He paused, simpered and smiled.
"About what?" the editor asked with a frown.
"About the best policy for the leaders of public opinion to pursue to more rapidly advance the interests of the South----"
"And by "interests of the South" you mean?"
"The best interest of all the people without regard to race or color!"
Norton smiled:
"You forgot part of the pa.s.s-word of your order, professor! The whole clause used to read, "race, color or previous condition of servitude"----"
The sneer was lost on the professor. He was too intent on his mission.
"I have called, Major Norton," he went on glibly, "to inform you that my distinguished a.s.sociates in the great Educational Movement in the South view with increasing alarm the tendency of your paper to continue the agitation of the so-called negro problem."
"And may I ask by whose authority your distinguished a.s.sociates have been set up as the arbiters of the destiny of twenty millions of white citizens of the South?"
The professor flushed with amazement at the audacity of such a question:
"They have given millions to the cause of education, sir! These great Funds represent to-day a power that is becoming more and more resistless----"
Norton sprang to his feet and faced Magraw with eyes flashing:
"That"s why I haven"t minced matters in my references to you, professor.
That"s why I"m getting ready to strike a blow in the cause of racial purity for which my paper stands."
"But why continue to rouse the bitterness of racial feeling? The question will settle itself if let alone."
"How?"
"By the process of evolution----"
"Exactly!" Norton thundered. "And by that you mean the gradual breaking down of racial barriers and the degradation of our people to a mongrel negroid level or you mean nothing! No miracle of evolution can gloss over the meaning of such a tragedy. The Negro is the lowest of all human forms, four thousand years below the standard of the pioneer white Aryan who discovered this continent and peopled it with a race of empire builders.
The gradual mixture of our blood with his can only result in the extinction of National character--a calamity so appalling the mind of every patriot refuses to accept for a moment its possibility."
"I am not advocating such a mixture!" the professor mildly protested.
"In so many words, no," retorted Norton; "yet you are setting in motion forces that make it inevitable, as certain as life, as remorseless as death. When you demand that the patriot of the South let the Negro alone to work out his own destiny, you know that the mere physical contact of two such races is a constant menace to white civilization----"
The professor raised the delicate, tapering hands:
"The old nightmare of negro domination is only a thing with which to frighten children, major, the danger is a myth----"
"Indeed!" Norton sneered. "When our people saw the menace of an emanc.i.p.ated slave suddenly clothed with the royal power of a ballot they met this threat against the foundations of law and order by a counter revolution and restored a government of the wealth, virtue and intelligence of the community. What they have not yet seen, is the more insidious danger that threatens the inner home life of a Democratic nation from the physical contact of two such races."
"And you propose to prevent that contact?" the piping voice asked.
"Yes."
"And may I ask how?"
"By an ultimate complete separation through a process covering perhaps two hundred years----"
The professor laughed:
"Visionary--impossible!"
"All right," Norton slowly replied. "I see the invisible and set myself to do the impossible. Because men have done such things the world moves forward not backward!"
The lavender hose moved stealthily:
"You will advocate this?" the professor asked.
"In due time. The Southern white man and woman still labor under the old delusion that the negro"s lazy, slipshod ways are necessary and that we could not get along without him----"
"And if you dare to antagonize that faith?"
"When your work is done, professor, and the glorious results of Evolution are shown to mean the giving in marriage of our sons and daughters, my task will be easy. In the mean time I"ll do the work at hand. The negro is still a voter. The devices by which he is prevented from using the power to which his numbers ent.i.tle him are but temporary. The first real work before the statesmen of the South is the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the African, the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment to our Const.i.tution and the restoration of American citizenship to its original dignity and meaning."
"A large undertaking," the professor glibly observed. "And you will dare such a program?"
"I"ll at least strike a blow for it. The first great crime against the purity of our racial stock was the mixture of blood which the physical contact of slavery made inevitable.
"But the second great crime, and by far the most tragic and disastrous, was the insane Act of Congress inspired by the pa.s.sions of the Reconstruction period by which a million ignorant black men, but yesterday from the jungles of Africa, were clothed with the full powers of citizenship under the flag of Democracy and given the right by the ballot to rule a superior race.
"The Act of Emanc.i.p.ation was a war measure pure and simple. By that act Lincoln sought to strike the South as a political power a mortal blow. He did not free four million negroes for sentimental reasons. He destroyed four billion dollars" worth of property invested in slaves as an act of war to save the Union. Nothing was further from his mind or heart than the mad idea that these Africans could be a.s.similated into our National life. He intended to separate the races and give the Negro a nation of his own. But the hand of a madman struck the great leader down in the hour of his supreme usefulness.
"In the anarchy which followed the a.s.sa.s.sination of the President and the attempt of a daring coterie of fanatics in Washington to impeach his successor and create a dictatorship, the great crime against Democracy was committed. Millions of black men, with the intelligence of children and the instincts of savages, were given full and equal citizenship with the breed of men who created the Republic.
"Any plan to solve intelligently the problem of the races must first correct this blunder from which a stream of poison has been pouring into our life.
"The first step in the work of separating the races, therefore, must be to deprive the negro of this enormous power over Democratic society. It is not a solution of the problem, but as the great blunder was the giving of this symbol of American kingship, our first task is to take it from him and restore the ballot to its original sanct.i.ty."
"Your movement will encounter difficulties, I foresee!" observed the professor with a gracious smile.
He was finding his task with Norton easier than he antic.i.p.ated. The editor"s madness was evidently so hopeless he had only to deliver his ultimatum and close the interview.
"The difficulties are great," Norton went on with renewed emphasis, "but less than they have been for the past twenty years. Until yesterday the negro was the ward of the Nation. Any movement by a Southern state to remove his menace was immediately met by a call to arms to defend the Union by Northern demagogues who had never smelled powder when the Union was in danger.
"A foolish preacher in Boston who enjoys a National reputation has been in the habit of rousing his hearers to a round of cheers by stamping his foot, lifting hands above his head and yelling:
""The only way to save the Union now is for Northern mothers to rear more children than Southern mothers!"
"And the sad part of it is that thousands of otherwise sane people in New England and other sections of the North and West believed this idiotic statement to be literally true. It is no longer possible to fool them with such chaff----"
The professor rose and shook out his finely creased trousers until the lavender hose scarcely showed: