Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures Part 4

First, being a southern man, I shall turn it upon the Race Problem.

A century ago the Indian question was a perplexing problem, but it cuts but little figure now, for the Indian is nightly pitching his moving tepee a day's march nearer the sunset sh.o.r.e, where one more shove, and,

"Mad to life's history Glad to death's mystery,"

the red race will go, to where the pale face will cease from troubling, and the weary spirit will find its rest at last.

The Chinese question is of equal insignificance, since our doors are closed and barred against the almond eyes of the Orient.

The Negro question seems to be the race riddle of our civilization and it will take much tact, patience and wisdom to solve the problem. It may be a revelation to some of you to know, that at the rate the negro race has grown since the Civil War, when the twentieth century goes out, there will be sixty millions of negroes in one black belt across the Southland. I say across the Southland because, the main body of the negro race will never leave the track of the southern sun. The South held the negro in slavery, the North set him free. We supposed at the close of the war, he would leave the South and go to live among his liberators. But after half a century, he is still clinging to the cotton and the cane, or sitting in his log house home, the "shadowed livery of the burning sun" upon his brow, the plantation song still lingering on his lips, the banjo tuned to memory's melodies on his knee, a clump of kinky-headed pickaninnies playing in the sand about his cabin door, and there he sits multiplying the Southland and problemizing the century.

I have not time to discuss at length the solution of the problems before us, but I hope to present them in such a manner as will help you to appreciate their importance and how they are linked with the destiny of the republic.

It seems to me exaltation of character, dignification of labor, material prosperity, leaving social equality to take care of itself, makes up the best solution of the negro problem. Social equality does take care of itself even among the white races. Some of you may have a white servant who is a good woman, a Christian woman, you expect to meet her in heaven (if you get there), but she is not admitted to your social set.

There is a vast difference between social rights and civil rights.

Near Lexington, Ky., where I claim my home, is the country residence of J.B. Haggin, the multi-millionaire horseman. Soon after the completion of his mansion home, he gave a reception which cost thousands of dollars. The "first cut" of society came from far and near, but I was not invited, nor did I feel slighted, for I had no claim upon the millionaire magnate socially. But when I meet the great turf-king on the turnpike, he in his limozine and I in my little runabout, I say, "Mr. Haggin, give me half the road, sir." Inside his gates I have no claim, but outside, the turnpike's free, and J.B.

Haggin can't run over me. So the negro has no claim on the white man for social equality, but he has a right to the key of knowledge and a chance in the world.

Slavery was not an unmixed evil. Like the famed s.h.i.+eld it had two sides. While it had its blighting effects it had its blessings. In bondage the negro was taught to speak the English language, and in childhood had the a.s.sociation of white children with their southern home training. They were taught two valuable lessons, industry and obedience, without which liberty means license. The negro was compelled to work and obey, two lessons the Indian never had and never respected. Beside these valuable lessons the negro was taught the fundamental principles of Christianity and at the opening of the war nearly every negro belonged to some church. Their preachers used to get their dictionary and Bible very amusingly mixed at times. Elder Barton exhorting his hearers said: "Paul may plant and Apolinarus water, but if you keeps on tradin' off your birthright for a pot of Messapotamia you'se gwine to git lost. You may go down into de water and come up out ob de water like dat Ethiopian Unitarium, but if you keeps on ossifyin' from one saloon to another; if you keeps on breakin' the ten commandments to satisfy your appet.i.te for chicken; if you keeps on spendin' your time playing c.r.a.ps, the fourteenth amendment ain't gwine to save you. Seben come elebin never took a man to Heben. I want you to understand dat." Yet from such crudeness of expression has come preaching, remarkable for thought as well as scholars.h.i.+p and eloquence, while out of the suffering of slavery, through the law of compensation, we have matchless melodies in negro choirs and negro concert companies.

Leaders of thought may differ as to the methods of solution, but upon one thing all must agree. The net-work of our republic is such that if one suffers all suffer, and the negro is so interwoven with the various interests of our National life, we must level the race up or it will level the white race down. The lower cla.s.ses must be lifted to the tableland of a better life, where they can breathe the pure air of intelligence and morality, or they will pollute the whole body politic. They must also acquire property. Economy is a lesson the negro race needs to learn. This lesson was well presented to a drunken white man by a sober old negro. The white man spent his money for liquor, and then started for home. Reaching a river he must cross by ferry, he found he had spent his last penny for drink. Seeing an old colored man seated at a cabin door near by, he turned toward the cabin. Nearing the old man he said:

"Uncle, would you loan me three cents to cross the ferry?"

"Boss, ain't you got three cents?"

"I ain't got one cent," replied the white man.

"Well, you can't git the three cents. Ef you ain't got three cents, you'se just as well off on one side de river as you is on de other."

I said we may differ as to methods for solving this race problem.

Remembering as I do the days of slavery, how in Christian homes the most merciful masters and the most faithful slaves were found, I believe the best solution lies in the golden rule of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I now give the searchlight a swing and it falls upon the City Problem.

At the opening of the nineteenth century three per cent. of the people of this country lived in cities, ninety-seven per cent. in the country. At the rate migration is now going from country to city in twenty years there will be ten millions more people in the cities than in the country. This means a change of civilization, and new problems to solve. It means a day when cities will control in state and national elections, and if ignorance and vice control our cities, then virtue and intelligence as saving influences will not suffice to save us. The ignorance prominent in the machinery of large cities is ill.u.s.trated by the police force of New York City. When applicants for positions on the police force were being tested a few years ago, the question was asked: "Name four of the six New England States." Several replied: "England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales." Another question was: "Who was Abraham Lincoln?" As many as ten answered: "He was a great general." One said: "He discovered America;" another said: "He was killed by a man name Garfield;" and another's answer was, "He was shot by Ballington Booth."

The growth of large cities means the growth of slum-life. Hear me, you who live out in the uncrowded part of the country. Maud Ballington Booth tells of finding five families, living in one attic room in New York City, with no part.i.tions between. Here they "cook, eat, sleep, wash, live and die," in the one room. In our large cities are armies of children, whose shoulders "droop with parental vice," whose feet are fast in the mire of miserable conditions, whose hovel homes line the sewers of social life, and who are cursed and doomed by inheritance.

Some twenty or more years ago, a Chicago paper that had money behind it, and could have been sued for damages said: "The man who controls the purse strings of this city, the school board and board of public works, is the vilest product of the slums, a saloon keeper, a gambler, a man a leading citizen of this city would not invite into his home."

That man then controlled the purse strings of the great city of Chicago. I am glad to say a better man holds the place today. Hannibal could not save Carthage; Demosthenes could not save Greece; Jesus himself could not save Jerusalem. Can we save the cities of this republic?

Yet our lads and la.s.sies are eager to leave the country and go to large cities, where gas-lit streets are thronged with humanity and entertainments provided every hour.

A country boy said to me: "Mr. Bain, you go everywhere; you see everything; I live out here in the country and see nothing." I have tried it all. For about twenty-eight years I lived in the country.

Since then my life has been in cities and on railroad trains between the oceans. My experience is, there is no life that keeps the heart so pure and the mind so contented as life in the country.

Some years ago I gave two addresses at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, on Sat.u.r.day evening a popular lecture, and on Sunday an address to young men. I had the popular lecture made but not the Sunday talk. For three months I promised myself to get that lecture but kept on delaying. As I neared the time I hoped something would prevent my going. The time came, I was at Ocean Grove, knew I would have a great audience, for the day was ideal, and still I did not have the lecture except in skeleton form. After breakfast Sunday I began to walk the floor, working out clothing for that skeleton and racking my brain for climaxes. My wife was with me and she never would worry over my having nothing to say. Into every sentence I would weave she would inject a piece of her mind about home or children or some woman's dress or bonnet. I said: "This is a trying time with me, won't you take a stroll along the beach and let me be alone today?" Like a good wife she gratified my request, and left me to work and worry over that lecture. At four o'clock p.m., I could not see daylight, and in the darkness cried out: "O Lord, if you will help me this time I won't ask you again for awhile." The Lord did help me. My friends said I never did so well as that evening. At the close of the lecture the audience arose and handkerchiefs, like so many white doves, fluttered in the air. In the midst of that scene, an old superannuated minister of the New York Methodist Conference planted a kiss on my cheek, and I have wondered often, why a man should have thought of that instead of a woman.

At the close of the service a friend said: "That must have been the proudest moment of your life, for surely I never witnessed such a scene."

I said: "No, I can recall one that was greater than the white lilies."

Away back in Bourbon county, Kentucky, when I was not quite twenty I was married to a girl of nineteen. Soon after, we went to housekeeping in a country home. It was supper time. I had fed the chickens and horses, and washed my face in a tin pan on the kitchen steps, when a sweet voice said: "Come, supper's ready." As I entered the dining room my young wife came through the kitchen door, the coffee pot in her hand, her cheeks the ruddier from the glow of the cook stove, her face all lit up with expectancy as to what her young husband would think of his first meal prepared by his wife. All the operas I have heard since, and all the cities I have seen, dwindle into insignificance compared with that pure, peaceful home in the country.

Another sweep of the searchlight brings us to the Immigration Problem.

We are today the most cosmopolitan country of the world. At the rate of a million a year immigrants are pouring in upon us, and no wonder they come, when they read of the marvelous fortunes made in the new world; of Mackay a penniless boy in the old world, worth fifty millions at middle life in America; A.T. Stewart peddling lace at twenty, a merchant prince at fifty; Carnegie a poor Scotch lad at eighteen, a half billionaire at seventy. These with many more such results on a smaller scale, rainbow the sky that spans the sea, and from the other end, this end is seen pouring its gold and greatness into the lap of the land of the free. So they come, and though they do not find all they expected, they do find far more here than they left behind, and writing letters back over the ocean, they set others wild with a desire to live in America. Many of them are excellent people; their children go into our public schools and come out with ours, one in thought, one in purpose, one in feeling. A little boy in Chicago said:

"Papa, you were born in England?"

"Yes."

"And mama was born in Scotland?"

"Yes."

"And you had a king at the head of your armies?"

"Yes."

"Well! _we_ licked you all the same."

The children of our foreign born citizens in our public schools are intensely American. A boy who was born in this country but whose parents were foreign born, was for some misdemeanor chastised by his father. When his playmates teased him he said: "Oh, the whipping didn't count for much, but I don't like being licked by a foreigner."

There is another cla.s.s coming to our country not only injurious but dangerous. They bring with them the heresies of the lands they hail from. They do not come to be American citizens. There is not an American hair in their heads, or an American thought in their minds.

Every drop of blood in their veins, beats to the music of continental customs, and they come prepared to sow and grow the seeds of anarchy.

Many come with tags on their backs giving their destination; not to build American homes; not to learn our language; not to obey our laws, or honor our inst.i.tutions, but to undermine the honest laboring cla.s.ses who toil to build homes and educate and clothe their children.

I say, take off their tags and let them tag back home. Out of this cla.s.s came the men who cheered to the echo a speaker in Chicago when he said: "I am in favor of dynamiting every bank vault in this city and taking the money we are ent.i.tled to." Out of such schools of anarchy, came the man who crossed the sea from Patterson, New Jersey, to send a bullet through the heart of King Humbert, and out of this cla.s.s came the teachers, who shrouded our land with shame and sorrow in Buffalo, New York.

Just here, I congratulate the spirit of William McKinley upon its auspicious flight to the spirit world. There is no better time and place for one to die, than at the summit of true greatness, "enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen, at peace with his G.o.d," the sun of his life going down, "before eye has grown dim or natural force has abated." Take him from the time he entered the army, where his commanding general said: "A night was never so dark, storm never so wild, weather never so cold as to interfere with his discharge of every duty." From this time on, as lawyer, commonwealth's attorney, congressman, governor, and president, he was a Jonathan to his friends, a Ruth to his kindred, a Jacob to his family, a Gideon to his country. Take him in private life where an intimate friend said: "I never heard him utter a word his wife or mother might not have heard; I never heard him speak evil of any man." Take him when stricken down by an a.s.sa.s.sin, hear him say: "Let no man harm him; let the law take its course; good-bye to all; G.o.d's will be done," and in his last conscious moments chanting "Nearer my G.o.d to Thee," and you have one of the most touching stories of this old world. All honor to our martyred president, William McKinley.

What a shame that in a land whose const.i.tution guarantees life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the humblest citizen, the life of its chief executive is not safe, though guarded by detectives and surrounded by devoted friends. Until the country is rid of organized anarchy it would be well to abandon free-for-all hand-shaking.

When Senator h.o.a.r made his speech in the United States Senate against anarchy he said: "It would be well if the nations of the earth would combine together, purchase an island in the sea, place all anarchists on that island, and let them run a government of their own." An Irishman said: "I'm not in favor of any sich thing; I am in favor of gathering thim up all right, takin' thim out in the middle of the ocean, dumpin' them out, and letin' thim find their own island."

Out of the personal liberty league, which is but another form of anarchy, came the man who in an address a few years ago said: "This republic is our hunting ground and the American Sabbath shall be our hunting day. Down with the American Sabbath!"

It has been well said: "The Sabbath is the window of our week, the sky-light of our souls, opened by divine law and love, up through the murk and cloud and turmoil of earthly life to the divine life above."

Whoever would destroy the Sabbath day is undermining the republic, and any man who does not like the restrictions of our Sabbath, can find a vessel leaving our ports about every day in the year. He can take pa.s.sage any day he chooses, and as the vessel steams out we can afford to sing, "Praise G.o.d from whom all blessings flow."

Another move of the searchlight and we have The Expansion Problem.

Yonder in the Philippine Islands are seventy different tribes, speaking many languages. How to mold them into one common whole, loyal to one flag is a mighty problem; and yet I am one of those who believe G.o.d intends this American republic shall be a standard-bearer of civilization to the darkest corners of the earth. I do not mean by this that I advocate imperialism from the standpoint of wider domain.

Indeed I am disposed to dodge the question of imperialism, as I dodged the money question in Colorado when the question was the issue in politics. I gave three addresses for the Boulder, Colorado, Chautauqua when the money question was the all-absorbing one in the west. At the close of my second address I was introduced to the superintendent of the railroad that runs over the Switzerland trail. He said: "I understand your wife is here, and I will be pleased to have you and Mrs. Bain as my guests tomorrow." I knew that meant a free ride and I accepted. The next morning we were at the station at the appointed hour and after a wonderful ride mid scenic grandeur up to where eagles nest, and blizzards hatch out their young, our host said: "I want you to have the most thrilling ride you ever had, and at the next station be ready to leave the train." As the brakes gripped the wheels, and the train rested on the eye-brow of the mountain height, we stepped off. A hand car was taken from the baggage car and the train moved on up the trail. While Mrs. Bain was captivated by the mountains, I was looking at that hand car, without any handles on it, a flat truck with four wheels. The superintendent said: "Will you help me lift this on to the track?" I said: "Yes, but what are you going to do with it?"

When he said: "Going down the mountain to where we came from," I said, "What will we hold to?" "To each other," he replied, and I could see he was enjoying Mrs. Bain's placidness and my apprehension of trouble ahead.

Determined to sustain Kentucky's reputation for courage I said no more, but hoped Mrs. Bain would come to my relief since she knew her husband was given to dizziness when riding backwards or swinging round sudden curves. She said: "Isn't this a grand sight?" I said: "Yes, it's grand, but we are going down the mountain on this hand car."