and sexes.

For two hundred and fifty years the American Negro has been a drawer
of water and a hewer of wood. He felled the trees and turned the
forest into fields of cotton and corn; he drained the swamps and
turned them into fields of rice; he graded the highways and made them
possible for railroad transit and traffic. In summer he was to the
white man, his owner, an umbrella; in winter, to the same owner, he
was his winter wood, and always a ready servant with hand and brawn,
as bread and meat and shelter.

The question of labor is one of bread and meat. To the bread-winner it
means much; to the unemployed it often lends a charm for crime; for
after all, the unemployed needs food, clothing, medicine, a shelter
and employment alike for body and mind.

But the subject of labor is not a new one, and, indeed, it has been
made a question of many complex phases introduced by prejudice from
white trade unions. Also, climate makes an important factor, hence the
different sections of our country employ to a large extent different
kinds of labor, suited to the prevailing industries, thrift and
enterprises.

We may consider at once the two general classes of labor, the crude
and the skilled. For generations the black man, as a crude laborer,
raised "King Cotton" in the cottonfields of the South. He has had no
competition as a crude laborer; he still holds a trust on the fleecy
staple; his right there is none to dispute.

But to-day a new and brighter era opens before us. We are to
manufacture cotton as well as raise it. We are to advance and keep
pace with the mental training of our children and provide employment
for them in every avenue. As the Turk weaves his carpet and darns his
shawl and as the Chinese prepares his silk, so the black youth must be
trained to change cotton into cloth.

Trained hands and trained minds are inseparable companions. If we
educate our boys and girls, we create in them a desire, we thrust upon
them a stimulus which pushes them out into the active world, and, if
only with polished brain and soft hands, they wander from place to
place seeking the shady side of active, stern reality.

Since we, by educating our boys and girls, create new appetites, new
desires, new activities, we set in motion new forces; then we ought
the more to create new enterprises, open new avenues, establish new
business or improve the old so as to meet the new relations, the
awakened appetites, the growing activitie