average attendance, and one white teacher to every 29 white children in average attendance.

"For the year 1896-7, the total expenditure for the public schools of the sixteen Southern States and the District of Columbia was $31,144,801. The cost of the schools for the colored race can not be accurately stated, but a fair estimate will place the cost of the colored schools at about $6,575,000. This is something over 20 per cent. of the aggregate expenditure of the Southern States, while the average attendance of colored children was about 26 per cent. of the entire average attendance of white and colored pupils.

"There are at least 178 schools in the United States for the secondary and higher education of colored youth exclusively. Of this number, one was in Illinois, two in Indiana, one in New Jersey, two in Ohio, and three in Pennsylvania, the remaining 169 being in the Southern States.

"In the 169 schools, there were employed 1795 professors and teachers, 787 males and 1008 females. There was a total enrollment in these schools of 45,402 students, 20,243 males and 25,159 females, an increase of 5275 over the enrollment of the previous year. In collegiate grades there were 2108 students, 1526 males and 582 females, an increase of 653 over the previous year. In the secondary grades there were 15,203 students, 6944 males and 8259 females, an increase of 1640 over the year before. In the elementary grades of these secondary and collegiate institutions, there

were 28,091 pupils, 11,773 males and 16,318 females, an increase of 2999 over the year 1895-6.

"In all the colored schools there were 2410 students pursuing the classical course, 1312 males and 1098 females. There were 974 students in scientific courses, 447 males and 527 females. In English courses there were 11,340 students. The business courses had 295 students, 179 males and 116 females. There were 5081 students in normal or teachers' training courses, 2382 males and 2699 females. There were 117 graduates from college courses, 103 males and 14 females. There were 1256 graduates from normal courses, 537 males and 719 females. The high-school courses had 846 graduates, 333 males and 513 females. In all there were 1311 professional students, 1137 males and 174 females. There were 611 students and 68 graduates in theology, 104 students and 30 graduates in law, 345 students and 71 graduates in medicine, 38 students and 10 graduates in dentistry, 39 students and 20 graduates in pharmacy and 174 students and 35 graduates in nurse training.

"That in the 169 schools for the colored race there were 13,581 pupils and students receiving industrial training, 4970 males and 8611 females. The number in industrial training was almost 40 per cent. of the total enrollment in these schools. There were 1027 of these pupils being trained in farm and garden work, 1496 in carpentry, 166 in bricklaying, 144 in plastering, 149 in painting, 85 in tin and sheet-metal work,

227 in forging, 248 in machine shops, 185 in shoemaking, 689 in printing, 6728 in sewing, 2349 in cooking, and 2753 in other trades. In the libraries of these schools there were 244,794 volumes, valued at $203,731. The aggregate value of grounds, buildings, furniture, and scientific apparatus was $7,714,908. The value of benefactions or bequests received during the year 1896-7 was $303,050. The schools received from the public funds for support for the year $271,839, from tuition fees $141,262, from productive funds $92,080, and from sources not named $540,097, making an aggregate income of $1,045,278 for the year."

These figures are tiresome, but they teach one of the greatest lessons of the century. In the line of this argument, the valuable statistics of the Commissioner of Education showed that in 1890, the Negroes occupied 550,000 farms; of the number of homes in the country 900,000 were occupied by the Negroes; that twentytwo per cent. of their farms were owned by the occupants, and that of the farms owned by the Negroes over ninety per cent. were without incumbrance. This shows a very safe and gratifying progress. This is not entirely a clear picture, and the bare figures may be somewhat optimistic. It will not be expected that the Negro will be educated within a few years. His education has been attended with great difficulties, and discouragements have been in every step in his existence. He has been a slave, has been degraded, and he lives in large masses which are dense and hard to reach. He

has even now a comparatively small idea of economic conditions, and the burden of lifting him has been a tremendous one, but, in the judgment of those who have studied the question, he is now moving in the right direction, and this of itself speaks volumes.

In one view, a great deal has been done for the Negro. Large sums of money have been spent upon his education, yet a vast deal of this money has been poorly spent. People in the North, without the knowledge of the social and educational conditions in the South, have spent large sums of money in endowing sectarian and higher institutions for the Negro. They have lavished great sums of money in many instances on the education of the Negro for the professions of the law, medicine, politics, and the higher education. As a matter of fact, a great deal of this education has been entirely inopportune and misplaced. The Negro lawyer is almost entirely without clients. The Negro doctor is almost surely without patients; the Negro politician is a disturber to the country, and in vast numbers of instances the product of these institutions has been an injury to his race and the section in which he lives. There has been no disguising this proposition. Many of the institutions in their teachings have been narrow, and, as a matter of fact, it has been the experience of the Southern people that oftentimes their teachings have been an injury rather than a good to the Negro race. What the South wishes is to have the Negro educated thoroughly in body, soul, and

mind. Let him become a useful farmer; let an effort be made to make a useful artisan; let him be taught the social economics of life, social ethics, how to live the cheapest and best; let him be taught the arts of bread-winning, and, instead of being a disturber, instead of being a useless hanger-on in the section in which he lives, he will be a builder-up of that section and an honor to his race. Do not understand me to decry special literary education. I am earnestly in favor of it. I think he should be educated, but, as a matter of fact, I do not believe he should be educated for pursuits which in the condition of affairs in this generation are practically closed to him. The new theory of industrial education is a most magnificent one, and I look in the next twenty years for a wonderful increase in the character, standing, and well-being of the Negro derived from this common-sense method of teaching. If the Northern philanthropist, instead of putting a few dollars in the special sectarian, political, or professional education of the Negro in some university in the South, would allow that money to be placed under the control of people who will, in connection with the Southern States, inaugurate a comprehensive, systematic, and general plan for the education of the Negro in the pursuits of life, a step will have been taken in the settlement of this question. This will be more effective than a dozen half endowed, half-officered universities teaching along their own lines without regard to a general system or under a