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Show f RACE QUESTION AGAIN. The lynching of a negro at Laramie, Wyo., one day this week, brings mob violence almost to our very doors. The crime for which this wretch risked his life is the same a? the one for which the negro was burned at, the stake not long ago in Georgia. With sure and horrible vengeance staring them in the face, these black maniacs commit rape and murder mur-der their victims without a single thought beyond the one of bestial gratification. No fear will stop the crime. No appeal to reason and law is heeded by an avenging mob. And so sure as the crime is committed, so sure will a mob gather and inflict torture that makes one shudder to even think of it. " Then where is the sense in admonishing men to abide by the decision of the law, when they are prone to turn a deaf ear to entreaty? And who can tell but that the very persons who raise their voices loudest for law might be the first to violate it if they were put in the other man's place? Such is human nature. Such arc the promptings of human hu-man passion. These crimes only intensify the race question. The same indignation, the same methods for expiation, expi-ation, exist North as well as South; but happily, here they are infrequent. Perhap3 the negro's environment en-vironment in this latitude has much to do with the sober vi g up of his morals. He is only a small fraction of the population. I portions of the South, particularly in the "Black Belt," he outnumbers out-numbers the whites three to one. It makes one impatient to listen to partisan complaints of Southern treatment of the blacks. The negro question should be one distinct from politics, 'and it is made a political question by men of the North for campaign bluster. These complain that the laws inhibiting franchise except upon educational edu-cational and property qualifications, are an injustice injus-tice to the negro. Let them fit the Southern shoe to their own foot. How long would Illinois, or Indiana, In-diana, or any Northern state, submit to a government govern-ment placed in power by the votes of negroes ? Indeed, In-deed, hr.s any Northern state honored a negro by any office above that of dog catcher ? The South feels that the presence of negro labor is indispensable indis-pensable to her industrial progress, but demands only that m her relation to the race she shall have a free hand. And she certainly ought, and does, exercise that right. "An Old Abolitionist," in the New York Sun, presents an old solution of tho negro question; nevertheless, it is new because it comes from an abolitionist. It spells one.- word Exodus. IIo says ? If the only views that pre to prevail rc-5r:t? to the; j negro's present condition as a part of Amt:r!can wo- j ciety, then tt may be taken for grunted that in the south, just so long as the lust of the- black man assaults as-saults the honor of tho white woman, or black cupidity cu-pidity leads to the murder of the whites, just so long ! will negroes be burned at the stake: Yet all this might be prevented if north and south could only come into harmony. There is one complete solution; but it lies only within the power of the nation. Southern South-ern statesmen, like John Temple Graves of Georgia, have advocated this solution with tongue and pen; leaders of the negro race, men like Bishop Henry 31. Turner of the same state, plead for it as the only possible door of hope to the despised and outcast descendants of slaves. It is the solution of the Exodus. Exo-dus. It asks that, laying asido all .questions of party, the national government shall make it possible for every black man under DO years of. age. who so desires, de-sires, to find in Africa that degree of opportunity, that social equality the freedom from race prejudice, the chance for political advancement, the essential elements of happiness to which he feels he is entitled, en-titled, and to which, in the south at any rate, he may not aspire. Only in Africa, the land of his ancestors, ances-tors, may the black man find that reality of freedom which he desires: only when. he has gone, and the white labor of Kurope fills his place, may we hope to see lifted from America the stigma of lawless ferocity which .adheres to her today. Words wasted. The South wants the negro in its fields, and the negro has no intention or desire to leave those fields. Negro labor is profitable to planter and congenial to field hand, providing the field hand is treated well (which he usually is) or otherwise is broke (which "also frequently happens). Therefore the negro will never go to Africa or any other country. He was brought here a slave. ' He was emancipated, but Lincoln's act did not change his skin, nor did it 'better his condition. Indeed the slave of the old days was better off, in many"' many instances, than the despised black-of the present day of freedom. The change for the better will take place when the Catholic church gets hold of the negro. Not before. . . i. |