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About The monitor. (Omaha, Neb.) 1915-1928 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 1917)
The Monitor A National Weekly Ne*~' 3ycv9 evoted to the Interests of the Colored * ,**»**" Nebraska and the West tV - itEV. JOHN ALBERT WILLIAMS, Editor $1.50 a Year. 5c a Copy Omaha, Nebraska, Jan. 6, 1917 Vol. II. No. 28 (Whole No. 80) 0 Monitor Takes Up Migration Problem A Systematic Plan for Aiding Those of Race Who Would Come North or West. AN ASSISTANCE MUCH NEEDED An Effort to Prevent Exploitation of Colored People and Save Them from Injury and Insult. Ever since the starting of the race exodus from the south, The Monitor has been a close student of all the conditions and problems relating thereto. The European war suddenly produced a demand for Colored labor for which the race was not prepared. Every nation of Europe that sends immigrants to America has a well planned organization which looks af ter their respective citizens when reaching our shores, but the unex pected conditions before mentioned found the Colored people of the north and west totally unprepared to give aid and assistance to their southern brothers. Labor agents, sent out by northern industries, plunged into the south and brought Colored people out by the thousands, the result being that the south has awakened to her loss and determines to prevent it. Laws have been made and drastically enforced against labor agents, while innumerable indignities have been heaped upon members of the race who have tried to leave. Colored people have formed various associations in northern cities to look after Colored people coming to their particular city, but there has been no national effort to handle the situation. This The Mon itor proposes to do. Our plan is simply to bring the em ployer into direct communication with the labor he desires and have this la bor brought to him quietly and with out publicity. We are in communica tion with many of the greatest indus tries of the north and west and will be able to render real help and pre vent the indiscriminate flow of labor into many large cities now over crowded. The task will be a tremen dous one, but the system which we have worked out will, we believe, prove effective. The Monitor will not attempt to create false impressions and dazzling hopes in those of the south who would come. This country north of the Ma son-Dixon line is alive with competi tion and only by honest industry, character and hopefulness can new comers conquer. We only promise that in the north and west will be found better opportunities, a better home, a better job, a better chance for the children. And last, but not least, will be the chance to exercise the full duties of citizenship and to hold one’s head up and feel himself a man. BANK DISTRIBUTES $10,000 Portsmouth, Va., Jan. 4.—Christmas checks to the amount of $10,000 were distributed this week by the Mutual Savings Bank for Colored people. There were 1,200 members of the bank’s savings department who re ceived checks under the Christmas fund arrangement. ADOPTED BABY IS NEGRO, TIME SHOWS j Chicago, Jan. 4.—Somewhere in Chicago lives a wealthy family with an adopted baby that has turned out to be a Negro. The baby was brought from New Orleans by the couple. Thomas H. Agney, superintendent of the Louisiana Society for the Preven tion of Cruelty to Children, said the couple came to him six months ago and wanted a baby. He was unable to supply one, but learned later they secured one elsewhere. Saturday he received a letter that the baby, when first taken, was white, but had turned dark and now has kinky hair. No Negroes For the United States Navy Secretary Daniels Embarrassed and Disappointed by Suggestion Coming From Texan. Chattanooga, Tenn., Jan. 4.—Ac cording to the Washington corre spondent of the Cincinnati Times-Star, a paper which has been a severe critic of the present administration, certain features of the Negro question, in administration circles, are taboo. Secretary of the Navy Daniels recent ly appeared before the house com mittee on naval affairs to discuss the building program and to explain to the legislators the difficulties involved in getting men for the naval service of the government, says the corre spondent. All sorts of suggestions were put forward—to increase the pay of the enlisted men, to give them bonuses, to offer inducements with regard to promotion. Finally Callo way, of Texas, dropped a match in the gasoline. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea,” he asked Mr. Daniels, “to get some Colored men for the navy?” Mr. Daniels leaned toward the offi cial stenographer in a confidential at titude. “Don’t put this in the record,” he said in a low tone, “I ask to be ex cused from discussing it,” he said to the committee. Another member suggested that the American Negro had proved him self to be a good fighting man. The secretary of the navy stood mute. Al though the American navy is now short 20,000 men and is facing the probability of a still greater shortage when the new ships now under con struction shall be ready for service, employment of the Colored man in the navy is not within the remedies regarded as debatable by the secre tary. The question of securing crew complements for the vessels has be come a serious one and failure to ob tain them has resulted in assignment of several ships to the reserve list, in order that their crews might be transferred to newer and bigger ships in active service. OMAHA QUARTETTE MAKES GOOD AT KRUG Walter Bell’s Omaha Quartette was engaged for a split week run at the Krug last week, from Thursday until Sunday. Their repertoire of songs were up-to-date popular hits and were all enthusiastically received by the theatre goers. The management was especially pleased and promised the boys many future engagements. COLORED MILL EXPANDING Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 4.—A knit ting mill run by Colored people has prospered so that its capital has been increased and $100,000 spent in im provements and machinery. When the improvements are completed it will give employment to a much larger number of people than at present. Attends Consecration Bishop of Colorado Former Omaha Priest Elevated to Episcopate With Impressive Ceremonies. The Rev. John Albert Williams left Saturday afternoon over the Union Pacific for Denver, Col., where he at tended on Monday, January 1st, the consecration of the Rev. Irving Peake Johnson, D. D., as Bishop-Coadjutor of Colorado. The impressive cere mony took place in St. John’s cathe dral in the presence of 1200 people. Bishop Williams of Nebraska preached the sermon. In the long line of clergy were representatives of the white, the black and the red races. The Rev. Sherman Coolidge, a full-blooded Arapahoe, represented the red man, the Colored clergy pres ent being the Rev. Henry B. Brown, rector of the Church of the Redeemer, Denver, and the Rev. John Albert Wil liams, of Omaha. The Rt. Rev. Daniel S. Tuttle, pri mate of the American Episcopal church, was chief consecrator, the two co-consecrators being Bishop Paul Matthews, of New Jersey, and Bis hop Griswold, of Salina. Ten bishops took part in the service. The bishop elect was attended by his two brothers who are both priests. Bishop Johnson began his ministry in Omaha, where he still has many friends who rejoice in ms elevation to the Episcopate. He and Fr. Williams, of the Church of St. Philip the Dea con, have been close personal friends for many years. Sunday morning Fr. Williams preached in the Church of the Re deemer, Denver. He returned home Wednesday. Mrs. Arthur Anderson, who is ar ranging the cantata, King Saul, for the benefit of Grove Street M. E. church, invites the public to volunteer for places in the chorus. The can tata calls for many voices and the number has not yet been secured. Dodor Washington and Dinner Functions His Recently Published Biography Throws Interesting Side Lights On Certain Events. PURELY BUSINESS MATTERS Satisfied With the Social Gatherings and Opportunities of His Own Race. As everybody, north and south, knows, Booker T. Washington, while he may have achieved fame by his work at Tuskegee, achieved the great er part of his notoriety at two or three dinners he attended. The most ex ploited of these dinners was, of course, the one at the White House with President Roosevelt, in 1901. Next to that was the dinner with Mr. John Wanamaker, at Saratoga, in 1905. A third was the dinner in 1911 with the king and queen of Denmark. They were embarrassing affairs, these dinners, both before and after taking, as we gather from the new biography just published by Double day & Page. Nothing else in Wash ington’s whole life, we are assured pained him as deeply as the censure which the dinner with Roosevelt brought down upon the latter. As an invitation to a dinner at the White House is regarded as a summons that cannot be disregarded, Mr. Washing ton, we are told, had no choice, even if he had wanted one. But the con sequences were not only embarrassing but dangerous. Both the President and his guest received numerous epistol ary threats. Washington had enough letters threatening his life to fill a desk drawer. In one case ,as was learned several years afterward, an actual attempt was made to carry out the threats. Say the authors of the new biography—Emmet J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe: “A strange Negro was hurt in jump ing off the train before it reached the Tuskegee Institute station. There being no hospital for Negroes in the town of Tuskegee, he was taken to the hospital of the Institute, where he was cared for and nursed for sev eral weeks before he was able to leave. Mr. Washington was absent in the north during all of this time. Many months later this man con fessed that he had come to Tuskegee in pay of a group of white men in Louisiana for the purpose of assas sinating Booker Washington. He said that he became so ashamed of himself while being cared for by the doctors and nurses employed by the very man he had come to murder that he left as soon as he was able to do so instead of waiting to carry out his purpose on the return of his victim, as he had originally planned to do.” Another incident growing out of the Roosevelt dinner has a humorous as well as an illuminating side. On a trip which Washington made in Flor ida, at a little station near Gaines ville, a white man got aboard the (Continued on Page 6)