pro and con by friend and enemy in other races, and by the
optimist and pessimist of his own. Comparisons concerning his morals
and moral growth are made as all other comparisons are made concerning
him, not between his present and former condition, nor between his
condition and that of any other people at the same stage of
development, under the same conditions and environments. On the
contrary, inconsistency is ever present in the attempts to show the
world existing facts. Whenever an attack was made upon the system of
slavery, the defenders of the system immediately pointed to the poor
slaveholder and the dearth of Negro criminals as points in favor of a
time when the Negro enjoyed the blessings of a "mild and humane
system."

When the progress of the black race in America is placed in the
balance, the lowest and most degraded and careless of the masses who
have not come out of a state of inertia are brought into comparison
with the noblest types that have ascended the scale of life. What
wonder then that there is so much adverse criticism; what is needed is
a search for facts and an unprejudiced putting of all that appertains
to the Negro, and a just acknowledgment of the results attained.

That the American Negro has made an advance along all lines that make
for the higher development of a people cannot be denied. He has
improved morally in a corresponding way. The limit of this paper will
not permit a statistical comparison, but a few points may be noticed
in passing. His moral instinct is quickened and his moral nature
asserts itself in higher forms of life under the new conditions. He
has started at the fountainhead and the purity of his home and
hearthstone is a magnificent memorial to the purity of the black
woman.

Were it possible to give in numbers the correct estimate of these
beautiful homes and their characters, even the most bitter of his
enemies and the pessimists of his own race would look with doubt upon
the pernicious libels disseminated in the periodical literature of the
day. The dark picture of the Negro's shortcomings is thrown on the
canvas and so familiar has it become that not a few seldom think that
there is another picture which the Negro himself knows to be truer to
life and more prophetic of his real nature, taken from real life, and
one that ought to give inspiration and hope to all seekers after
facts.

The Negro ministry has made rapid and marked progress in moral
achievements f