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is best work; the white workman who welcomes him to his side; the trade-union that opens its doors alike to both colors; the teacher spending heart and brain for her pupils; the statesman planning justice and opportunity for all; the sheriff setting his life between his prisoner and the mob; the dark-skinned guest cheerfully accepting a lower place than his due at life's feast; the white-skinned host saying, Friend, come up higher,--it is these who are solving the race problem. Slowly but surely we are coming together. We confront our difficulties as a people, however we may differ among ourselves, with a oneness of spirit which is a help and pledge of final victory. We are one by our most sacred memories, by our dearest possessions, and by our most solemn tasks. Our discords are on the lower plane; when the rich, full voices speak, in whatever latitude and longitude, they chord with one another. When Uncle Remus tells Miss Sally's little boy about Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, the children from the Gulf to the Lakes gather about his knees. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are claimed as comrades by all the boys between the Penobscot and the Rio Grande. Lanier's verse rests on the shelf with Longfellow's. The seer of Concord gives inspiration in Europe and India and Japan. Frances Willard stands for the womanhood of the continent. When Fitzhugh Lee died, it was not Virginia only but America that mourned a son. When Mary Livermore passed away, we all did honor to her heroic spirit. When Dunbar sings his songs, or DuBois speaks in the tones of scholar and poet, we all listen. The great emancipators of the successive generations,--Woolman, Lundy, Channing, Mrs. Stowe, Lincoln, Armstrong, Booker Washington--do we not all claim a share in them? Just as all Englishmen feel themselves heirs alike of the Puritan Hampden and the Royalist Falkland, so we Americans all pay our love and reverence to the heroes of our war,--Grant and Lee, Jackson and Sheridan, Johnston and Thomas, and all their peers. And we are one by the common tasks that confront us. This problem of the races,--it is a challenge to do our best. "Impossible? What are we put into the world for, but to do the impossible in the strength of God?" The rich man and the poor man, the employer and the laborer, must find some common ground of justice and harmony. The nation must be steered away from commercial greed and military glory, toward international arbitration, toward peace
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