THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE RACE PROBLEM.

By FRED J. CLARK, of Cornell College.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

Fred J. Clark was born in Mason City, Iowa, in 1879, and is the son of J. J. Clark, lawyer and prominent politician. He was graduated from Mason City High School, and in June, 1905, from Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Mr. Clark, while in college, distinguished himself as a student and made an excellent record throughout his entire course. During his junior and senior years he carried heavy work, besides being each year in a home, State and Inter-State contest, and each term received "A" grades in all his studies. He has won two home and two State contests, and with his oration on "The Philosophy of the Race Problem," he received second place at the Inter-State Oratorical Contest. Mr. Clark is now preaching for the M. E. Church at Solon, Iowa.

THE ORATION.

Delivered at the Inter-State Oratorical Contest at Monmouth, Illinois, May 4, 1905, taking second prize. Judges: Dr. W. A. GRANVILLE, Rev. JOHN M. FULTON, Prof. C. H. FRENCH, Dr. JAMES E. DAVIS, Dr. F. A. HALL, and Hon. SAM F. WRIGHT.

The most unique and tragic figure in history is the American negro. No other race has plunged so deeply in despair, or been exalted to such heights of hope; no other race has viewed so black a night, or been dazzled by such a flash of promise; no other race has grasped so eagerly the prize, to see its substance turn to ashes. "The bright ideals of the past, physical freedom, political power,both these in turn have waxed and waned, until

even the last grows dim and overcast." Thus has ended the negro's dream of freedom. Yet it was not dreamed in vain; it served to lighten the task of the tired slave and to bring hope to his aching heart; it did more than that: it gave place to a dogged determination, based upon a knowledge of reality, to somehow, somewhere, find something in this world akin to the visions of the past. A background darkened by slavery; a foreground clouded by prejudice; in the center, a weary people struggling on, their gaze fixed far in the future. A path that is dim; a way that is steep and stony. But over all, lighting up the dusky faces of the plodders, darting its rays here and there through the clouded foreground,―silver cords of promise reaching out into the future,— Hope shines like the sun. And through it all, the mystery of struggle, inspiring, uplifting, ennobling.

Why has the negro failed so miserably in the realization of his ideals? What is the nature of the force that binds him still to the lot of an inferior? It is the gulf between the races, the twofold difference of race and culture. The ages past, so crowded with the landmarks of Caucasian progress, still stretch before the negro,-a vast, unexplored wilderness. Through two centuries of bondage the negro learned to regard slavery as the source of all his woes, freedom as the fount of perfect joy. Emancipation came at last-in a holocaust of blood and war. Since then forty

years have passed-the dream of freedom is still a dream, and the negro rests under the shadow of a great disappointment. That gulf between the races, emancipation could not bridge; the ballot could not span its yawning depths. Standing on its verge, striving with longing eyes to pierce its mysteries, is a man. As he looks and wonders, he has a strange vision, a cloud of doubt rises before him, and in it he sees his own soul, "darkly, as through a veil," and in that soul he sees reflected a faint revelation of inborn power, of a mission all its own. Suddenly, round about him shines a radiance of rare glory. Under its rays doubt vanishes and the innermost recesses of that gulf show forth their secrets. His heart leaps under the inspiration of a great conception. He can never cross that gulf, he can never be white, but he can be himself. And so, in half-awakened consciousness, he stands trembling upon the threshold of self-realization. The negro for the first time sees and knows himself. And so comes the third ideal that has possessed the negro race: education, culture of hand, intellect and soul.

The racial strife of today is the logical outcome of present-day conditions. Two different peoples of varying degrees of culture are seeking to progress under the same institutions. The government, laws and educational system of a people and their social and industrial organization are the result of a growth, an evolution out of lower forms, which keeps pace with the development of

a nation; and to be suited to a people, they must be an expression of the particular stage of civilization attained by that people. Language, laws and institutions are mileposts in the evolution of a race, telling how far it has advanced and pointing the way onward and upward. And for a nation to ignore this evident truth, and to expect to lift a child race up to the plane of civilization occupied by itself in a day, or a year, or a century, is to ignore the teachings of experience and to fly in the face of law. Liberty is from within; it can only exist as the product of character, and character is a gem which holds in the mysterious beauty of crystallization all the good, the noble, and the true that has enriched a race's past. We cannot take an African savage, cast him for over two centuries in the mold of slavery, and then, in a day, implant within his bosom that transcendent brilliancy, those radiant hues that can only shine forth from a nature cut, ground, and polished in God's workshop of the ages. Shall we then despair because many have failed to grasp the new conditions of their suddenly changed environment, and have deteriorated? Already the leaders have seized the issues, and out of the gigantic struggle for race existence emerge the names of DuBois, Council, Hoffman, Morris, Lyons, Dunbar, Booker Washington, and a host of others,-names that stand for ability, industry and worth,-and the better element is already building the foundation for a new, fit, en

during negro race, and even now the listening ear can catch the clanging of their hammers and the buzzing of their saws echoed back from the walls of Tuskegee, Howard, Atlanta, and a hundred similar institutions, and the feeling soul may count the heart-beats as they throb their hope and yearning to the One Kind Tender Heart above, which answers throb for throb for every pain and every striving of the human breast. Oh! the negro is human; he is human in that divine element of yearning for something better which separates him from the beast, and links his heart of desire to the great, overruling Heart of Pity above.

A son of the South, a United States Senator, holds up the shrinking form of negro civilization,— "more sinned against than sinning,"-and in a spirit of derision compares it with the manly beauty of our own; then trampling it in the dirt, and standing with his foot upon its neck, calls upon it to instantly arise and prove its fitness, or forever consent to grovel in the filth of slavery: this he does in the heart of the North, and a maudlin people applaud his spirit. I would ask this gentleman, What is it you compare? You point to the highest civilization the world has yet produced, the product and pride of all the ages, and compare it with the civilization of an infant race. How old is the civilization of America? Over three centuries. Who fathered it? The proudest blood, the sturdiest sinew of Europe. What sought they thus afar? Freedom. Who now