The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 56

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‘ _ which cannot be compared with ours. . . .
_ would judge of them [Africans] should avoid add-

56 THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

and sexes is 226. Our Christians are scattered
through 183 cities and villages. The total number
of souls under our care is 6,389, of whom 3,336 are
baptized. Our schools of all descriptions number
87, with an enrolment of 3,356. In six boarding-
schools we have 190 boys and 134 girls. The sem-
inary at Nagercoil has 7 students. In three cat-
echists’ institutes, one each at Ambur, Nagercoil,
and Trivandrum, there are 31 students. Our two
teachers’ training-schools harbor 12 inmates. The
Bible Women’s Training-school at Ambur is at-
tended by 12 women. — The total number of
patients treated at Bethesda Hospital in 1924
amounted to 6,687. Six hundred services were held
with the patients. The Nrishnagiri Dispensary
ministered to 3,806 patients.

All the foregoing figures merely indicate at a
distance some of the work we are doing in the name
of our blessed Savior. They do not tell us anything

“of the self-sacrifice and arduous labors of our

brethren, of their temptations, their battles, their
tears, their prayers, their victories. God alone
knows the full compass of our work. Let us keep
on working while it is day!

St. Louis, Mo. FREDERICK BRranpD.

The Negro and His Needs —a Study.

Ill. MENTAL CAPACITY OF THE NEGRO.

Prejudice is the enemy to any truth. And per-
haps no race has suffered more because of it than
the Negro people. On every hand the Negro has
met with this monster. If he accomplished any-

thing, prejudice spoke of it slightingly, if at all;.
if he tried to do something worth-while, he was dis- *

couraged — because of prejudice. He has expe-
rienced what it means “to be down.” And s0 his
white neighbor, in so many instances, has mis-
judged and misunderstood him.

For this reason, too, we find that there is a
general impression among white people that intel-
lectually the Negro does not measure up to the
standard of this or that branch of the human race.
It might be well for us to remember that “at
present the Negro in Africa no doubt appears to
be uncivilized, but that means undeveloped, not in-
capable of development.... The difficulty of form-
ing a judgment about races increases where it has
only been possible to observe them closely either in
the abnormal state of slavery or under conditions
He who

ing to their unfavorable circumstances his own un-
favorable prejudices.” (I. Retzel, History of Man-
kind, Vol. II, pp. 319—329.) We, too, must try to
arrive at a true estimate of the Negro, remembering
that his opportunities for education, good citizen-
ship, and the development of manhood, were few
and, at best, could apply to but few of the race
even for many years after the Emancipation. After
all, the test of intellectuality is the ability to use
the mind. This, we believe, the Negro has fully
demonstrated to even the most skeptical. He has
already entered every intellectual field open to him,
and he is achieving success in every field that he
has-entered. And there is no reason whatever for
assuming or making the statement that this is only
true of Negroes with an admixture of white blood.
There are full-blooded Negroes, who can trace their
lineage back to Africa, that have earned the highest
university recognition from the most representative
educational institutions of our country. The pres-
ent head of Tuskegee, Dr. R. R. Moton, is a fine
example of a full-blooded Negro who has accom-
plished achievements presupposing very high mental
capacity.
The Root of the Trouble.

We fear that the great trouble lies not so much
with the Negro as with a somewhat determined
effort on the part of the white citizenship not to
get into contact with the best of Negro citizenship.
Invariably those who have taken occasion to try to
understand the Negro better have come to the con-
clusion that the Negro intellectually has evidenced
no inherent absence of the highest mental powers.
This was demonstrated “during the hearings of the
committee of the United States House of Repre-
sentatives on the Fordney Emergency Tariff Bill,
when a short, thin, coal-black man, a professor from
one of the Negro institutions of the South, was
ushered before the committee. The chairman an-
nounced with emphasis that the gentleman would
be given ten minutes to talk about Southern pea-
nuts and their need of protection by the tariff. In
a high tenor voice and with a smile on his face the
speaker began. As he neared his time-limit, one
of the Congressmen on the committee arose to ask
that his time be extended some minutes more. He
continued, giving more information about his re-
searches into the many uses to be made of the
‘ground pea,’ from a substitute for cow’s milk made

.of its fat to polishing powder to be made from its

hulls and to ink and dyes from its skin.
“The members of the committee leaned toward
the swarthy speaker with wide-open eyes and plied