hing needed, no matter who
backs it up; it is the business men who run the country; it is they
who put the millions to work and keep the mighty dollar in
circulation; we must enter the business world and by pluck, tact and
thrift, live while we are living, and die when we cannot do otherwise.
The man who thanks Almighty God when the news of disaster comes from
land or sea that no loss comes to him is not so wise in the sight of
God, or man, as he who can thank God that the interest on accrued
stock had advanced an hundred fold before the crash came.

TOPIC XXVI.

THE NEGRO AS A FARMER

BY PROF. GEORGE W. CARVER.

[Illustration: Prof. Geo. W. Carver, M. Ag.]

PROF. GEORGE W. CARVER, M. AG.

A few years ago there was graduated at the Iowa Agricultural
College a young colored man of unusual promise. His name was
G. W. Carver, and his specialty the care and production of
plants. Not long after graduation he was engaged by Booker
T. Washington as a teacher and assistant in his famous
industrial school, and to-day the young man is Mr.
Washington's most trusted adviser, while his reputation has
gone abroad as a scientist and an original investigator of
no mean order.

Born during the period of the Civil War, he was separated
from his parents when but six weeks old, they having been
sold to some distant slaveholders. The infant was puny and
ailing, and his master regarded him as worthless. A family
named Carver took the babe and his brother, a little older.
It was with them the child had a home for nine years. About
that time the little black boy developed a remarkable love
for plants, and so much knowledge of their structure and
life, that he was given the name of "the plant doctor." Mr.
and Mrs. Carver were proud of the boy's talents and made
much of him, and it was their evident satisfaction in him
that aroused the jealousy of their own children, who at last
drove the two colored boys away from home. Northward they
turned their faces, to the land where white and black have
equal chances in life, as they fondly believed. The little
"plant doctor," who had picked up the elements of an
education, wanted, above all else, to enter some good
school. The boys were driven from pillar to post, but, being
devotedly attached to each other they held together, until