ide on a Jim Crow car? Who could it
have been, who offered us this advice? We should at least crown him king
of jesters and prince of wits. Is there anything in the English or
American past, to justify us in believing that they will part more
willingly with wealth than with power? Are we not shortsightedly
preparing for calamities far more destructive, and more enduring than
the political murders of the last thirty years? The black miners at
Virden could tell us something about the pursuit of wealth; and the Jews
about its social and political value after it has been acquired.

But the worst result _to-day_ of this kind of advice is that it is so
quickly taken up by rash and evil-minded men, who shout it from the
platform in its coarsest and most misleading form. After them follows
the newspaper vulture seizing upon what is worst in the speaker's
address to scatter it in large headlines through thousands of homes.

More numerous than these who bid us strike for our rights are the
counsellors of a pacific policy. Their aim is the same, survival, but
our part in the struggle must be, they say, a humble, or at least, an
inconspicuous one. We should stoop to conquer, one tells us; while
another, phrasing technically the same thought, says, we must march
along the path of least resistance.

That the second thought is only the first in another dress scarcely
needs the proof which a few words will give. In order to determine in
advance, which of many paths will offer the least resistance, we must
know the nature of the body moving, and of the field through which the
body moves; and also the changes which both the body and the field
undergo during the passage; the problem being a somewhat different one
at any moment from what it was at the preceding moment. Still, the
variations would be comparatively few were not the body, our own chaotic
mass, and the field, which is, in this case, the American people, such
changeable factors. As it is, the determination of the path of least
resistance for our eight millions is a task which a college of
scientists could not hope to accomplish.

The problem becomes very easy however, if we make two assumptions: the
first, that the colored people of this country are immeasurably meek,
patient and long-suffering; and the second, that the white people are
determined, right or wrong, to rule and have. These premises being
granted, it _seems_ at least to follow, that the path of least
resistanc