tilling of soil. In this movement for the education of the hand the
Negro teacher is meeting with encouragement on all sides. Such an
education cannot fail to work great benefit for the race, and help to
give it standing. Given an intelligent Negro mass, masters of the
trades and of science of agriculture, there need be no fear for the
Negro's future. The only mistake which it seems that the Negro
teachers may possibly make at this time is, that having pictured in
their minds the benefit of having a mass skilled in industry, and
noting the present popularity of industrial training, they may lose
sight of the fact that the skilled hand must be backed by and rest
upon a mind trained to logical thinking. Industrial training does much
indeed toward mental training, but by no means does it, nor can it, do
all. There is quite a tendency at present aside from industrial
training to limit the mental training of the race to the "3 r's,"
viz., reading, writing and arithmetic. The highest industrial
attainment is not possible with such a limitation. The making, the
repairing and the manipulation of machinery calls for a knowledge of
natural philosophy and higher mathematics. The masterly tilling of the
soil demands one learned in chemistry and botany--botany, which we
know is not even a stranger to Latin. So we might go through every
industry and point out that its perfection is conditioned on the
highest mental training. Let the Negro teacher, while loving
industrial training for his race, not learn to despise that which
appears on the surface to be merely a mental gymnastic, but which,
when examined more carefully, proves to be that only which furnishes
a condition for the best and the highest even in that which he may
most love.

Since social conditions in the South are such as to necessitate a
system of separate schools for whites and Negroes, and since this
necessitates the establishment of a large number of extra schools, it
inevitably results in the shortening of school terms and the cutting
down of the salaries of teachers. I have found some Negro country
schools in Alabama paying the teachers from twelve to fifteen dollars
per month, and the length of the school term was only four months. In
these cases I did not find the teachers worrying over the small
salary, but they were working to have the Negro patrons, from their
own scanty purses, lengthen the school term. In not a few cases the
Negro teachers observed were thus