instinct, therefore, of humanity and common sense demands that the plantation freedmen, whose multitudes constitute the great body of the negro people, should be trained in mental and industrial efficiency. Nor will permanent results ever be achieved in any attempted amelioration of their condition, unless they are sought in country life. The negro school which in pursuance of these suggestions shall be the first to forego its Northward quest for precarious support, and found homes and impart knowledge to the rural freedman, will thereby lay up for itself a wealth of revenue that will make it the most powerful factor for negro development in the Southern field. Many years have passed since reconstruction set in motion the machinery of popular education. The freedmen were then eager to get knowledge, but are now indifferent to learning because the methods employed have neither reached nor interested the majority of that people. Three decades ago, when the negro, then a physical and illiterate mendicant, overwhelmed with credulous benightedness, was begging for the bread of common understanding, we built universities and fettered his feeble brain with motheaten hieroglyphics. To-day, after he has toiled through one generation of industrial servitude without making serious headway, we are making puerile attempts at his industrial development, much after the same manner that mistaken, but doubtless wellmeaning people, are teaching millinery and lace-making to blanketed Indian women. Some people are prone to ask of what avail, in either case, are these senseless fads? But from the dawn of freedom the negro has been deluged with false expectations. He was told that enfranchisement would make him a man, but he speedily awoke to that deception. He was told that education would lift him out of industrial bondage, but a taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge has merely opened his eyes to the bitterness of his degradation. He is now told that industrial training in schools will transform the race into trade artisans, and that through industrial strife will come the redemption of the freed people. But this mirage of golden expectations is doomed to fade away, just as the others have done. It is not external, but internal, development that the negro needs. CHAPTER X SOCIAL RIGHTS ABSOLUTE human rights are those of personal liberty, of personal security, and the unquestionable right to think, speak, and act according to the dictates of an enlightened conscience. Growing out of these fundamentals are numerous subdivisions of rights, such as legal, civil, and social rights, the latter of which we shall now consider. Social rights cover a wide field, and include both absolute and conferred rights. Even in the restricted sense in which we shall deal with this subject, it takes in such common law rights as that of contract, compensation for labor, the purchase and sale of real and personal property, transit by public conveyance, admission to public places of amusement or instruction, together with all expressed or implied social rights inherent in public franchises, created under authority from the states, and carried on by individuals or corporations for public service. In setting forth these well-established principles as correct definitions of social rights, we do not mean to imply that public carriers and other servants of the people have not the inherent right to make such regulations regarding the manner and method of rendering such ser vice so long as its quality is unimpaired and free from individual discrimination as will best subserve their corporate or individual welfare. Social rights and personal association are sometimes inextricably confounded in the popular mind. The two, however, are wholly distinct from each other. Social rights are universal franchises, and relate entirely to public privileges. Social intercourse, on the other hand, is an inherent and personal prerogative, in no wise amenable to municipal regulation; it may, therefore, be indulged in or not, just as individual tastes determine. Municipal law, then, has no right to say who shall or shall not consort together; first, because it would be of no avail where individuals were strongly attracted toward, or repelled from, each other; and secondly, because any law permitting, or restricting, social intercourse, is an obvious invasion of primary individual rights, inasmuch as choice of association, as well as option. of religious belief, are, for adult people, God-ordained functions. Hence, any infringement of privilege inherent in either social rights or personal association by municipal law or social custom becomes an inexcusable act of tyranny. Any and all races have the right of unrestricted social intercourse, either as individuals or communities, whenever and wherever reciprocal sentiments prompt such intercourse. Social freedom always carries with it the right of social union. Hence, where persons of opposite sexes or races, of their own free will and choice, seek to enter into conjugal relations, municipal restrictions have no right to interfere, either by forbidding such marriages or by annulling them after consummation. We have already remarked that men will select their associates despite civic regulations, and that municipal functions are supereminent whenever any attempt is made to separate races or create class distinctions by organic authority. In thus enunciating these principles of social intercourse, we are not contending for such an abrogation of all municipal oversight as would supplant liberty with license. Such conclusions would be far astray from our meaning. Social affiliations are, as we have said, the outcome of personal desire for congenial association, and in so far as individual commingling does not endanger the welfare of the state, as where the vicious undertake to seduce the virtuous members of society, the right of private judgment in accepting or declining overtures for social intercourse, and in contracting or severing individual friendship, is supreme. What, we may ask, are the functions of the municipality in dealing with its members, if not to protect and conserve their public and private rights? Among the latter, is not the inviolability of private life to be placed first and foremost? Do not the peace, security, preservation, and integrity of the social organism rest on the great magna charta of personal liberty, which declares "A man's house is his castle," and which, so long as the occupant is not answerable to processes of law, he may defend |