they should now be,
given greater consideration. Mr. Washington eternally dwells on the
theory of doing something, producing something, and especially do we
recommend the field, with its thousand-avenued opportunities.
Competition in the products of the field is fair. The school prepares
the farmer as well as it does the classic. A company of Negroes,
equipped to make a wagon throughout, will at least make living wages,
even should the article be sold for a few dollars less in order to
make it go. Material is always the smaller item of expense. The public
will not question the nationality of the makers. Reputation for good
work is always understood to be a condition.

Other enterprises, with a small output of capital, would insure wages
if no more. Do Negroes receive fair wages generally? If the Negroes
have dreamed that they were to move unscathed in the industrial
procession as they found it existing when they obtained their freedom,
they have long ere this been rudely awakened. It is not always
prejudice with shop owners and proprietors that prevent them from
employing Negroes; it is that general mass prejudice that puts an
emphatic veto on any such intentions. It resolves itself into a
business proposition with him. The store owner allows no philanthropy
in his business. He is dictated to by that course which insures him
the greatest prosperity. He may not be wholly free from prejudices,
but it is not that which determines his actions, it is the prejudice
of the masses. He will not sacrifice his existence by opposing it. It
is a mistake to wail at the class who is at the mercy of the masses.
It is more than probable that they would do different if free to do
so.

The question is often asked, can the Negroes work out their own
salvation? Will they do it? The answer is: they have it to do or reap
the very bitter consequences. The wardship idea is not the part of the
American institution as it concerns them. Competition, deadly
competition, is the pass word. The white man gives no quarter nor
takes any; nothing but sheer force, absorption, extinction,
annihilation, or what not in the commercial, industrial competitive
sense. Nothing is longer conceded; no special place for the white man,
for the black man, but for the man with the greatest pull. White
barbers, white waiters, white coachmen, are no longer "curios;" they
are persistent in their efforts to establish themselves, having no
regard for peculiar races with