general control. Many of these institutions in the same community are continuously going over the same ground as the neighboring school. A central board composed of first-class men of the North and of the South, full of the needs of the Negro in the South, would do more good in one year in dispensing Northern philanthropy among the Negroes than a dozen law, medicine, religious, or higher educational universities, each working in an aimless fashion. A busy, intelligent, and successful bread-winner, whether white or black, will be respected, and he will do more to bring about a settling of the great problem than a hundred briefless lawyers or doctors without clients or bookkeepers who can have no business.

Do not understand me to say that the general and industrial training, and the restriction of the ballot to a full intelligence or property basis, will entirely do away with the Race Question. I mean that when the naturally acute feelings which have been raised by the unintelligent exercise of the ballot by the Negro shall have been dissipated and he shall have become educated as an intelligent workman, the Race Question will be infinitely nearer solution. That is the practical aim of my discussion here to-day. It is entirely practical.

While the fields will take vast numbers of Negroes, the fields will no longer furnish them with employment. The household cannot in the future be relied upon to furnish them all with a supply of labor. They cannot be confined to the lower and heavier classes of labor.

This

Vast numbers of the Negroes must find employment in the higher classes of labor in the South. I believe that with the consummation of the industrial education inaugurated by General Armstrong at Hampton, and by Booker Washington at Tuskegee, that we will see a wonderful change in the Negro. In the South the labor lines are not so closely drawn as in the North, and they are daily lessening in their severity. If the Negro is made a fine artisan, either in the field or upon the wall or in the mill or at the bench, almost surely will he have work. One great injury to the Negro race is that there has not been sufficient employment for him. The consequence naturally is crime. would be the consequence to either white or black not employed. This state of affairs cannot be continued by the South. The Negro must have work and the South must give it to him. We must look that situation squarely in the face. Even if the employment of the Negro in the trades and mills will lessen somewhat the price of labor, this must be one of the burdens of the South. This is a very plain statement, but it is true. That being the case, it will be better and easier for the South to give work to the intelligent workman, skilled in his trade and able to make his living, than to an ignorant one. Individuals must suffer in every great social or economic livelihood. It will be infinitely cheaper for the South to push this system of education all over the land for the Negro, than to support him in idleness and vice. He must be prepared for a higher

class of labor. I repeat, the present class of labor is not sufficient for him. In this educational idea we must not deal in dreams. I insist that we shall not tell the Negro that his hope of standing in the South at the ballot and at work is dependent upon his labor, and then take the labor away from him. We must give him a chance, and I am glad to say that over the South is a desire to give the intelligent Negro all the chance he needs. I do not believe that educating the Negro as an artisan will affect the white man as has been expected in some quarters. Many people have informed me that the Negro coming into the intelligent field of labor in the future will intensify the Race Question. It may do so in isolated instances. Under a settled state of affairs, with the demand for labor at a minimum, it might cause serious trouble. In ordinary state of affairs in a settled community, such as the manufacturing communities in the North, where, if anything, manufacturing is lessening, or where just so much manufacturing is done, this might be the case; but in the South, where the mills and manufactories within the last ten years have been multiplied to an unprecedented extent, where labor is needed as it never was before, there will be no question but that the intelligent Negro artisan will be in demand. Every intelligent workingman in the South can make a living. We of the South who understand the vast possibilities of the South scarcely appreciate what we have done and what we are doing. We have been so

engaged in building the South from its desolation that we have scarcely understood what an advance it has made in the commercial and manufacturing affairs of the world. It is only by comparison that we can see the wonderful opportunities for absorbing every particle of intelligent labor in the South. This commercial increase came slowly, but to-day it is increasing in arithmetical progression.

I will be pardoned if I give some plain figures of comparison made by Mr. Richard Edmonds, the greatest living master of Southern commercial conditions. The mere statement will enable us to appreciate the advance of the South and its marvellous growing ability to absorb all labor.

THE SOUTH-YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY.

As a distinguished editor in the South well says, the increased prosperity that would come to the South

could her idle Negroes be put to work would make place on a higher plane of employment for millions of white men.

I will say here that, as a matter of fact, whilst much has been done for the Negro, much of it has been badly done. For ten or fifteen years after his emancipation, he was largely in the hands of people who were using him for political effect. He was in a period of transi

tion. He was disturbed in body and mind, his whole environment had been changed, and, I think, considering the vast disadvantages under which he has worked, that we see in him a bright hope that he will be uplifted and upbuilt, and become a useful, practical, and necessary member of the body politic. Dr. Mayo and Dr. Curry are the greatest of authorities upon this work, and Dr. Curry well says: "Of the desire of the colored people for education the proof is conclusive, of their capacity to receive mental color there is not the shadow of a reason to support an adverse hypothesis." Dr. Mayo arrives at the same conclusion.

In conclusion, I will say that the problem will be worked out by the South. Wise men believe that the greatest danger is over. It seems the boundary limit has been passed. There is no question but that the races are greatly improved by daily contact with each other. There is a kindly feeling on both sides in all of the interests of life which are not racial and inherent. The racial distinction will be and should be permanent. In the business relations there is no question