Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/44

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36
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tendency toward the average of civilization reached by the white race; it has the tendency to excite fear and to paralyze the race that still looks to the white man to continue to guarantee to it its political rights, and for the recognition of the full equality before the law that assures him the peaceful pursuit of happiness and the possession of property. By education a great gap has been made in the mountain of illiteracy that was first assailed in 1862 with many forebodings and much doubt. The philanthropic men and women who first undertook the task have many of them passed to their reward; but their works do follow them. The better outlook that enabled them to see away beyond the stormy years to come and predict this better day has been fully justified, and none more eagerly bear testimony, and willing testimony, to the beneficence and blessings of that work than the white men and women who were born again to their better natures out of and away beyond the prejudices of centuries, and to-day rejoice in the living light that shines from books on the negro's intellect and heart, enabling him to grasp hitherto hidden meanings and comprehend some of the treasures of our literature and make himself strong for the battle of life. The man who survives by his own strength and will excites admiration; the man who has to be helped becomes a burden, and a wearisome burden, to all about him. Educate, educate the negro. Make the ways of light broader; make the avenues to better life and living plainer. Illuminate him with the intelligence of the ages and the light of reason, and the negro will see his own way and walk without help. He will become a stronger, a more self-reliant man, and by that strength and self-reliance will beat down all the barriers and shake off all the make-weights that impede his progress and stand in his way. He will be a citizen, indeed, and not a halting, wailing child. He will be a man full of man's ways and purposes, with a comprehensive grasp of his duties and a sound, sensibly guided determination to be in every case a citizen equal to the maintenance of his own rights under the law, a strength and not a weakness to the republic. Education, and not agitation, is what the negro needs. He needs repose and rest, time to think of himself and for himself, to realize what he has accomplished in a few years, how closely he stands to his white neighbors, and how intimately his destiny is linked with theirs. Hitherto he has been constantly in a very sea of turmoil, tossed about, anxious, and confused. Under these circumstances, his own natural disinclination, the poverty of the Southern States, and the political bedevilments that made at the South confusion worse confounded until 1870, the advance he has made in education and in the acquisition of property is like the work of magic. In peace, in freedom from political agitation, with increased facilities for education, sustained by the good-will and the voluntary taxation of the white people, what may he not be expected to accomplish in the future? When seventy per cent of his illiteracy has been swept away, what a self-respecting man he will