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BLICAL ECOKDER RALEIGH, N. C, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1903. JOSIAH WILUAM BAILEY, Editor. VOLUME 69, NUMBER 18. THE CURSE OF CURSES. A Letter from a Son of North Carolina. J. W. Bailey, Raleigh, N. O. My Dear Brother: I have just read your edi torial with tears in my eyes and a tinge of shame upon my cheek. I love North Carolina and ever shall. Within her borders was spent a joyous youth. There I learned the first lessons of hope and trust in Qod and confidence in my fellow man. There sleeps the dust of her to whom more than all else, I owe a debt for what I now am and what ever I may be in time or eternity. Thus I appre hend feel most of those who gathered at Greensboro las't week. It is sentiment, I know, but a sentiment that is one of man's most sacred possessions. Love for one's native land is little worth if he does nothing for her development and progress. Charge me with this and I will give you the reason which many of the returning sons can also give. What is it you ask. My answer is, Lack of opportunity. The curse of curses which has been the blighting influence on many of the State's noblest sons, is the narrowness with which ignorance has surrounded her thinkers. Nay, more than this, a man scarce dare think in the atmosphere of "The Old North State." I make not this charge without seriously considering what it means. I re-read your leader and thanked (iod for one within her borders who dared to tell the truth. It means crucifixion possibly for you, but beyond the cross on the new-made calvaries of today, lies the new garden, where the glad dawning of a new resurrection day for intellectual and spiritual freedom, shall greet him who suffers for the truth plainly t old. It may help you to a fuller understanding if you -tinly the reasons for the present status of affairs i'f which you spoke in your article. There is much of State history wrapped up in the causes which produced this state id' affairs. I'ardon me if I recall some of tkcse causes. From the days nf Tryon until now there lias been a spirit of con tention between the West and Last in the State. Thi grew out of race and sectional prejudice, which men wi re net. large enough to overcome. It was a struggle" but ween the Scotch-Irish of the VYt and the Knglish of the Fast. Fur a century the tight has been on. and men did not know where it originated. The smallest men have Keen se lected in this ancient struggle most frequently because they "could carry" a thing through. Wit ness the struggle about the State capital and many other public matters. Men looked to sectional rather than State interests. That light is not over even yet. Hannibal Hamlin. Lincoln's first Vice President, said that the really greatest statesmen he knew during his forty years in Congress, were Badger and Maugum of North Carolina. His time included the time of Clay, Webster and Cal houn. Carolina scarcely knows these men and they served brief terms in the Senate because their constituents preferred weaklings with whom they agreed rather than giants with whom they did not agree. Has not history repeated itself many times since their day? Party spirit has belit tled the State and brought her to open shame. I think in these two things may bo found a reason why the youth of the State are so woefully igno rant of what her history is and what her men have done. The Fresbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians and other religious bodies were un willing to admit any good could exist outside of their own little circle. The political party of the first part so despised the political party of the second part that its members would not even read the recorded deeds of the other. Hence history remained unwritten and if written unread. This same spirit of narrow bigotry both politi cal and religious, has "clipped the wings of fancy" ad driven the muses from her borders. The re sult is that North Carolina is a State without a poetry, a land without a literature and a com monwealth whose statesmen remain forever un known unless forsooth they go to more favorable climes. Is it any wonder that North Carolina has fur nished Presidents, Governors and statesmen for so many other States? Is it any wonder that the best of her sons seek fame and fortune elsewhere? Is it any wonder that should you want to seek the greatest of her men and women you would not go to the State itself ? God's best blessings upon those who have stayed with her and kept the ship afloat, but they have not done their best work nor have they attained to their highest ideals. There is another thing which has largely grown out of this ignorant intolerance. This is the spirit of emigration which has been the bane, of the State's progress. Men want freedom. They will not always remain where they cannot think and act for themselves. In this case they sought and found relief in removal to other States. This took away the progressive and strong and too often left the conservative and weak. This was especially true in the rural districts. Tennessee is but a greater North Carolina, while her influence ra diates in all directions. The remnant left behind grew weaker rather than stronger with the result that ignorance begot ignorance and progress was impossible. I know communities which are not as intelligent as they were in my boyhood. The reason is found in this very thing. It is distress ing but true. The men of the community are without ambition and their children are without hope. Men sometimes decry the coming of the mills. I believe it is the physical salvation for a large per cent of the State's population. I think it is a help for their intellectual life. The loneliest, most dreary and most desolate existence in this world is the life of an ignorant, ambitionless wo man with her children in the solitude of the rural district. It is scarce one step removed from the life of the forest animals. The mill at least adds zest, activity and work. It gives companionship and association, which is great gain. The school, church, and Sunday-school are infinitely removed from the dreary pitiful life of the former condi tion. This is the condition which confronts the Commonwealth. What of the future? To me at this distance the outlook is more hopeful than it has been since the Civil War. The very fact that men are will ing to look unpleasant conditions in the face and think over them is great gain. You who are with in cannot realize what the difference is so much as we who are without. Your gain in manufac turing, in agriculture and in commercial activi ties, is being duplicated in educational growth. More slowly conies the latter, it is true, but cer tainly and surely it is coming. The great interest shown by your leading men, the establishment of graded schools, the number of young men ami wo men in institutions of learning compared to that of twenty years ago, the cessation of emigration, the growth of true State pride, the elimination to a great degree of the demagogue in politics, each and all seem to nie to bo hopeful signs. Some day will come the iconoclast and break down the images to which blind prejudice has so long led a blinded people for worship, and then will intelli gence, virtue and righteousness claim their own heritage, even the "Old North State" with her true Anglo-Saxon sons and daughters. God speed the day and nerve you for your part in the contest. October !, VMl. A HERO In the story of the recent const storm the fol lowing is told : The rescue of the remaining three negroes of the crew by the surfman, W. A. Capps, of Seatack station, was one of the most heroic acts in the history of the surfman on the Virginia coast. Capps, while two miles from any other human being and patrolling his stretch between the sta tions, saw one negro over 100 yards off-shore in the roaring surf. Without a moment's hesitation at the peril he was facing, he stripped and plunged into the sea, that was already a seething mass of wreckage from the barges, and, after a half hour's battle, single-handed ami alone, brought the un conscious man ashore. He had not recovered his breath before he discerned, through a rift in the spume, another form, and once more he went into the surf. This time, by reason of his exhaustion, his struggle was a harder one, but he eventually succeeded in saving the negro. Placing both men under the lee of a cliff, he started back to the sta tion to give the alarm, when he saw the third ne gro in the waves, and for the third time he plunged in and brought an unconscious man ashore. Capps did not cease his work until all three men had been cared for in the station, and at night he resumed his regular trick of patrolling the storm-swept coast. Capps is a white man. He saved three negroes. Does he not put to the blush the moral life-savers, the soill-savers in the service of the old Ship of Zion, who are surrounded with negroes, and white men too, going down in storms of temptation? TYPICAL RESOLUTIONS MADE IN YOUNQ MANHOOD BY JONATHAN EDWARDS. Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can. Kesolved, Never to do any thing, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life. Kesolved, To think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death. Resolved, When I think of any theorem in divin ity to be solved immediately to do what I can to ward eolving it, if circumstances do not hinder. Kesolved, To inquire every night, as I am going to bed, wherein I have been negligent, what sin 1 have committed, and wherein I have denied my self; also at the end of every week, month and year. Kesolved, Never to speak any thing that is ridic ulous, or matter of laughter on the: Lord's Day. Kesolved, Never to allow the least measure of any fretting uneasiness at my father or mother. Kesolved to suffer no effects of it, so much as in the least alteration of speech, or motion of my eye ; and to be especially careful of it, with respect to any of our family. Kesolved, Constantly, with the utmost niceness and diligence, and the strictest scrutiny, to be looking into the state of my soul, that I may know whether 1 have truly an interest in Christ or no; that when I come to die, I may not have any neg ligence respecting this to repent of. Kesolved, Never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be. Kesolved, After afflictions, to inquire, what I am the better for them, what good I have got by them, and what I might have got by them. Found in the Congregationalist. BOOKER WASHINGTON; AN EVIDENC OF PROORESS. (From The Progressive Farmer.) Compare him with Fred Douglas, for example Fred Douglas who preached social equality and married a white woman and was a firebrand in pol itics. How much more it means to the peace of the South in these days of restricted suffrage and Jim Crow cars, that instead of a Fred Douglas the negroes have Booker Washington who has advised them to drop their unwholesome ambitions for social and political distinction, and acquire the virtues of industry ,thrift, peacefulness and self-reliance. Booker Washington, we ought to remember, has incurred a great deal of criticism from negroes of the Fred Douglas type because he has urged this peace policy on Southern ne groes. It was for this reason that the agitators tried to break up his Boston meeting a few weeks ago. It is for this reason that the Atlanta negro educator, Prof. DuBois, has attacked him. It was for this friendliness to the whites that the "Suffrage League" of New England negroes de nounced him recently in the following resolution: "Inasmuch as Booker T. Washington has glori fied the revised constitutions of the South, has minimized the Jim Crow car outrage, has attacked the wisdom of the fourteenth and fifteenth amend ments to the Constitution; has deprecated the primary importance of the ballot, has preached to the colored people silent submission to intol erable conditions and makes his people a byword and laughing stock before the world, he is not a fit leader for the colored race." RIGHT. It is sacrilegious to have any thought in the singing in church of pleasing men. Singing and prayer are to God, and He alone is to be thought of in both these. Dr. Broadus once said to this writer that it was as wrong to go outside the church to get some one to lead in the singing be cause that person was a good singer as it would be to go outside to get some one to do the praying because he was a fine elocutionist. Western Recorder. 1
The Biblical Recorder (Raleigh, N.C.)
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Oct. 28, 1903, edition 1
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