North Carolina Newspapers

J $1. OO a Year, In Advance. 'FOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY, AND FOR TRUTH." Single Copy, 6 C: ni ; , NO. 2. x VOL XII. PLYMOUTH, N. C, FllIDAY MARCH 15, 1901. HILL AHP'S LETTER. The race problem haa bobbed up again at the north. The Hon. Wil liam Hannibal Thomas out-Herods Herod in his denunciation of the negro and The New York Sun seems to indorse him. Thomas is a negro free born in Ohio, but came down to South Carolina and served in the carpetbag legislature during the reconstruction period and afterwards held judicial office and Bays in the preface to his book that he has been studying the negro for thirty years and is more and more confirmed in his opinion that there is no good 'In him neither socially, : morally, industrially or politically. His remarkable book has recently issued from the well-known press of the Macmillan Co., in New York, and The New York Sun devotes a good part of a page in reviewing it. The author says the race is slowly but surely degenerating that the negro is by nature a savage with an inborn ferocity and knows no such emotion as mercy that he is a beast in his domestic relations and will sell the virtue of his wife or his daughters and lose no social position among his people or in his church. That the negro preachers are the worst of the race. They stalk into negro sanctuaries, overshadow the pews, invade the precincts of domes tic life and despoil the - family and yoke virgin innocence with brazen guilt. That the negro churches are debauching rendezvous. That negro religion is a farce and worthless to reform or regenerate them, and the most heinous crimes are committed by those who read and write and are members of negro churches. He says that the negro is a brute in the com mission of crime and is a craven coward aUer it is committed and when caught and punished believes himself a martyr, and if he escapes the gallows would repeat his crime with no sense of wrong doing. He has no conception of virtue or truth, no fear of hell or damnation, but with the hangman's rope around his neck is going . straight to heaven. The author mildly condemns lynching for certain outrages, not because it is cruel or illegal, but because it does not deter other negroes from similar outrages. ' He says, however, that he has not yet found that an innocent man has ever been lynched. He ad vocates force as the only practical remedy for the negro force control subjection to the white race, not in a state ot slavery as before " the war, but in one of fear and obedience. He goes still further and suggests the extermination of the inferior elements of the race because it is better to have individual extermination than race extinction. But space forbids more of these anathemas and the worfder is that tne dook was written by a negro of the north and that a reput able publishing house would chaperon it before northern people and that a orthern editor, wdo haa been for years ana years lampooning tne southern people about the negro, should not give this book his quasi indorsement. What does all this' mean? We knew that they did not love the negro at Akron and Fana, nor in the slums of New York city, but we thought he was still safe in the sanc tum sanctorum of Republican editors What is behind this new departure? An agent has recently been to our town distributing sensational circu lars about a new book just issued in St. Louis in which the author asserts that the negro is a beast and he tries to prove it by the Bible as well as by scientific research. This book is but a revival of a former book called "Ariel," and published about thirty years ago. It is rethreshing of old straw, but seems to be a brand new doctrine up north and has the in dorsement of numerous preachers and college professors. One preacher up in Maine says that if it had been tcrit.fpn fnrt.v vfnrs ncrn t.hprfi wnnln have been no civil war, for their peo ple would not have fought for the freedom of, a lot of beasts. Then again I see in a recent editoral in a Republican paper an evidence of weakness and reaction about the negro and the editor asks, "Can it be possible that the two hundred mil lions of money sent by the north to educate the southern negro has all been wasted?" Apologies are now in order. ; In addition to all this it has been asserted by those who know that Mr. McKinley has changed front and that no more negroes will be appoint ed to office. Is the north about to abandon the negro and turn him over to the mercy of hia former masters? If so, the negro will be the gainer, and so will the south. . That is all we have asked for all these years just to be let alone. They were our negroes before the war and they are our negroes yet. We don't give them office nor allow thera to sit on our juries, nor ride in our cars, nor find lodging in our hotels, nor take pewe in our churches, and but for northern interference they would not have been allowed to vote, either state or national or municipal, but we pay them for their labor and give them a fair education. But for fear of shock ing our northern friends the whip ping post would have long since been the force Thomas gays must be used , and then the 5,000 that are in the state and county chaingangs of Georgia would have been reduced to 500 or a less number. A bad negro who fears not God nor regards man, cares not a great deal for the gallows and less for the chaingang, and noth ing for a term in jail, but he does dread a good whipping. We old masters all remember that. One good whipping will last a negro for years. The chaingang effects no reform and does not last six months. But the average nepo does not need corporal punishment often; he needs a boss. Thomas is right when he declares that they are getting worse instead of better, especially in the towns and cities. Read the Atlanta papers and ask the Atlanta, police. Ask Judge Broyles to compare the records of his court. Ask the judge and solicitor of any court. They are growing worse everywhere, except , on the farms and plantations, where they are controlled by landlords, who are nearly as much their masters .as in the olden times. If they don't use physical force they exercise a will power inat exacts the utmost obedi ence. The landlord is the boss. Thomas is right when he asserts that they have no conception of domestic virtue and morality. I hey seldom marry according to law, but just take up and quit when they feel like it. There are more negro children in this town and every other town who are born out of wedlock than those who are born in it. Neither man nor wife nor church member loses caste for notorious infidelity to the mar riage relation. As Thomas says most of the preachers are on that line Eight negro preachers are now in our state chaingang and as many more in the county gangs. I asked a negro the other day what they turned their preachers off for, and he said, "it were for some onreglarities." Some of our negro school teachers get the same reputation and have to step down and out. We had one here a few years ago who was highly edu cated and wrote a beautiful letter, but he got to kidnaping little things and ran away in the night and dident stop until he got to Africa and was made a bishop. But Thomas does not tell us how to exterminate them, nor where to draw the line between the inferior classes and those who shall be allowed to live and multiply. He exhausts his indignation without defining the mode and maner of the remedy. suppose we might transport the men and boys over to the Philippines and turn the army loose upon them, but that would be expensive, or we might drive them out west and let them starve to death or be killed off by the Indians, Anyway would satisfy Thomas if it exterminated all the bad ones. We are doing reasonably well on that line, for besides the lynch ings for the usual crime, which I hope will be kept up diligently," we have retired about 5,000 to private life in the chaingangs of Georgia, and 15,000 more in other southern states. ' That amounts to a partial extermination and is better, for we get their labor during the process. We .ought to take up every trifling vagabond and send him there, for idleness is the parent of vice and crime. If he had done something send him for doing it and if he hadent done anything then send him for doing nothing And as for those snatch thieves who are pursuing and robbing the ladies of Atlanta I wouldent send them to the chaingang until they had been whipped once a week for a month. Force is the thing the force of a cowhide on the naked skin. That is the rem ly for black and white in Delaware, and neither a snatch thief nor a bank robber dares to stop in the state. They hurry through to another state where there is no whippingpost When we get a legislature that has got wisdom and moral courage enough to exterminate the dogs and protect the sheep they will re-establish the whipping post. But about the Beasty book that says the negro has no soul. I sup pose it was manufactured to sell and fool somebody. As my nigger Bob once said to Nabor Freeman: "Effen a white man got a soul and a nigger haint got no soul how about a met later?" That's a conundrum. And how about the Indians and Chinese and Cubans and the Ar. bs. ,How much coloring does it take to germ inate a soul. How about such high minded philanthropic negroes as Booker Washington, President Coun cil, Bishop Gaines, Bishop Turner and the bishop of Louisiana, who are do ing their utmost to reform their race. I had rather risk them and many other good negroes for souls and sal vation than many a white man I know. How about my faithful Tip, who was born and raised in our fami ly and has been loval and loving to his mistress and her children all these years, and how about old-time ser vants in almost every family who owned negroes and whose devotion never died when freedom came? No. Let Thomas and Company write books to perplex the north and make money for themselves, but let us and our negroes alone. Just keep hands off and we will manage them. We need them in our fields and furnaces and mines and on our rail roads. But for their labor aa slaves the south would have been fifty years behind in the clearing of our . forests, building our railroads and developing our mineral resources. But for them the south would be inundated with a horde of foreigners who bring with them all sorts of isms and religions and strikes. The negro has his faults, but if his presence will keep immigrants away it will be a blessing. It is still the destiny of the south to perpetuate an uncontami nated white race who will save the republic from anarchy and ruin or from imperialism. Bill Arp. P. S. We read that extermination has begun at Terre Haute and Indian apolis. I hope Hannibal is happy. B. A. Dissatisfaction With The New Con gressional Districts. Salisbury Cor. Charlotte Observer. If the proposed ninth congressional district, which includes Mecklsnburg, may be Republican, according to the editorial in today's Observer, the pro posed eighth, which includes Rowan, is in a much worse way. It stretches from Stanly ' to Ashe and includes half of the whole number of Republican mountain counties. It looks to peo ple at this distance as though the Legislature has wilfully determined to bunch together piedmont and western North Carolina and turn the whole thing over, to the Republicans. Why it is ' pursuing this course is a matter aooui wnica mere are vanuuu cuujeu- tures, but general resentment is felt, The counties composing the proposed eighth district gave Overman, Bryan elector, 16,365, and Price, McKinley elector, 17,987; Republican majority 722. The London Libel Bill. News and Observer, 7th. ' The people and the press of the State will applaud the action of the judiciary committee of the House of Representa tives in unanimously voting to favora bly recommend the London Libel Bill which unanimously passed the Senate three weeks ago. An amendment, striking out section two of the bill waB acceptable to Mr. London, and the bill will doubtless pass the House today The passage of this modern flbel law, demanded by the State press will be one of the best nets of this General As sembly. Paul Teeter Runs Away From Home. Correspondence Charlotte Observer. Concord, Feb. 28. Paul Teeter, a young man about 16 years old, and son of Mr. Frank Teeter, left home last Monday, and, not returning, his family is afraid he is making hia way to Cuba He had only $15 in cash when he left home, aud his friends, who are on the search, hope to overtake him some where about Savannah. Mr. Frank Teeter lives near Pharr's Mill, in this county. Italians interested in traffic between this country and Italy and whose busi ness is located in the South have begun a movement in Tennessee, Taxas, Ar kansas, Alabama and Florida to induce Southern exporters and importers to handle their business through the port of New Orleans instead of New York Railroads centering at the Crescent City are naturally giving them every possible encouragement. Southern ex ports to Italy are sugar, molasses and cotton. The imports are principally wines, oil, macaroni and marble. Dr. IiegtXer Knew Capt. Ward. Charlotte News. Dr. E. C. Register in his travels abroad was a passenger on the Rio J a neiro, that met its fate just inside the Golden Gate several days ago. He knew Capt. Ward who went down with his boat, having boarded the Rio at Cobe, Japan, and sailed with the genial Capt. ard to Hong Kong. De. Keg ister says that Capt. Ward was an ex tremely pleasant man and was quite different from many of the sea captains, in that he was congenial and very sociable with bis passengers. ' During the trip from1 Japan coast to Hong Kong Dr. Register had a number of conversations with Capt. 'Ward. He stated that he was born at Reideville and from that town went to Raleigh where he resided until he went to sea. Emperor Franas Josef Tires of the Itoyal Life. Vienna, March 9. Emperor Franz Fosef visited a working men's restaur ant today and partook of a six cent, lunch. He talked with a laborer who sat at the same table with him, inquir ing as to his life. The laborer told briefly of his Biraple way of living and then the Emperor remarked feel ingly: . - . "Oh, how Xenvy you.' A Pullman car full of insane sol iprs retiirnincr from the Philippines passed Concord last night. Tliere ere a sergeant ana t privates, an msane. it is very saa. The case againBt the Christian Scientists at Newbern, who had, it was charged, permitted Henry Persons to die without medical attendance, result: ed in "not a true bill" being found by the grand jury. SAM JONES IN CHICAGO. He Touches on Street Hallway Fran chises In Chicago, ''sinter Nation," Bryan and Trust. To day finds me in the big, busy, buzzing city of Chicago. When I am in New York city the one thing that impresses me is the great crowds of people thronging the streets. When I am in Chicago I am impressed with the fact of the bigness of the city and the difficulty one has in crossing the streets. Sometimes it takes two po licemen to get one man across the street. Hacks, carriages, automobiles, dray 8, street cars, etc., seem to congest at all the crossings and street junctions in the center of the city. If a country fellow were here today he would think sure enough there was a circus in town. I lecture here tonight at the Centenary church for the Epwortb. League, and go on west tomorrow and spend four nights in Iowa. The weather has been very disagreeable for a week or more, but this is a beatiuful day, the thermometer registering from 40 to 50 above. I am sorry to note the notice of the great fire in Atlanta, and am almost as sorry that the great fare did not settle the depot problem. Atlanta can sing: " 'Twas ever thus; from childhood's hour I have seen my fondest hopes decay. I have never loved a tree or flower But 'twas the first to fade away." . Then from the ridiculous Bhe can chorus in with the sublime and sing "Goo-Goo Eyes" as she looks on that magnificent depot still spared in spite of fire and blood, germs and gophers. I spent last Friday in Cincinnati, and by the way, Cincinnati is a great manufacturing city, in spite of her beer and booze. Ohio is a great state scores of live towns with tneir man ufactunng interests and increasing population. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas are the three blue ribbon states of this union, while Georgia remains the Empire state, with New York fol lowing close behind. But when it comes to cities, here are larger cities than Atlanta in population; but when it comes to wind, that seems to be the storm center. Atlanta reminds me of Sam Small's Dutchman who went swaggering along the street and heard some of the boy's practicing on the brass horns up a stairway. The Dutchman walked" up, pushed open the door and looked on with a emile while the boys were playiDg and said: '"Gim me vone ov dose insdrumends?" They said: "Are you a musician?" "Of course," he said, "I am a mu3icianer." One of the boys with a big brass horn with a hundred crooks in it banded it to him and said : "Can you blow that one?" "Veil, now, my vrend, ven I feels right veil and got all my vind about me I'd just like to take that horn and blow him out straight de first puff." So Atlanta, ven she has got all her vind about her, can blow anything out straight, including street railways, union depots, etc. Chicago is in the midst of a big fight, renewing franchises on street railways. Many other cities are now trying to solve the problem, but other cities haven't got Joel Atkinsons and Harry Hurts to help them solve their problems. I note the latest news from Sister Nation is she is still in jail, resting. I suppose she is like the negro who, when one of the visiting brethren asked him how he liked to stay in jair said; "I like it fine, but it is such aBteady job." She will get out when she wants to. She not only needs a rest, but the jointists of Kansas need rest, and they cannot rest when she is out of jail. The Kansas legislature, I Bee, has passed a law and the governor has signed it declaring joints to be a nuis ance. That is certainly a feather in Sister Nation's cap. Really, the old soul is marching on.. I saw for the first time today a copy of The Commoner. It is small in size and light in weight. I was astonished when I looked over its columns. Any issue of the Atlanta Semi-Weekly Jour nal need not blush in its presence. But I suppose that thousands and tens of thousands will subscribe for the paper because Mr. Bryan is the editor. They are for Bryan whether he is running for president, editing a paper or any other little thing like that. But while be lumbers and thunders the world runs on -railroads combining, trusts forming, capital centering and Republicans shouting. A fellow trying to do something with this great country with editorials and oratorials is like a fellow with a hypodermic syringe drawing tne water out of the Atlantic ocean. A fellow cannot head them off, but he might grab them by the tail, like the boy did the calf, and slow them up a bit. That is about all we preachers can do these days, is to slow the crowd up. It is no trouble to manage the crowd if you will go their way and fall in with their notions, but whenever you try to cross tneir views or run contrary to their prejudices, then comes the "tug of war." I do not know why, but 1 don't hear much about trusts and combines going to eat up the people blood rare. The world seems to be looking on with astonishment at the colossal combines and wondering whether by and by the Morgans and the Vanderbilts will not own the world and turn round and make the balance of us build a fence around it for them. But I am not car ing bo much about who owns the railroads so long as they run firat-claes time, hauling passengers at 3 cents per mile, or lees, and freight cheaper than a fellow can build hia own boat and float it down the river. I jlo nor care who owns the sugar trust if they do rfbt put sugar above 5 cents per pound. I do not care how much dividend tbe Standard Oil company pays to its stock holders if it will furnish oil at 15 cents per gallon. As long as the individual has the ballot and officials have to be re-elected, we will come mighty near evening things up. Yours truly. Sam P. Jones. THE PASSING OF BUTLER. Charlotte Observer, 4th. To-day, the 4th of March, Senator Marion Butler, of North Carolina, will gather up his books and papers such as have not been already moved clean up his desk and walk out of the Senate chamber, his term ended. Six years ago to-day his senatorial term began. He was borne into the Senate on the crest of a wave of revolution, and a revolution has swept him out. For a dozen years or more this yet compara tively young man has filled a large space in the public eye of North Caro lina. A wily-politician, a born agitator, he took advantage of a spirit of unrest among the people, born of hard times and low prices, and lead a successful revolt against the then existing order of things, supplanting in the Senate a veteran of both military and civil life whose views were not in harmony with those of the people who had for bo long honored themselves by trusting him. It was, indeed, a period of revolution in North Carolina. As Mr. Butbr went into the Senate there went into the House new men also, and other new men still two years later men holding new and strange doctrines, which were to be at once enacted into laws under which the people were to be again prosperous and happy. All of these new men are gone from tbe halls of Congress and the most of them are for gotten. And none of the things for which they stood have ever taken the form of law. It is reasonable to sup pose that, owing to the logic of events, they have departed from seme of the views which they held then. Even Mr. Butler appears to have changed in Bome of his ideas. One of the "de mands" which he was conspicuous in urging some years ago, before he be came a Senator, was that the compen sation of all public officers should be reduced in order that they might con form to the prices of agricultural pro ducts. Yet one of the last things that he did in the Senate was to give notice of an amendment to the sundry civil bill raising the salaries of Senators and Representatives from $5,000 to $7,500 a year. We have no purpose at this moment to be unkind or even inconsiderate in comment, but as one takes a glance at the public history of the State, be ginning, we will say, twelve years ago, with an agitation which succeeded in 1894 and reached high water mark in 1896, one wonders what it was all for and what it all accomplished in the way of practical results to the people Mr. Butler was the' principal bene ficiary of this agi'ation and since his mn sets to-day this inquiry is timely, We have no subtreasuries; no free sil ver at 16 to 1; no government owner ship of railroads; no $50 Wr capita, is sued direct to the peoplet It is true that the party to which Mr.vButler was indebted for "his senatorial nonors suc ceeded, before it expired, in I engrafting a good many of its vagaries) upon the Democratic party, but they fare as far from realization as they ever) were and the Democratic party is worse off for the new additions to its articles of faith. But why prolong the agony or fur ther lacerate the public bosom by a re cital of familiar and unpleasant his tory ? Mr. Marion Butler ceases at high noon to-day to be a Senator of the United States, and with his passing the curtain goes down on a little political comedy which at times had in 4t the elements of a tragedy and which has consumed in all some fifteen years in the playing. The ship labeled "Demo cratic" has been move! a good piece from where she was moored when the storm broke out, but if the storm produced any other effect it is not apparent to the naked eye. Least ways we congratulate ourselves that after all God reigns and the republic still lives, and, like St. Paul at Three Taverns, we thank God and take courage. Her Wish Was Granted. A strange circumstance connected with the death of Mrs. Edward Madison of Bethel, O., who met death recently in a rur.away, has come to light. A few moments before she started for Bata via one of her friends spoke to her about driving such a fractious horse and asked her if she did not fear the horse. She replied that her husband had met death while driving the same horse and that she wished to die in the same man ner. An hour later her wish was ful filled and her lifeless body removed from a heap of bru3h down a Bteep and stonv embankment. -The distillerv of Mr. John Sum mers, of Rowan county, waa blown up last Saturday, caused by defective machinery. The roof was blown off, and about $100 damage done. LYING IN SOCIAL LIFE. Baltimore Sun. Rev. Dr. W. L. McDowell, pastor of Broadway Methodist Episcopal Church, preached last night on "The Lie in r" Social Life." It was the second sermonV""" of a series on "Social Sins.' He spoke' in part as follows: "Often in the presence of the child we ask ourselvea the question, What will he make of life? There is another, second only t this in importance, viz., What will life make of him ? For the evils that are in the world shall try their power on him. The Bins that lurk everywhere he must meet. Few are more subtle and more certain to work their disastrous eflects than the deceit which characterizes the social life in which he is to live,, move and have hia being. "The custom which justified a lie when the truth would be inconvenient or disagreeable, the flattery that dupes its victim and then smiles at its work, the insincerity which utters one word with the lips and holds another in the heart, the pretense which is the lie in act, the sham, the scandal-mongering which originates or gives currency to irrespon sible rumor affecting the reputation of another, how these permeate tbe social atmosphere of the day even as the pesti- ; lent miasma the air! "The child may be now the soul of truth. Would that we, his elders, could hold out before him the prospect of a social environment that would help him to remain sol We know that unless a revolution be wrought it must be far otherwise. "The 'lie direct' is in evidence in our social life. The standing joke of the newspaper that Mrs. A directs her maid to say to Mrs. B that the former is not at home when the latter calls is other than a joke. It is a widely practiced reality. " Mrs. A really means that she does not wish to see Mrs. B. It would be impolite, perhaps impolitic, ' to let Mrs. B know that; so Mrs. A escapes her dilemma by using a'lie. A white lie, a harmless lie, it may be said. "Harmless lies are like harmless poisons. There are none. If the lie liarme no one else it harms the liar. It reacts on the sources of his moral life, adding its increment of falseness to the nature and creating a facility for lying. Black lies, lies, foul, abominable, loath some lie'', that perjure the soul which utters them and throw dark shadows over other human lives, are the legiti mate progeny of white lies. "There is the lie of flattery. Tbj serpent used it successfully in theHQar- den of Eden, and we are all rpWe or less susceptible to it today.. . Some time since I was asking 'the influence of a man who could perform a much needed service for one of my friends and men tioned the matter to a mutual acquaint ance. His reply was: 'Just go the office and jolly him a little and he will do anything you ask.' Tickling his vanity was the door to hia favor. But what of the morale of using that door? It is lying, deceit, pure and simple. To say what you do not believe or what you know is untrue is falsehood, what ever be tbe motive that prompts it "But it is claimed that true polite ness often calls for a bit of flattery and one must always be polite. Lowell once said: "Tne code of society is stronger with some persons than that of Sinai, and many a man who would not scruple to thrust his fingers into his neighbor's pocket would forego peas rather than use his knife as a shovel.' So there are people who will lie rather than be guilty of breaking through some false notions of etiquette. If it be unkind to wound unnecessarily by sj.eaking the ill-timed truth it is never courteous to lie. We are truly courteous only when we are wholly sincere in every word we speak and everything we do. "There is the lie of slander. What is it to slander? To speak or repeat evil of another that you do not know to be the truth. It is not necessary that yoa deliberately seek to harm him. "We share in the falsehood when we give currency to it. We share also in re sponsibility for the damage it works. Most of tbe scandals that come to us come destitute of all authority worthy of credence. There are certain un known and untraceable personages called by the simple cognomen 'they' who do a great deal of mischief. They say that 'Mr. A gets druuk on the sly.' They Bay that 'Mr. B does not pay his debts.' They say that 'Mrs. C mal treats her children. ' "If the 'lie direct' and the lie of flat tery work their chief damage upon him who utters them the lie of Blander does most harm to others. It is assassina tion. It stabs reputation, often inflict ing a wound from which there is never recovery. 'Every man is the keeper of his own character, but your reputation and mine re largely in the hands of our fellows. They can make us or unmake us in the eyes of the world. It, is a terrible sin to damage the moral etanding of an other. Yet reputations have been tarn ished, happy homes have been wrecked and human hearts broken by the vile tongue of slander. "The Great Teacher has said that every idle world that men shall ipeak they shall give an account thereof iu the day of judgment. How much more for the untrue wonte the falsehoods that have been uttered with lips or life!"