nerally, that if they would
be saved, they must save themselves. The idea that they were to enter
at once into all the walks of American life without violent protest
has been dissipated through the actual occurrences of the last four
decades. It would be too long a story to rehearse the reasons for the
seeming undiminished prejudices.

In the interest of truth, the exact truth, we feel free to say,
however, that the reasons are not to be charged altogether to one
race. There is much that can yet be done on the Negro's side that
would tend to put a better face on the matter. There has been
undergoing a gradual change in the minds of the thoughtful of both
races concerning education and politics as it concerns the Negroes,
which has, indeed, upset the first calculations of many, but which,
after all, has a tendency to broaden the foundation on which racial
progress must rest. The Booker T. Washington theory of education has
come to stay; not because he advocates it; not because rich men are
sustaining his school, but because he has an institution that meets
the requirements, the demands of the day. It is a pity, but true, that
the race as a rule has entertained inflated notions about the matter
of education. It rather looked forward to an education that vied with
the whites, with their centuries of leisure and their myriad routes
for employment. Education that unfits the individual to grapple with
his surroundings, his environments, is a misfit. The masses of any
race do not hope to be educated as its classes do. Those who oppose
Mr. Washington's theory advance the argument, but those intimately
acquainted with the race must admit that the Negro parent slaves
himself to make a fine lady or gentleman out of the daughter or son,
whereas the poor white parents hope and endeavor to turn out
breadwinners, notwithstanding they have no color conditions to
overcome. The lady and gentleman idea, doubtless, was born of the
slavery period, when the so-called "great" received flattering
attention from master and slave. The desire to be the recipient of
such attention, or to have it bestowed on their kind, was the result
of association and infantile minds, which have not as yet left the
will free to have the children taught to feel that the conditions must
determine the education. Happily, we may say that the notion of
turning out ladies and gentlemen instead of women and man is on the
wane. The trades, the fields, the shops are, as