PEABODY EDUCATION FUND.

Tabular statement of the distribution of the income from the year 1868 to September 30, 1897.

The original gift of John F. Slater to the cause of negro education ($1,000,000 in 1882) by wise investment had reached in 1900 the sum of $1,500,000. The expenditure for schools meanwhile had amounted to $650,000.

IV.-EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.

BY THE HON. J. L. M. CURRY.

[An address before the educational conference at Capon Springs, W. Va., June 22, 1399.] I have been requested to present a survey of the educational field of the South. This must necessarily be rapid and imperfect. The starting point is the war between the States, which resulted in the most gigantic revolution of modern time-the emancipation of slaves, the disorganization of the entire labor system of the South, the reversal of traditions, habits, and institutions, the impoverishment of the South, and the addition to the voting population of a large mass of people who, recently in bondage, were suddenly transformed by act of the United States into a body of citizens having the highest privileges and prerogatives. Few people can realize-no one outside the limits of the Confederate States-how utterly transformed everything was, what an upheaval, overthrow of cherished convictions, of habits of life, of social and political environments, and destruction of property. When the surrender of the armies under Lee and Johnston occurred there came the necessary duty of rehabilitation, of setting houses, churches, schools, and government in order for the new and the strange life. During the war, through the Freedmen's Bureau and a few religious organizations, efforts, partial and local, were begun toward giving some education to those who were within the Union lines. This noble and proper effort was often in the hands of fanatical men and women ignorant of negro peculiarities, inexperienced as to methods of teaching, full of self-conceit, and possessed of a fatal facility of rubbing the fur the wrong way.

It must be borne in mind that under the ancient régime no public school system providing universal education existed at the South. There was no system adequate even to the education at public expense of the white youth. Our peculiar social system forbade the education of the negroes. That obviously would have been impossible and dangerous. In the course of a few years systems for both races were established. The difficulties were very great. Population was sparse, roads were bad, schoolhouses did not exist, there was an absolute want of acquaintance with the machinery of public schools, no sufficient supply of competent teachers was to be had, and weighing down all spirit of hopeful progress was the dreary poverty of the taxpayer. It is impossible for those living north of Mason and Dixon's line to realize how universal and crushing was the bankruptcy of the South after Appomattox. In 1861 the real and personal property of Georgia was valued at $661,000,000. At the close of the war $121,000,000 were left. Ex uno disce omnes. Superadd the horrors of reconstruction, its robbcries, insults, corruptions, incompetency of officials, and the deliberate attempt to put the white people in subjection to the negroes.

Despite the environments and the hopelessness of the outlook, there were a few who felt that the salvation of the South, the recovery of its lost prestige, depended on universal education. They felt that no better service could be rendered to the country and the great problem which embarrassed or darkened action than a scheme of applying systems, tried and known elsewhere, tɔ the renaissance of the South. Therefore, with hope and courage amid the gloom of disappointment and poverty and despair, the pressure of adverse circumstances, and the strugglə for subsistence, they advocated and secured the incorporation into organic law of general education as the only measure which promised to lift up the lately servile race and restore the white people to their former prosperity They persevered in their efforts, until now, in view of the magnificent results achieved, we can set up our Ebenezers. Every State in the South has State-established, State-controlled, State-supported schools for both rac.s, without legal discrimination as to benefits conferred. About $100,000,000, drawn very largely from the taxation of the white

people, have been given for negro education, and 1,250,000 negro children are enrolled in the schools. Nothing in the history of civilization is comparable to this sublime self-denial and this work of enlarged patriotism.

When the Government emancipated the negroes there was an imperative resulting obligation to prepare them for citizenship and freedom, but the Government has persistently and cruelly refused to give one cent of aid to this indispensable work. Along with what the States have done, northern religious societies and some benevolent men and women have given liberally for the education of the negroes, and such institutions as Hampton, Tuskegee, Spelman, Tougaloo, Claflin, Shaw, St. Augustine, and others have done most valuable service in preparing the negrces for their changed condition. These schools, however valuable the work done by them, reach not more than 30,000 pupils, and if all these turned out well, what are they among so many? Every southern man or woman is profoundly grateful for what northern people have done for the education of the negroes-for making coequal citizenship of the two races in the same territory an endurable possibility. The public free schools are the colleges of the people; they are the nurseries of freedom; their establishment and efficiency are the paramount duty of a republic. The education of children is the most legitimate object of taxation. Eighty-five or 90 per cent of the children will never know any education as given by schools except what they obtain in free State schools. It is not, therefore, a question of relative worth of different methods, but of education at all.

It must not be supposed that because prior to the war the Southern States had no systems of public schools for universal education they were negligent of the duty of supplying a large number of the white population with instruction of the highest order. It may surprise some of the audience to learn that by the census of 1860, when the North had a population of 19,000,000 and the South had 8,000,000, the North had 205 colleges, 1,407 professors, and 29,044 students; the South had 262 colleges, 1,488 professors, and 27,055 students; the North expended for colleges per annum $1,514,688 and for academies $4,663,749, while the South expended for colleges $1,662,419 and for academies $4,328,127. Besides these, in nearly every State were denominational colleges, and I make bold to say that the education furnished, according to the then existing courses of study, was in all respects equal to that furnished elsewhere. Webster once exclaimed of Massachusetts: "There she is-she speaks for herself!" With equal boastfulness the South may say of the results of the education furnished: "There are her men-they speak for themselves!" What portion of the world can surpass our Marshall and Taney, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, Rutledge, Pinckneys, Calhoun, Clay, and scores of others? Obliterate from our history what those men have achieved, and how barren it would be!

It need hardly be said that our institutions of learning shared in the universal poverty which swept over our land. The colleges in some cases were used as barracks and hospitals for the soldiers. Libraries and apparatus were removed or destroyed, and in some instances there has been a weary waiting for compensation after proof, clear and full, leaving no loop to hang a doubt upon. Buildings for dormitories and science halls, very much needed to meet pressing demands, are not finished for want of funds. Professors, faithful and scholarly, are poorly paid. Most pathetic calls from young men and young women hungry for education are heard, and yet they must be turned away in the absence of scholarships and endowments. Some single colored schools have a larger annual income and expend more for running expenses than any university except Johns Hopkins, and as much as the combined outlay of four or five white colleges. The white institutions at the South have had no help from the generosity of the North except what one family has given to the Vanderbilt and the University of Virginia has received from the estate of Fayerweather. Is there any wonder that southern

colleges can not compare or compete with Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, or Chicago, with their plethoric millions?

From the Bureau of Education I gather that the northern colleges have in productive funds $102,721,451, while the South, exclusive of the District of Columbia, reports $15,741,000. In the North there are 23 institutions with an annual income of from $100,000 to $200,000, while in the South there are only 13. The North has 3 colleges with an annual income of from $400,000 to $500,000 and 3 with an income of from $700,000 to $800,000, while in that favored class the South has not one. No wonder that in the northern press, the greatest civilizing force of the times, while columns are given to interesting accounts of what higher institutions are doing and receiving, there is scarcely a mention of work done or help received by the struggling colleges of the South.

I shall not stultify myself by any fresh argument in favor of negro education, but I must be pardoned for emphasizing the fact that there is greater need for the education of the other race. The white people are to be the leaders, to take the initiative, to have the directive control in all matters pertaining to civilization and the highest interests of our beloved land. History demonstrates that the Caucasian will rule. He ought to rule. He made our Constitution; he achieved our independence; he is identified with all the true progress, all high civilization, and if true to his mission, while developing his own capabilities, he will lead out and on other races as far and as fast as their good and their possibilities will justify. This white supremacy does not mean hostility to the negro, but friendship for him. On the intelligent and more refined class of the white people the negroes have been compelled to rely heretofore for the educational advantages which they possess, and on them in the future they must depend to prevent a widening of the breach between the races and to bring about their higher advancement. It is hopeless to think of the small number of educated negroes protecting themselves against wrongs unless there be men and women cultured, courageous, broad minded to correct, elevate, and lead public opinion. Some wild enthusiasts of the negro race, some purblind fanatics of the white race, may expect or desire subordination or inferiority of the white people, but that is the crazy dream of a kind of racial cosmopolitanism or fusion which portends loss of national unity and is the forerunner of decay.

Much has been said-too much can not be said-of the negro problem. It does not "down" at any man's bidding. It is a living, ever-present, a'l-pervasive, apparently irremovable fact. Its solution baffles statesmanship and philanthropy. Education-moral, intellectual, industrial, civic-should be persistently, generously furnished, but, if universal, is slow in its results and while immensely beneficial does not settle irreconcilable racial antagonisms, and it leaves two heterogeneous, unassimilable peoples as coequal citizens with growing cleavage in the same territory. Preachers, sociologists, humanitarians, with their altruistic speculations, may from a safe distance pooh-pooh the problem, but there it is, and there it will remain.

Recent tragic occurrences at the South are not the gravamen of the problem. They are horrifying, but are incidents. The unmentionable atrocities, filling the timid with direful apprehensions, are committed by a few brutes, who, slaves to appetites, have had their moral perceptions, if discernible at all, blunted by undeveloped intellects, low companionship, descent from depraved mothers, fiery intoxicants, and certainly are far below the average and have not the sympathy and approval of their race. It needs no argument that the more debased, the less self-reliant, the more unskilled, the more thriftless, and unemployed the race or any portion of it is, the more dangerous it will be, the less desirable as inhabitant, as laborer, as citizen, as voter. Plato said a man not sufficiently or properly trained is the most savage animal on earth. Nothing can be more illogical, more

indefensible, more unjust, more cruel, more harmful to both races than to hold the negroes responsible for the outrages of a few of their race. Besides, these crimes hardly enter into the problem, which is not one of criminology or vengeance, but exceeding in magnitude and gravity any now existing in a civilized country, and demanding patience, wisdom, statesmanship, justice, charity of the best of the land.

It is sometimes said that we must rely exclusively on universities to furnish the means of meeting social and civil questions, and for leading a community or nation out of darkness into light, out of bondage into freedom. Such is not my reading of history. Art grew out of handicraft. The revival of real art came from a new beginning among humble craftsmen and hard-working artisans. Political reforms for amelioration of the condition of the masses have been achieved with unrelenting opposition of those in power and in high places who are on the catalogues of universities. It is an interesting fact, says President Harper, that all the great religious truths were worked out in the popular mind before they were formulated by the thinkers. Nearly every step in throwing off the tyrannies of church establishments and winning freedom of worship has been taken with the bitter, insulting, unforgiving hostility of those who boasted of their social and intellectual superiority. Exceptions honorable there have been, but the truth remains that not all of the advancements of the race have been due to those who have had the advantages of highest instruction. It is upon the condition of the great masses of the people, and not upon the elevation and welfare of a limited and privileged class, that we must mainly rely for the stability of our free institutions and for the permanent maintenance of public order.

Far be it from me to underrate the utility of these institutions which are monuments to the dignity and worth of the human mind, exert a conservative influence on society, furnish, through the vigilance of the wise, safeguards of freedom, and are essential to our safety and well-being at home and to our honor abroad. Napoleon melted the cannon captured at Austerlitz to build a monument to signalize his martial exploits. It would have been better to have built a university, for Sedan was the triumph of German universities and of science applied to war. My contention is that our main dependence as a republic is on the capacity and integrity of our general citizenship, and the importance of the trust demands the use and improvement of every educational agency from kindergarten to university. Ours is a federal, democratic, constitutional, representative Republic, and individual liberty is greater and can be safely intrusted in proportion as people rise in the scale of virtue, intelligence, patriotism, and in acquaintance with the nature and ends of free government. When a people are ignorant, superstitious, debased, corrupt, purchasable, the prey of demagogues and adventurers, the slaves of prejudice and passion, individual liberty is less and less until it becomes extinct and despotism is a necessity. Our American Republic, which we love, is the guardian of the holiest trust ever committed to a people.

There are grave questions growing out of our late and present wars against Spain and the Philippines, our relations with half-civilized islanders, which are not to be considered in this conference. There are other questions, home and internal, which thrust themselves upon our thoughts and demand wise consideration and the fullest education of every citizen. When all are properly educated we shall not then have too much wisdom for meeting the perils which menace our institutions. The masses, always representing the lowest parts of society, must have general instruction and some familiarity with the rights and duties of ordinary citizenship. Perhaps the most mischievous error in the public mind is the misapprehension of liberty and of democracy. Liberty is to be blended inseparably with the Government, harmonized with its forms, be made subordinate to its ends, for the correlative of liberty is lawful authority. Freedom consists in keeping