thousand rather than pay an annual poll-tax. He infinitely pre fers the freedom and privileges of a car of his own to the restraint of one in which he would be compelled to mingle with white people." As for the real negro, the negro of the masses, Mr. Stone thinks he presents few, if any, serious problems, and "none which he may not himself work out if let alone ancf given time. But it will be an individual rather than a race solution; the industrious will as children acquire a common school education, and as adults will own prop erty; those capable of higher things will find for themselves a field for the exercise of their talents, just as they are doing to-day; the vicious and shiftless will be as are the vicious and shiftless of other races." The complaints over "the lack of opportunities under which the negro labors," and the "injus tice of race distinction," do not come, according to Mr. Stone, from the negro, but from the mu latto or white politician. "Through the medium of lace papers and magazines, the pulpit, indus trial and political gatherings and associations, the mulatto wields a tremendous influence over the negro. It is here that his importance as a factor in whatever problems may arise from the negro's presence in this country becomes manifest, and the working out of such problems may be ad vanced or retarded, just as he wisely or unwisely plays the part which fate or Providence has assigned him. The negro, like the white man, responds more readily to bad influences than to good, and the example and precepts of a hundred men like Washington and Du Bois may be easily counteracted by the advice and influence of some of the very men of whom the mulatto type unfor tunately furnishes too many examples. "Booker Washington may in all sincerity preach the gospel of labor ; he may teach his people, as a fundamental lesson, tie cultivation of the friend ship and esteem of the white man; he may point out the truth that for the negro the privilege of earning a dollar is of much greater importance than that of spending it at the white man's thea ter or hotel; yet all these lessons must fail of their fullest and best results so long as the negro's mind is being constantly poisoned with the radical teachings and destructive doctrines of the mulat to of the other school." Review of Reviews for May. Nothing is more reasonable and cheap than good manners. South. Every Man Owes a Duty to the Community. It is a truism to state that the basis of a dem ocracy in the realization of the obligation by every citizen to contribute in his own sphere and in his own best way something toward good gov ernment and progress. Equally true is it that so cial reforms and economic growth are only possi ble where the citizens realize their duties to so ciety and in proportion as the average conception of duty is high, so are introduced improvements and reforms which make for comfort, . better homes, higher ideals and increased prosperity. Wherever the few do the thinking for the many and are permitted to set the code of social ethics and to mark the limitations of social growth, we find a false aristocracy maintained, and the more complaisant the many, the more tyrannical be come the few. . Whenever technical and industrial skill end capital, the hand-maiden of labor, are confined to the few, we find industrial monopoly, a material aristocracy as false as that based on social aggrandizement and power. Whenever the few control the political parties and dominate the administration of government in the municipal ity, State or Nation, there democracy is for the time being dethroned and a political oligarchy tainted with corruption and tyranny is estab lished in its stead. Therefore, in his social re lations the life of the citizen must be strenuous and aggressive. Hon. John H. Small, in Alumni Address, Trinity College, Durham, N. C, June 9, 1903. What the Rich Man Cannot Purchase. We want more happiness, more real satisfac tion, more joy, more enjoyment. It is said that we Americans are always trying to get money more pay, higher wages, higher salaries, more profit in our trade and there is truth in that description of the American aim. Now, is that the ultimate end of life? Is that the way to win greater happiness, truer enjoy ment, deeper satisfactions? I think the first source, the greatest source in this world, is family life, the joys of father and mother and children and grandfather and grand mother and grandchildren. They last. In the natural course of life they last fifty, even sixty, years, and they grow as time passes by. They are always increasing; they are not dimin ishing satisfactions. Does the rich man have any more of these true and high satisfactions than the poor man? Not one whit more! He cannot buy them. They are the result of natural affection and of disciplined character. They are absolutely unpurchasable in this world. President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University. The Man Without the Hoe. Ay, he's the man to pity and point the tale of woe, Who hath no place to plan a seed and help to make it grow, Whose heart is brick and mortar, Whose life is soulless barter A million miles from God's sweet world, the man without the hoe. Country Life in America. President Dabney, of the University of Ten nessee, addressing a Farmer's Convention at Knoxville, said: "The way to develop our great resources is to develop the brains of our children. In Tennessee, the average child enrolled attends school sixty-two days in the year. Our trouble is twofold, first with directors who appoint in competent teachers; secondly, with a system of taxation under which poverty-stricken communi ties which need schools must practically have none." He is a good man who makes two thoughts grow in as much language as one thought occupied be fore. Saturday Evening Post. 1