The South and the National Government | Page 6

marvelous ratio already shown, the demand for
labor must increase. The presence of the Southern community of white
European labor from the southern part of Europe will have, I am
hopeful, the same effect that it has had upon Negro labor on the
Isthmus of Panama. It has introduced a spirit of emulation or
competition, so that to-day the tropical Negroes of the West Indies do
much better work for us in the canal construction since we brought over
Spanish, Italian, and Greek laborers.
Ultimately, of course, the burden of Negro education must fall on the
Southern people and on Southern property owners. Private charity and
munificence, except by way of furnishing an example and a model, can
do comparatively little in this direction. It may take some time to
hasten the movement for the most generous public appropriations for
the education of the Negro, but the truth that in the uplifting of the
Negro lies the welfare of the South is forcing itself on the far-sighted of

the Southern leaders. Primary and industrial education for the masses,
higher education for the leaders of the Negro race, for their professional
men, their clergymen, their physicians, their lawyers, and their teachers,
will make up a system under which their improvement, which statistics
show to have been most noteworthy in the last forty years, will
continue at the same rate.
On the whole, then, the best public opinion of the North and the best
public opinion of the South seem to be coming together in respect to all
the economic and political questions growing out of present race
conditions.
The attitude of the candidate and the platform of the Democratic Party
in the last election made this campaign a most favorable one to bring
home to the Southern people for serious consideration the query why
they should still adhere to political solidity in the South. It may be that
four years hence the candidate and platform of the Democratic Party
will more approve themselves to the South and to the intelligent men of
the South. Under these conditions there may seem to be a retrograde
step, and the South continue solid, but I venture to think that the
movement now begun will grow, slowly at first, but ultimately so as to
extend the practical political arena for the discussion of party issues
into all the Southern States.
The recent election has made it probable that I shall become more or
less responsible for the policy of the next Presidential Administration,
and I improve this opportunity to say that nothing would give me
greater pride, because nothing would give me more claim to the
gratitude of my fellow-citizens, than if I could so direct that policy in
respect to the Southern States as to convince its intelligent citizens of
the desire of the Administration to aid them in working out
satisfactorily the serious problems before them and of bringing them
and their Northern fellow-citizens closer and closer in sympathy and
point of view. During the last decade, in common with all lovers of our
country, I have watched with delight and thanksgiving the bond of
union between the two sections grow firmer. I pray that it may be given
to me to strengthen this movement, to obliterate all sectional lines, and

leave nothing of difference between the North and the South, save a
friendly emulation for the benefit of our common country.

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