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TRIBUNE
OFFICE, NEW YORK, Sept. 7, 1870.
MRS. GRIFFING:--In
my judgment you and others who wish to befriend the blacks crowded into
Washington, do them great injury. Had they been told years ago, "You must
find work; go out and seek it," they would have been spared much misery.
They are an easy, worthless race, taking no thought for the morrow, and
liking to lean on those who befriend them. Your course aggravates their
weaknesses, when you should raise your ambition and stimulate them to
self-reliance. Unless you change your course speedily and singly, the
swarming of blacks to the District will increase, and the argument that
Slavery is their natural condition will be immeasurably strengthened.
So long as they look to others to calculate and provide for them, they
are not truly free. If there be any woman capable of earning wages who
would rather some one else than herself should pay her passage to the
place where she can have work, then she needs reconstruction and awakening
to a just and honest self-reliance. В
* Horace
Greeley was the noted editor of the New York Tribune.
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