THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM by Joseph Cook

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 6, 1877

THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM.

By Joseph Cook

Let us look at the books. Here are these statistics: In the Southern States, of the population over ten years of age twenty-five per cent are illiterate. In the Eastern States and Middle States, only three and eight-tenths per cent are illiterate; in the Western States—I hope Boston will not hear us to-night—three and four-tenths per cent. They are ahead of us! In the South, a quarter of the population over ten years of age cannot read or write, and thirty-nine per cent of the voters cannot read their ballots. A terrible state of things is this.

Who is that man in priestly robes? This is the town of Macon, Ga. Here is a gathering of freedmen. They are a religious body. They want aid in their churches. They are passing a resolution, and are going to send it to that man in priestly robes. I give you the exact language of that resolution, passed in Macon, Ga., lately:

“Resolved, That this meeting appoint a committee to wait upon Right Rev. Bishop Gross, who is now in this city, and ascertain his views as to the educational policy of the Catholic Church in regard to the colored people of the South, and ascertain to what extent we may look to that organization for assistance in the work of educating our children.”

A new problem. There is the negro, and this man in priestly robes is a Jesuit. And what is his history? He has been heard of before in the world. The negro begins to lean on him. Where are we? Politicians put their ear to the ground, and say, “Will Rome bring together the negro vote and the foreign vote? If she can mass these two bodies together under universal suffrage and control both of them as a make-weight, will she have any political influence here?” These are serious times. The other day I met a politician, one of the astutest men of Massachusetts, and he said to me, “Lately I was in Washington and went into a Romish church that was almost a cathedral, and found it filled with negro worshipers. Do you think,” he whispered to me—on Bacon street, at the head of that historic mall in Boston Common, which Lafayette and Washington walked up together—“do you think it is possible that the foreign vote and the negro vote may be massed together and exploited by the hand on the Tiber?” “You know better than I do,” said I. But it occurred to me that no more important question than that was asked by Washington of Lafayette or by Lafayette of Washington on that historic ground.—Joseph Cook.