the Southern white man, and shunned and hated by the Southern white woman. Even in the best ordered Southern family the housewife may go to her kitchen any day expecting to find no cook and oftentimes she is not disappointed. Kind treatment, comfortable homes, increase of wages, things which ought to win the affections and hold the services play but an insignificant part in the domestic economy of a household whose domestic service is in the hands of a colored servant. The negro is restless and nomadic. Without excuse he quits his employer's farm when it is most grassy. An excursion, a circus, or a big meeting is to him of vaster importance than the acquisition of property.

We are not now considering whether the Southern white man should or could be his own laborer and his own domestic. To a great extent he must be such. But what we are now to consider is the inefficiency of the black man, and how such inefficiency keeps race strife alive. No one will deny that many farms are uncultivated and deserted and that people are leaving the country for the town because of lack of labor, and that when they reach city or town, there too life is tense for the lack of efficient domestic service. Southern hospitality is becoming but a memory. The house-wife is nervous and overwrought, made so by the strain of a thousand cares thrust upon her by bad domestic service. The arrival of guests usually means the departure of her cook! The Southern white woman's hate and loathing of the new negro is unspeakable. "Bridget" or "Lucy," the old-time cook and maid, whom mother or grandmother never ceased to praise, is now but a myth, while the person who has taken her place seems to have been made by a journeyman carpenter.

When a woman hates, it is her whole existence. Elisha withstood storms and war, but incontinently fled before an enraged woman. It was a womanly characteristic in the women of Carthage to give the hair of their heads wherewith to string bows to carry death to their enemy. It is much the same way with the Southern woman. She cheerfully gave her jewels to the Confederacy. She knit socks, and sewed garments, and supervised the work of the plantation, and despised the "stay-athome," creating, the while, a sentiment which sustained the boys at the front. Since the war she has made the South what it is. The Southern woman has rendered impossible the growth of any

political party built upon negro votes. The inefficiency of the negro makes the burden of the Southern white woman a thousand fold heavier than that of her husband. The servant question is the nightmare of the Southern home, and you will never even begin to settle the negro problem until you settle this question of farm labor and domestic service. For behind this question is the white woman, fearless, uncompromising, and bearing a great grievance. That the situation is serious, no one will deny. That the situation is worse to-day than at any time since 1865 few will deny. Unless a marked change for the better soon occurs, not only will there be increased violence towards the average negro, but upon hatred of him will grow up a political party that will sweep away his schools, his orphan homes, and his hospitals, and will expatriate him or make a chattel of him. Crumpacker legislation and the like will but add to the acuteness of race feeling. Leges sine moribus have ever been, and ever will be, vain, most vain. The question arises, therefore, How can these unkindly racial relations be changed? The reply is let the negro do his duty as a laborer and a domestic and the negro problem is solved. The white man will then stand by him in all his troubles, and the white woman will have no cause further to dislike him. Even now the best Southern white man or woman would lay down a life in defense of a faithful colored friend. But such colored friends are growing rare.

This child-like and superstitious race greatly respects the President of the United States. If Mr. Roosevelt will issue an open letter, or better, his proclamation, if possible under the great seal of the country, setting forth the substance of these thoughts, and if such proclamation be framed and hung in negro houses and read by negro teachers and preachers from school platforms and pulpits, an instant change will be felt throughout the entire South. A sentiment will be created among the negroes that it is proper and manly to do one's duty, and that it is highly improper to break one's contract and be idle and impudent. Then indeed will the black man be secure in his rights, for behind every black man will be one white man, and when such is the case they are not easily coerced.

Now, there are those who believe that when the negro becomes educated and wealthy he will command such respect as to win

social place among his white neighbors, and there are others who think that the negro is a beast and should, like the beast, be fed and restrained. Are not both in error? And if both are in error, where is the safe way between these extremes? What is the limit of the advancement of the negro in wealth, in education, in morals? It has no limit. If he will now and at once but heed the voice of friendship and proceed to do his duty in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call him, he will have friends by the million, and the extremists dare not touch a hair of his head. The negro can do his duty and he will do it. I voice but the true sentiment of the South when I wish for the negro all things good and useful, short of social equality. May wealth and virtue and contentment be his forever.

The Work of the Smithsonian Institution

BY ENOCH Walter Sikes, PH. D.

Mr. Carnegie's munificent bequest of ten million dollars for the founding of a National University at Washington has directed attention to Washington City as an educational center. Our national capital offers in some respects very superior advantages for a very high class of work. That Washington has these advantages is largely due to the Smithsonian Institution. No seat of learning in the country is held in higher esteem than this institution made possible by the liberality and generosity of James Lewes Smithson, a young Englishman, who spent most of his life in Paris and none in America.

James Lewes Smithson was the son of Elizabeth Macie, a widow. His father was Sir Hugh Smithson-descendant of the fiery Percies. This Sir Hugh Smithson was a man of very fine parts and held many positions of honor and trust. The Macies also had good blood, the widow being the "heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley, and niece of Charles, the proud Duke of Somerset." Young Smithson was never reticent concerning the irregularity of his birth. The laws of England did not permit this scion of an aristocratic family to assume the titles of his father or of the much praised Percies. It was not till he had grown to manhood that he even took the name of his father. These things chagrined young Smithson much. Once he wrote, "The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father's side I am a Northumberland; on my mother's I am related to kings, but this avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percies are extinct and forgotten."

In 1782 he entered Pembroke College and took the lead in scientific studies-especially chemistry and mineralogy. At this time these subjects were little studied. The means of study were also very poor. During his four years' stay at Pembroke he was deeply interested in mining and manufacturing, and with his teachers visited many such places. The year following his graduation, 1787, he was elected a member of the Royal Society, to

which he afterwards made many contributions. His first paper was on "Chemical Experiments on Tabasheer," "a concretion found in the hollow of bamboo canes."

In 1792 he was living in Paris and expressing his opinions in words that bespeak the extreme Jacobin. Says he, "Ca ira is growing the song of England, of Europe, as well as of France. Men of every rank are joining in the chorus. Stupidity and guilt have had a long reign, and it begins, indeed, to be time for justice and common sense to have their turn; the office of king is not yet abolished, but they daily feel the inutility, or rather inconvenience, of continuing it, and its duration will probably not be long. May other nations, at the time of their reform, be wise enough to cast off, at first, the contemptible incumbrance."

Smithson's health was poor. Paris was more congenial and more favorable to his health than his native England. He spent his life largely in Paris with frequent excursions into Italy. The estate left him by his mother was sufficient to support him in the gay circles of Paris. He found his chief recreation in playing, and he managed to win back what he lost. But his life was not idle and dissolute. He was a student, careful, industrious, and painstaking. His life was lonely. He had no near relatives, but his friends were among the highest and the best. In these lonely moments he fed the fires of ambition and determined to be a scholar. It was this ambition, doubtless, that caused him to say that his name would live in the memory of man when the titles of the Percies were forgotten. In these years he contributed to the Royal Society 27 papers, and left 200 manuscripts with thousands of unconnected notes. Science was a hard mistress at this time. Dr. F. W. Clarke says Smithson's chief contribution to science was his success in experiments with only the crudest apparatus, and that his reasoning on all subjects was good. His papers and manuscripts were brought to America but were destroyed by fire. However, they had been carefully sifted and the important topics are in print. The Royal Society placed a high estimate on Smithson's work. With Cavendish he was on terms of intimate friendship. His name is mentioned along with Wollaston, Young, and Davy. He corresponded with Thompson, Black, and Arago. He was not a great scientist, but he did contribute something to the fund of human knowledge, to the