FROM SLAVE CABIN TO WHITE HOUSE.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 11104, 24 October 1901, Page 4

FROM SLAVE CABIN TO WHITE HOUSE.

Given the right man and the Government 1 of the United States becomes a benevolent 1 autocracy, in -which the immense powers wielded by the President ore none the 1 less real because he owes his position to no , claim of divine right and succession, but to the votes of his fellow-corintrynien. That the President rarely taksa advantage of hia position is due to the dominance of the party leaders who nominated him and engineered his election. President Roosevelt, however, seems to be ova of those President's—they do not occur more than once in a generation, if so often—who rise above party, and act as they think best, regardless of popular clamour and careless of how their actions may affect their chance of re-election. His appointment as a Judge of a member of the party in opposition was in defiance of what is generally understood to be that peculiarly Ame--1 ricau system—"the spoils to the victors.'' ' His declared detachment frod party ties . followed as a natural consequence, and .gives tbe office of President a dignity it has possibly never before possessed. In his latest action, however, Colonel Roosevelt has done more than rise superior to political custom; he has defied social prejudice, with its cast-iron laws. The presence at dinner at White House of the negro president of a negro college is one of the most noto- . worthy incidents in the history of the coloured race in America since the civil war, that gave them liberty. We in New Zea- . land, accustomed to the presence among us, on terms of perfect equality and sincere friendship, of a coloured people, can form no idea of the rigour with which the ■ "colour line' is drawn in the United States. It has been enforced all the more severely because it is recognised that the increase of the negro will in time present a grave problem to American statesmen. The North went to war over the negro and effected his p release from slavery, but Northerners, as a whole, have never carried out the principle that the black man is "a man and a brother," about which so much was heard at the tame of the war, while the South, upon whom the negro's civic equality was forced, have sternly refused to admit him to anything approaching social equality. As Mr Bryce remarks in discussing, in his work on the American Commonwealth, the present and future of the negro, there is practically, in North and South, no social admixture of the white and coloured people. "Except on the "Pacific Coast a negro never sits down to "dinner with a white man in a railway "refreshment room. You never encounter "him at a private party. He is not received in a hotels of the better "matter how rich he may be. He is not "shaved in a place frequented By white "men, not even by a. barber of his own "colour. He worships in a church of his "own. No native white woman wouiii " dream of receiving his addresses. Kindly "condescension is the best he can look for, "accompanied by equality of access to a "business or profession./ Social equality is " utterly out of his reach." In many States separate railway and street- cars are set apart for coloured persons, who may travel in no other. Intermarriage is illegal, and in this respect prejudice makes the law all but unnecessary.. The negro will never be absorbed by the American race, as are the immigrants from every country in Europe. He stands alone. It can be imagined, then, how great a sensation was caused throughout the States by Colonel Roosevelt's action. Yet the man upon whom he conferred the honour of being the first negro guest "of White House was not unworthy of the distinci . ■ ■ **■ tion. His race has. produced some celebrated men, but few have worked harder for their fellow-negroes than Mr Booker Taliaferro Washington. &i* name is a reminiscence of the liberation days," when the released slaves gave themselves all sorts of high-sounding names. Mr Washington < avoided "Lincoln" and "Sherman," where ■ " were in common use, his actual choice .doing credit, at least, to his > imagination. Born in a slave cabin inVir- ' ginia, 'he worked in a coal mine after the war, and negro schools being then practically unknown he worried through the elerments" of education by thtf aid of an old spelling book, and then, wben a There lad, tramped "five hundred miles to the Hampton Institute, a school for the coloured #ace. There, in course of time, he became a teacher, and twenty years ago he accepted an invitation to establish a negro school at Tuskegee, in Alabama. Since then Tuskegee has become known throughout America and in many other land*. Space does not allow of our detailing its history, but something may be learned fjrom the fact that it began with a hen-house for a school building and thirty pupils, and now consists -of forty buildings, standing in 2000 acres of land, with many hundreds of student*, and several scores of officers and teachers. ■ The institution owes much to the generosity of millionaires, and a great deal more to the enthusiasm of it» founder and principal. "It* foundations were faith, and "ha buttresses mendicity," remarks one writer. One would have preferred to say that its buttresses were' represented by the labour of its students. Mx Washington preaches the gospels of labour and education, and the fruit of his teaching and example in the first case is that the students themselves erected the buildings, and have cultivated 700 of the 2000 acres of land surrounding them. Included in the departments of the Institute are twentyeight industrial branches, and students go to it from not only the States, but from Africa, Cuba, and Porto Rico, departing thither, after finishing their course, to commence the work of elevating and improving their own communities. Mr Washington's fame has grown wit* that of his great -ohool. He acted there as host to President McKiniey, and when in England he had an interview with Queen Victoria. He had not, however, decisively orossed the colour line until President Roosevelt entertained him at White House. It ia the thinnest possible end of the wedge, but such an incident mnst have its effect upon ! the mental attitude of many in America towards the coloured race*