"Just let me say one more word, Senator. You have the 'Record' and the press to give circulation to your ideas. I have only the men who sit in my chairs or who are waiting for a place in them to talk to. This bill which you think such a fine thing, to my mind is a plan for using 'nigger's' fingers to pull chestnuts out of the treasury for the benefit of white people of those States!...
"But what would you have? We cannot undo all the wrongs of the past at once!
"True enough, Senator ; but it is better to do nothing than add a new wrong to the long category of the old ones.
"'The fact that a man is black does not prove that he knows what is best for the colored race,'petulantly.
"Very true, sir; but it's a universal rule that the man who wears a shoe knows best where it pinches.
"But he may not know how to mend it.
"Very likely, nor will the cobbler, until he learns just where it rubs. I know what it is to be a nigger, Senator, and you don't ; and you never will be able to devise an efficient remedy for our ills until you have learned just what that means!
"'Perhaps you are right, said the Senator in a dissatisfied tone,' as he turned thoughtfully away. 'It's a very difficult problem to deal with. We try to be as considerate and charitable as we can; but it seems as if the more we did for the colored man the more dissatisfied he becomes.'
"Suppose you try just a little justice, Senator ; Charity is a good thing, but I think a pound of justice would go further than a ton of charity."
P. 114, 116-117, PACTOLUS PRIME by Albion Winegar Tourgee (1890)
Pactolus Prime
www.amazon.com
Sunday, July 6, 2014
PACTOLUS PRIME, a novel by Albion Winegar Tourgee, excerpt
"Just let me say one more word, Senator. You have the 'Record' and the press to give circulation to your ideas. I have only the men who sit in my chairs or who are waiting for a place in them to talk to. This bill which you think such a fine thing, to my mind is a plan for using 'nigger's' fingers to pull chestnuts out of the treasury for the benefit of white people of those States!...
"But what would you have? We cannot undo all the wrongs of the past at once!
"True enough, Senator ; but it is better to do nothing than add a new wrong to the long category of the old ones.
"'The fact that a man is black does not prove that he knows what is best for the colored race,'petulantly.
"Very true, sir; but it's a universal rule that the man who wears a shoe knows best where it pinches.
"But he may not know how to mend it.
"Very likely, nor will the cobbler, until he learns just where it rubs. I know what it is to be a nigger, Senator, and you don't ; and you never will be able to devise an efficient remedy for our ills until you have learned just what that means!
"'Perhaps you are right, said the Senator in a dissatisfied tone,' as he turned thoughtfully away. 'It's a very difficult problem to deal with. We try to be as considerate and charitable as we can; but it seems as if the more we did for the colored man the more dissatisfied he becomes.'
"Suppose you try just a little justice, Senator ; Charity is a good thing, but I think a pound of justice would go further than a ton of charity."
P. 114, 116-117, PACTOLUS PRIME by Albion Winegar Tourgee (1890)
Pactolus Prime
www.amazon.com