Chapter 2

I had the pleasure, in Santa Fé, January 13th, of attending an entertainment given by the Ramona pupils in honor of Miss Platt, one of their teachers. Gov. Prince and his wife, and several of the citizens, were present as invited guests. After the singing of several songs, and a statement made by Prof. Elmore Chase, the Principal, fourteen of the scholars rendered, in the action of nature and the speaking of English, Mrs. Bentley's dialogue, "The Old Year's Vision and the New Year's Message," as found in the January number of _The Youth's Temperance Banner_. One of the large boys first came in as an old man, clad in a mantle and trembling on a staff, to repeat the "Old Year's Vision." Then came in, one after another, a dozen boys and girls, to recite the greeting of the several months. It was a temperance exhibit, and so each one had a testimony for that cause. January, bearing a New Year's card in hand, declared: "I've promised that not a drop of wine shall touch these temperance lips of mine." February bore a fancy valentine, with an appropriate motto. March lifted aloft a new kite, with "Kites may sail far up in the sky, but on strong drink I'll never get high." July, bearing a flag and a bunch of fire-crackers, declares:

"I tell you I mean to celebrate, with something that won't intoxicate:" while December resolves: "No brandy fumes in my Christmas pie; no wine-sauce in my pudding, say I."

Then comes in a beautiful maiden, clad in white and crowned with flowers, to be greeted by a chorus of voices: "The king is dead; long live the queen!" and then to recite the "Message of the New Year."

Then comes another song in English, and then the second unloading of the Christmas tree, which has kept its place in the chapel since its proper day of Christmas cheer. Then the whole occasion is honored by an address from the Governor, in simple words, with smiling face and transparent good feeling. It is not every children's holiday that has a Governor at hand to grace the occasion. As the President of the Board of Trustees which, under the A.M.A. fosters the Ramona, and as Governor of a territory which has nineteen Pueblo villages and the reservations of the Navajoes and the Mescalero and Jicarilla Apaches, he is a faithful friend of the Indians. This is apparent from his first report just made to the Secretary of the Interior. The 21,000 of the Navajoes he reports as possessing 250,000 horses, 500 mules, 1,000 burros, 5,000 cattle, 700,000 sheep and 200,000 goats. Their wool-clip the last year reached 2,100,000 pounds. Here is a grand field for a mission.

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THE CHINESE.

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"THE UNBELIEVING WIFE SANCTIFIED IN THE BROTHER."

I Cor. vii: 14. (Revision.)

Our Chinese brethren have their full share in the family feeling which for ages has been nurtured in their race. This feeling is even intensified by their new life in Christ. They long for what they hope to make a Christian home, and greatly desire to perpetuate themselves in children who may follow them in following Christ. But what are they to do for wives? Many live in a virtual celibacy that is hopeless, because enforced by the betrothals made for them in China by their parents or elder brothers. These are accounted sacred, and are honored by our brethren with an oblivion of their own fancies or affinities that will be adjudged to be either stolid or heroic, according as the person judging is disposed to think kindly or unkindly of this people. Many have returned to China for the express purpose of consummating this betrothal in marriage. They remain a few months with their wives, and then return to California to find work and provide for them. Such persons are obliged by their principles to live in virtual celibacy.

Some greatly desire to send for their wives, but not only does the Restriction Law bar the entrance, but the father in China will probably raise effectual objection. A son is as much the property of his father at sixty as at six, and all he has, not only in property, but in wife and children as well, is under the father's control. The daughter-in-law, if strong and willing, is a very serviceable person about the old homestead in China, and the appeals of the son for the enjoyment of his wife's society in California are answered with the advice to get him another wife here. One in China and one in America seems to them a very safe arrangement. Eight thousand miles of ocean intervene and assure against domestic broils.

Some, however, of our brethren have in one way or another been set free from these early betrothals, and are at liberty to seek wives for themselves. Such are very glad if among the inmates of the mission-homes for Chinese women they can find a Christian for a help-meet. But this is often impossible. There are not enough Chinese Christian women to meet the demand. And therefore it has seemed to me not to be my duty strenuously to insist on the restriction placed on union with unbelievers, but rather when such a union has been arranged for, and is to be consummated, to hold out a hope that the unbelieving wife may be, not only in form and in her relation to the church--which seems to be the sense of the text cited--but in truth and fact sanctified in the brother.

This hope was fulfilled some years ago in the home of our oldest missionary helper, Jee Gam. His father having at last yielded to the son's entreaties and sent his wife to him, the narrow quarters in our Central Mission House to which the bride was brought became at once a sanctuary, and the Family Altar was established and the Family Saviour recognized and worshiped. When a son was born to them, he was brought in due time to our Bethany to be baptized, the heathen mother consenting and attending. It was not long after that the mother herself stood with us to enter into covenant and be baptized, and since then,--though preferring to live in her home in a seclusion which American ladies would regard as imprisonment and torture,--she has sought there to do service to her Master in bringing up her children in the nurture of the Lord. In her husband's absence from home she takes his place at the family altar, and many an American mother might well pattern after her fidelity in teaching her children the good and right way.

Several years ago, one of our steadfast Chinese brethren in Sacramento requested me to come and conduct his marriage service. He had procured the bride in Marysville, purchasing her (I suppose) of her parents after the Chinese custom. I obeyed the summons; obtained for him the necessary license, and then at the Mission House awaited the coming of the bride. That which at length arrived resembled more a moving package of rich and brilliant dry-goods of Chinese manufacture than a bright and blushing bride. Something could be seen of the shoes she wore, and when at length, in the course of the service, I somewhat firmly insisted on a joining of hands a hand was made to appear, but there was no bridal kiss, nor any sight or semblance of a face beneath the quadrupled or quintupled veils. However, the marriage was effected in a Christian way, and the next morning there came to me an invitation to call upon the bride. I found her to be the most beautiful Chinese girl I had ever seen, with manners all the more pleasing because so very shy. Her husband had prepared quarters for her which, as compared with the average Chinese home, were almost palatial, and everything seemed to promise a future peaceful and joyous.

After a few months the mother-in-law made her daughter a visit as she passed through Sacramento on her way back to her native land. What passed between mother and daughter we do not know, but a few days after her departure, Fong Bow returning to his home was shocked to find his little wife suspended by the neck in an attempt at suicide. He rescued her, and when she was restored asked for the reason. She acknowledged that she had a good home and a kind and generous husband, but there was no shrine in the house, no ancestral tablet, no Joss, and she was convinced that some great evil must be impending from spirits thus neglected and provoked. She preferred to sacrifice her present comfort rather than incur the woes approaching,--all the more dreadful in her apprehension because utterly unknown. Whereupon Fong Bow told her that while he himself could not worship such things, and knew that an idol was "nothing in the world," he did not and would not forbid her to do what she thought right, and thus she provided herself with a shrine and gods and was comforted.

Meanwhile, the husband lived a Christian life before her, and she herself was willing to receive instruction from Mrs. Carrington and others. It is not improbable that she saw the difference between a home even half Christian, like her own, and those where heathen customs made of a husband less a protector than a lord. Doubtless she thought much in silence before coming to the decision which changed the current of her life. It is singular that the crisis came in consequence of her observing at a marriage of Chinese persons making no profession of Christian faith, the absence of the rites which had been, in her view, the only safeguards against evil. This brought her to decision. With her own hands she removed the shrine she had erected, and then declared her purpose to worship her husband's God. Those who know her--both Chinese and Americans--see in her the tokens of a real and radical change; and it was with great joy that I heard, some weeks ago, that she had been baptized and welcomed to the Congregational Church in Sacramento, to which her husband has belonged these many years.

WM. C. POND.

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THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO IN OUR COUNTRY.

_Address at the Annual Meeting in Chicago_,

BY THE REV. C.H. RICHARDS, D.D.

Deeper than the question, what shall we do with the Negro, lies the more fundamental question: What does God mean to do with the Negro in our country? Many a so-called solution of the "race problem" has been a foredoomed failure, because it ran counter to the Providential plan. Some have hoped that time would settle the burning question; if people would only stop talking about it, especially meddlesome people far away from the real pinch of the trouble, they fancy that somehow the mere flight of years would adjust differences and secure to all their rights. Others think the short way to peace is by force, keeping the Negro down with a strong hand, and keeping the Anglo Saxon on top by any vigorous means that may be needed. Others, again, think there never can be any solution of the problem so long as the two races occupy the same territory, and they propose some mammoth scheme of colonization to take the blacks away to some quarter of the world where they can be by themselves. But these and other remedies are utterly futile, because they are in collision with God's plan, as indicated by certain manifest facts. Meantime, while men are so busy trying to get around the difficulty instead of solving it in a straightforward way, the problem gets a little bigger every year. The caste question agitates our great religious assemblies. The spoliation of the civil rights of the Negro is one of the most menacing features in our politics. Bitter race prejudices keep Southern cities in a ferment, and even break out in dreadful massacres. This race problem will continue to be one of the most momentous and disturbing questions in American public life, until somehow we learn how to get into line with Providence, and find some solution that harmonizes with the great movements that have the hand of God in them.

It is time to ask then, with searching inquiry, What is the divine plan with regard to the Negro here, or, in other words, What is to be the future of the Negro in America? In certain significant facts and tendencies of his past and present, we may see the finger of Providence pointing on to that future. Let us look at some of these facts and their bearings.

First of all, the Negro is here, and that not of his own consent. He has not forced himself upon the country; he has been forced to make this his home against his will. We of the white race are responsible for his presence. We invited him here in the most pressing manner, and would not take "no" for an answer.

And he is here to stay. All the ingenious schemes for settling this troublesome question by taking up the black race bodily and dropping it in some roomy region far away from all possible contact with white people, are utterly delusive. The Negro does not want to go elsewhere. Having been compelled to make his home here for two centuries, he is domesticated here, and has as good a right to remain as the white man. Moreover, he can see as well as any one that this is the best country in the world to live in--the land offering greatest opportunity for advancement, the poor man's Paradise. Brought by force, he will not relinquish his rightful hold here except by force. And we may be sure that our National Government will never undertake the chimerical experiment of deporting him to some other land, and pay the enormous expense of it out of the National Treasury. Having been brought by the providence of God to expiate its former wrongs to the black man at such immense cost of treasure and blood, the Nation will be slow to tax itself enormously to do him another wrong.

Moreover, it is not necessary that the races should be separated in order to settle the difficulty that now disturbs us. All the Negro asks is to be treated with justice and equity, and to be given a fair chance in life. We have simply to apply the elementary principles of our common Christianity to the problem and deal with the Negro in the spirit of the Golden Rule and the whole difficulty vanishes. It looks as though God had made this a polychromatic country--red, black, white and yellow--on purpose that we might give a gospel illustration of the essential unity of all races, and show how these rainbow tints are to be blended in the white light of Christian brotherhood.

Nor is it desirable that the black man should leave us, even if he wanted to. It would impoverish us in no small degree and cripple us in our advancement. He is the natural laborer of the South, and has added, as we shall see, immensely to its prosperity since the war, and he is to be one of the chief factors in securing the future wealth of the country. These reasons combine with overwhelming force to show that an exodus is undesirable and impossible, and that the Negro is here to stay.

And he is to be here in greatly increased numbers. The fecundity of the race is remarkable. The 4,000,000 blacks that were freed by the emancipation proclamation are 8,000,000 now. They multiply by births alone 7 per cent. faster than the whites by births and immigration combined. It is estimated that they are increasing at the rate of 500 a day and that their numbers are now doubling every twenty years. This may be a little exaggerated, but it is not far out of the way. If they are increasing and continue to increase at this rate, in twenty years they will be 16,000,000 strong, or nearly as many as the entire population of the whole country in 1840; by 1930, they will number 32,000,000, or more than we had of all races here at the outbreak of our Civil War; by the middle of the next century they will number 64,000,000, or more than our present population within the borders of the Republic. Discount this estimate as much as you please, the increase in the colored race is sure to be tremendous, and it is plain that the race problem will increase in difficulty and in momentous consequences to the Nation until it is settled on Christian principles. And the work of settling it admits of no delay.

The Negro is to be a very important factor in promoting the future prosperity of the country. Already it is manifest that his value to the South as a freed man is far greater than the price formerly set upon him as a chattel. The unrequited toil of the slave is seen in the light of history to be the dearest kind of labor. It was frequently said after the war that the emancipated Negro would be worthless as a laborer; that he was naturally lazy, shiftless, and a shirk, and that he would relapse into a vagabond. But, as a matter of fact, far more good work has been done in the South since the war than before, and for the most part the Negro has done it. Great crops of cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, corn, and other staples have been raised and marketed; mines have been developed, railroads built, manufactories established, and hundreds of other industries opened and pushed in the new era of prosperity which has dawned in the South; and while the capital and brains for this have been furnished by the whites, and largely from the North, the manual labor has been done mainly by the blacks. They have made the New South possible. Take the single item of the cotton they have raised: The twenty-one cotton crops from 1841 to 1861, raised by slave labor, amounted to 58,500,000 bales; the twenty-one cotton crops from 1865 to 1885, raised by free labor, amounted to 93,500,000 bales. There was a gain, with free labor, of nearly 35,000,000 bales, worth $2,000,000,000, or about the full estimated value of all the slaves set free by the war. These facts show the value of the Negro to the South simply as a common laborer.

But his importance as a factor in securing a National prosperity is much enhanced when we note his remarkable capacity for improvement. Grant that the great bulk of these eight millions are still in a pitiable condition, poor, ignorant, sometimes vicious, the victims often of barbaric superstitions, living often in hovels rather than houses, without thrift or cleanliness, in crying need of kindly hands to help uplift them to a better life. Yet, granting all this physical and moral destitution among them, it must be said that history gives no record of a race, stripped and stranded so completely as these freedmen were in 1865, that has shown such marvelous progress in a quarter of a century. They have responded wonderfully to every effort made to elevate them, and have shown in themselves such versatility and vigor of intellect as give high promise for their future.

Their own advancement in material prosperity is an indication of this. Never was there a people left in worse plight than they were at the close of the war. In a country ravaged and denuded by a long and destructive conflict, themselves penniless, with none of the knowledge and training that would fit them for competition with shrewder and abler classes, there seemed small hope of their getting more than a bare livelihood. But ambition, mother wit, and a rare aptitude for learning have helped them on till the gains they have made for themselves are quite astonishing. Not long ago the New York _Independent_ made extensive inquiries through the Southern States with regard to this matter, and the replies showed that the disposition to accumulate property was very strong among the colored people, and that industry and economy and forecast for this purpose were virtues rapidly developing among them. A large proportion of them are owners of their own homes, the proportions differing widely in different localities, ranging from 10 per cent. in North Carolina, to 20 per cent. in Virginia, 50 and 60 per cent. in some parts of Georgia, and 75 per cent. in some parts of Florida. A writer from Montgomery, Ala., even claimed 90 per cent. of home-owners among his acquaintances.

Many, also, are coming into the ownership of land. Mr. Morris stated four years ago that colored people owned 680,000 acres of land in Georgia, and 5,000,000 acres in the whole South. Dr. Haygood estimates that they own about $10,000,000 worth of taxable property in Georgia, and it is stated that "within twenty-five years the colored people of sixteen Southern States have accumulated real and personal property estimated at more than $200,000,000." This, certainly, is a most remarkable showing for a people of whom it was freely prophesied that they would never be more than an indolent race of beggars. It shows that if they can only be given "a white man's chance" they will be as thrifty and prosperous as their Caucasian brothers, and that the wealth which this rapidly increasing race will produce in the next half century will much of it be their own property. Poverty is no more an essential characteristic of the African than of the white American, and it looks as though the Negro was likely to win his fair share of our prosperity in the years to come.

The capacity for improvement is also indicated by the large variety of occupations which the Negro is successfully pursuing. It has been imagined by some that the work he could do is exceedingly limited in its range, and that he must needs be a barber, a waiter, or a small farmer. But at the New Orleans Exposition not long ago, an entire gallery across one end of the building was assigned to the colored people, and they more than filled it with an astonishing array of their products in all sorts of work. There were exhibits of mechanical, agricultural and artistic skill; specimens of millinery, tailoring, painting, photography, sculpture; many useful inventions; models of engines, steamboats, rail-cars; specimens of all kinds of tools, pianos, organs, pottery, tinware, and so on. It was made manifest that the Negro can succeed in any trade or occupation that the white man follows. They are diversifying their labor more and more. They are physicians, lawyers, master-mechanics, bridge-builders. They edit, own and manage a hundred newspapers.