Various

“ Growing out of these doctrines is the policy of free immigration, which we are at liberty to regulate, but not proscribe, as we may lay down the conditions of citizenship, but not consistently forbid it. Having given political rights to the negro, it is inconsistent to renew race prejudices, and exclude the Asiatics on the ground of color, civilization and religion. These are the actual grounds of the prejudice. ”

“ If a colored man is worth $100 a year without an education, he is worth twenty-five per cent. more with one. The thrift of New England has been largely dependent upon the common-school houses there. Give a man education enough to transact ordinary business, to enable him to keep his accounts in writing, to improve his mind daily by reading, to understand the institutions of his country, to have an insight into the laws which shall govern him in relation to his neighbors and his God, to know his rights and his duties, and he is twenty-five per cent. ”

“ In regard to Education, he writes: “There is great prejudice in this State against free schools for any color; nor have the airs put on by colored-school children contributed to remove it. Policy, however, and past promises will probably impel the maintenance of a free-school system for some time, at least, but on a less extensive scale. It is proper to add that some cultured Southerners are in favor of educating and elevating the negro, as the best way to solve our race difficulties. But it is doubtful if their views will prevail against inherited prejudice.” ”

“ It is often said of the movements of our time that they are only history repeating itself; but if there is anything in history like this generous outpouring of effort and means to redeem a great mass of human merchandise, and lift it up out of its squalor and wretchedness to the level of our common Christian manhood, we exhort the friends of history to produce it. ”

“ It is a standing menace to republican institutions and Christian civilization. Free institutions, founded upon free schools and intelligence, can only be maintained when based on intelligent and adequately paid labor. Adequate wages are needed to give self-respect to the laborer, and the means of education to his children. Family life is a great safeguard to our political institutions. Chinese immigration involves sordid wages, no public schools, and the absence of the family. They show few of the characteristics of a desirable population, and many to be deprecated by any patriot. ”

“ The hearty interest manifested by all the colored people in the payment of your debt is encouraging. If the wealthier people would do as much in proportion as these poor people do, your debt would not long be a burden. The Sabbath-school has caught the fever, and, last Sunday, the proposition was made to send you all the money in the treasury (about $15) ”

“ Meanwhile, this Association, through its Normal Schools and Universities, is training up [85] colored teachers and preachers to labor, as leaders, among their own people, as school systems shall be founded and maintained by law.
It is not enough that the different States of the South adopt a liberal system of public schools. Where, among colored people, shall suitable teachers be found? This race, like every other, must work out its own salvation. Favored ones must mount high, and reach down a helping hand to those below them. It cannot depend wholly upon white teachers. ”

“ The report says of the address of the President: “He very graphically described the field in which we are to do the work that is to be done, and how it is to be done. He said that he felt sure that ‘the Great Disburser of Human Events’ held something good in store for the Negro. Teachers, you are the salt of the race; lose not your savor, but keep pushing on in this grand cause of education, and the heights may yet be reached in our day.” ”

“ At the same time, this Convention is deeply impressed with the importance of all wise measures that look to early self-support of the Indians as citizens of our common country.
“The Convention would close this address with thanks to Almighty God for the progress that has been made under the humane policy of the last few years, and for the evident advance of many of the Indians in civilization and the knowledge of the Christian religion.” ”

“ We have seen that there are now in the South, for the benefit of the negro, between 30 and 40 institutions for higher education, with an annual catalogue of nearly 5,000 students; and although they do not, as yet, graduate annually through all the higher departments of learning as many scholars as were graduated from the 10 colleges that were in operation prior to the Revolutionary War, because the training is not for scholarship, but for special work, it seems probable that the educational power is greater and exerts a wider influence. ”

“ Stetson gives a series of answers to questions, representing the negro as he is, morally, socially and politically: the sum of it all being, what might be anticipated for a race of tropical origin, held for generations in slavery, and suddenly endowed with political equality. Sensual and emotional by nature, lazy and thievish by training, clannish and easily misled as a voter, his salvation will depend on his receiving education, but not by a forcing process, and on his coming gradually to the independent exercise of his civil rights. ”

“ It makes our hearts sad to know of many who would gladly come to our school, but cannot find boarding places in town.
The young man mentioned above has since found Christ to be his Saviour. Rejoice with us! God is visiting us with His Spirit. The Church is quickened to newness of life, and sinners are converted. We observed the Week of Prayer; have continued the meetings every night this week. Some of our strongest and best young men were the first to start in the new life. All is quiet, but deep and earnest. ”

“ We have about sixty or more scholars, and, I tell you, to instruct them in the way they teach schools in America is difficult; indeed, more so than you have any idea of. With every attempt you make to teach them in that way, you become more and more discouraged. Our Sabbath-school is too large for the number of teachers at present engaged, but we hope to remedy this soon. We gave them, Thursday night, a Christmas entertainment. Mrs. Snelson cooked the food, which was partly furnished by the members of the church, and the remainder by ourselves. ”

“ The South Carolinian gives an apparently frank representation of the situation as it appears to the native people of that State. The present shows more honesty and less crime, a renewed interest of the whites, and the banishment of the blacks from politics. No party will be tolerated “which aggressively, and in real earnest, advocates negro rights.” He says: “The whites regard the negro as an inferior animal, admirably adapted to work and to wait, and look on him, ‘in his proper place,’ with a curious mixture of amusement, contempt and affection. ”

“ It is no ordinary education which is sought, but a special and peculiar training for a high and holy missionary work.
The demand for teachers from this school is continually greater than the supply. In the last catalogue were the names of 214 pupils, and of these, more than 150 are known to have engaged in teaching during the year. In the previous year, out of 240, more than 175 were at work in the same way. And this number includes nearly every person in school whose age and attainments gave him even the smallest fitness for the work. ”

“ One of the most pressing needs just now, in which we are sure of sympathy from the house-keeperly instincts of our good sisters, is that of bedding and table-linen for our Educational institutions. We hear from the matron of Tougaloo University, that the press of students is so great that she has used her last quilt, and may have to take up carpets to cover the students by night. Others are nearly as badly off. ”

“ The writer says: “The aristocrats of the South were the real ones; those of the North were spurious. The Southern question used to be, that of the maintenance of this supremacy over the whole land by these real aristocrats.”
Now “mediocrity is enthroned,” and the Southern question is the free negro question; a reversal has been made—the body politic has had its feet up and its head down. The author seems to see nothing but the race question: the law of animal life, where the strong destroy the weak, is the highest law he can think of for its solution ”

“ They have in day-schools an average attendance of thirty-five or forty; and as most have night-schools, and nearly all organize Sabbath-schools and temperance societies, it is not unreasonable to estimate that more than 10,000 people are every season reached and instructed by the present pupils of this school, while a still larger number are under the instruction of former pupils. They, for the most part, find their own places, collect the pupils, secure a building—either a church, shed or cabin, or, in lack of these, build a log-house or bush-arbor ”

“ But we make it one of our principal duties to make each one feel that he has found some better friends in the Association than those he has lost by becoming a Christian. Not long ago a young man became a Christian, and his friends, not satisfied with abusing and jeering at him, wrote a false report to his parents in China, telling them that their son in California not only had forsaken his old religion and the worshipping of his ancestors, but also had cut off his long queue and dressed in foreigner’s clothes. ”

“ It foretold the capacity of those, for whom the school was especially founded, to advance in education, till they should need the advantages of a full university course. It foretold the willingness of the friends of humanity to furnish these advantages. ”

“ He brings important testimony to demonstrate the value of their labor in the construction of railroads and in the harvesting of crops. In these especially, by their freedom from combinations to control the price of labor, and as having brought wages to a level, which, though still higher than in other States, makes it possible for Californian manufacturers to compete with those of other States and countries. But for Chinese labor, he says, California would not have more than one-half or two-thirds of her present white population; it is indispensable to farming operations ”

“ The period of free labor may properly be divided into two portions—the first, including four years, during which the crops of 1865 to 1868, both inclusive, were made, and in which the labor system was greatly disorganized; the second, including eight years—1869 to 1877—when free labor was fairly well organized. If we divide the twelve crops preceding the war in the same manner, we shall get the following results:
In the last eight years free labor has, therefore, overtaken the palmiest days of slavery, and has produced two and three-quarter million bales more cotton. ”

“ They have repeatedly and handsomely acknowledged that the success of its instruction has convinced them that the colored race can receive a high degree of culture. The demonstration of this fact has an important bearing upon the whole subject of public education. Not only the colored people, but the white people of all classes, especially the poorer classes, will receive great benefit from the quickening of public sentiment, produced by the success of this institution. ”

“ The necessity of keeping the colored man ignorant, of keeping out discussions relating to human rights, involved the other necessity of keeping a population unintelligent, unthinking and, so far forth, unproductive, as appeared in the very implements employed for tilling the soil.
The southern portions of this country cannot long remain oblivious of the fact that the illiterate class are largely the criminal class; that ignorance fosters crime. In New England only seven per cent. of the population—and these almost entirely of foreign birth—are illiterate. ”

“ Every effort is put forth to make the Sabbath a power. The usual church service is held in the morning, Sunday-school in the afternoon, and prayer-meeting at night. The monthly missionary concert is observed. The contributions at this meeting, for the [76] nine school months, amount to about fifty dollars. The church prayer-meeting is held on Wednesday evening; the school prayer-meeting for all the students on Friday afternoon. At this meeting, the school makes weekly offerings, by the envelope plan, toward the payment of the debt of the American Missionary Association. ”

“ At the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, the whole population of the United States was not very different in point of numbers, from that of the colored population now residing in the Southern States. The country had then been settled for more than 200 years, and there were large interests of production and commerce and government, which would seem to demand very liberal provisions for higher institutions of learning. ”

“ It has been the experience of other organizations as well as our own, that missionary work suffers by nothing more than by having too few workers in a place. We hope, therefore, before this number of our Magazine reaches its readers, that two more good men, with their wives, will be on their way to join the Mendi Mission. ”

“ The Conference this year has been unusually interesting, in view of the disposition lately manifested to transfer the control of Indian affairs to the War Department, and of a new class of questions respecting the Indians themselves, which assume practical importance in view of their rapid progress toward civilization.
It appears that the religious sentiment of the country, as represented by those who control and direct its efforts to civilize and Christianize the Indians, is unanimously opposed to a change in the present general policy toward the Indian, in the mode of its administration ”

“ Senator Blaine, in a speech at Hot Springs, Ark., put the Southern question aptly thus: “Perfect peace in the South will everywhere follow perfect justice. There is no man in the country who desires strife for the sake of strife, but there will always be strife so long as there is wrong.” ”

“ While the Oriental nations have come on to our ground, it is proposed that we should go back to that which they have abandoned, and for the same reasons which they have given up—interference with trade and labor, and corruption of morals and religion. ”