They must climb up themselves with such assistance as they can get.  The race has done well in thirty years of freedom, but it could have done better; banking on the progress already made the next thirty years will no doubt show greater improvement than the past—­TIME, TIME, TIME, which some people seem to take so little into account, will be the great adjuster of all such problems in the future as it has been in the past.  Many children of the white fathers of the present day will read the writing of their parents and wonder at their short-sightedness in attempting to fix the metes and bounds of the American Negro’s status.  We feel reluctant to prophesy, but this much we do say, that fifty years from now will show a great change in the Negro’s condition in America, and many of those who now predict his calamity will be classed with the fools who said before the Negro was emancipated that they would all perish within ten years for lack of ability to feed and clothe themselves.  The complaint now with many of those who oppose the Negro is not because he lacks ability, but rather because he uses too much and sometimes gets the situation that they want.  This is pre-eminently so from a political standpoint and the reported arguments used to stir the poorer class of whites to rally against the Negroes in Wilmington during the campaign just before the late MASSACRE there in the fall of 1898, was a recital by impassioned orators of the fact that Negroes had pianos and servants in their houses, and lace curtains to their windows-this outburst being followed by the question, “HOW MANY OF YOU WHITE MEN CAN AFFORD TO HAVE THEM?” So as to the problem of the Negro’s imbibing the traits of civilization, that point is settled by what he has already done, and the untold obstacles which are being constantly put in his way by those who fear his competition.  The question then turns not so much on what shall be done with the Negro as upon WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE WHITE

Men who are so filled with prejudice that neither law nor religion restrains their bloody hands when the Negro refuses to get into what he calls “his place,” which place is that of a menial; and often there seems no effort even to put the Negro in any particular place save the grave, as many of the lynchings and murders appear to be done either for the fun of shooting someone, or else with extermination in view.  There is no attempt at a show of reason or right.  The mob spirit is growing—­prejudice is more intense.  Formerly it was confined to the rabble, now it has taken hold of those of education, and standing.  Red shirts have entered the pulpits, and it is a matter boasted of rather than condemned—­the South is not the only scene of such outrages.  Prejudice is not confined to one section, but is no doubt more intense in the Southern State, and more far-reaching in its effects, because it is there that the Negroes, by reason of the large numbers in proportion to the other inhabitants, come into political competition