The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 94

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

94

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

A Lone Hospital. — At Meshed, Persia, is a hos-
pital, which is the only Christian hospital in an area
about half the size of the United States. The
nearest Christian hospital west from Meshed is at
Teheran, 560 miles away; the nearest to the south-
east is at Peshawar, 700 miles distant; to the east
it is 3,000 miles to the next hospital, at Peking.

Population of the World. — According to the
estimates given by the New York Times, the world’s
population has steadily increased during the last
century. Here are the figures: —

1830— 847,000,000 1890—1,488,000,000

1840— 950,000,000 1900—1,543,000,000
1850—1,075,000,000 1910—1,616,000,000
1860—1,205,000,000 1920—1,$30,000,000
1870—1,310,000,000 1930—1,992,500,000
1880—1,439,000,000

This represents an increase of 135 per cent. during
the century for the world. In the United States
the growth of population has been about 900 per
cent. since 1830. There are about forty-one persons
to the square mile in the United States as compared
with 197 in France and 685 in Great Britain. Of
the world’s population not quite 8,000,000 are nom-
inal Christians. There are millions more of non-
Christians in the world to-day than there were a
hundred years ago. While the proportion of Chris-
tians may have kept pace with the growth of the
population, if we figure by millions, there are many
more non-Christians in the Foreign Mission coun-
tries now than there were when mission-work began
in those countries. And this ever-increasing multi-

tude of non-Christians constitutes for us Christians
_ a tremendously challenging call and opportunity.

An Unfinished Portrait.

(Conclusion.)

VI.

Attitudes are changing in the South with light-
ning rapidity. Hundreds and thousands of Southern
white men are aroused to demand fair play for the
Negro. Health officers are giving attention, un-
heard of ten years ago, to Negro diseases. White
physicians work in Negro hospitals and help their
Negro colleagues at least as heartily in the South as
in the North. Here in Selma, Alabama, white and
Negro physicians are to be seen in daily consulta-
tion in the Burwell Infirmary, a Negro hospital,
owned and operated by Negroes. City and county
superintendents of education are not only building
colored schools, but are taking pride in them. These

men of education and culture do not hesitate to use
the titles “Mister” and “Missis” in addressing their
teachers. This they do, not behind closed and bolted
doors, but openly, on the streets and from the plat-
form when addressing mixed audiences and refer-
ring to their teachers.

College students are taking a new attitude to-
wards Negroes, in which intelligence is supplanting
emotion. A number of college classes invited col-
ored speakers to address them, and questions and
answers fly back and forth with the greatest candor.
College audiences are appreciative of Negro singers.
In the summer of 1931, at the Peabody Conference
on Dual Education, held at George Peabody College,
Nashville, Tennessee, Mr. N. C. Newbold of the
North Carolina State Department of Education,
gave a summary of a study conducted under the
auspices of the National Education Association.
The purpose of this study was to find out what con-
tribution the colleges of the South are making to-
ward intelligent interracial adjustment through
their curricula, on the platform, in voluntary stu-
dent activities, and otherwise.

The study embraced 155 colleges in sixteen
Southern States. It showed that there are thirty-
nine colleges that give specific courses in race rela-
tions and seventy-six colleges that give correlated
treatment of race relations in sociology, history, and
other subjects. Thirty-eight colleges reported other
race-relation activities. Twenty-five books on race
relations were published by faculty members, and
twenty-four other books are ready for publication,
while forty-seven articles have been written. In
these colleges fourteen doctor’s theses and forty-four
master’s theses have been written by students. The
institutions that are doing especially good work in
race relations include the University of North
Carolina, Peabody College, Duke University, Uni-
versity of Virginia, the North Carolina College for
Women, and the Sam Houston State Teachers’
College.

Mr. R.B. Eleazer, educational director of the
Commission on Interracial Cooperation of Atlanta,
Georgia, pleaded for intelligence in dealing with
race relations. He in no uncertain terms con-
demned the “lumping” habit, which means the as-
sumption that the misdeeds of individual Negroes
are racial, so that, when one Negro commits a
heinous crime, the whole race is condemned. ‘The
whole white race is not maligned when a white man
commits a serious crime. The same rule should
hold for both races.