s and the employment of the
new forces in the culture of cotton and the establishment of cotton
mills.

We commit a crime by creating appetites and then failing to appease
them.

The education of our children should no longer be a mere theory, but a
matter of real practical nature, such as will benefit the
bread-winner, the home-seeker, the higher citizenship, the welfare of
the greatest number.

While I favor the higher education of the youth of the nation, I also
think the youth ought to learn trades, to wear the overalls at the
forge, at the work-bench, to adjust the machinery in the work-shop and
the factory. I would have the youth able to design and build a house
as well as to live in one, to raise potatoes as well as to eat them,
to produce as well as consume. For many years the great majority of
the youth must be common laborers, whatever their education, whatever
their social condition or station; then it follows as the day follows
the night that they should be educated with the trend of the mind and
in connection with environment.

In the days of slavery many of our young men and women were trained
along certain lines; the young men such as skilled carpenters,
blacksmiths, stone masons, bricklayers, and the like, and the young
women were trained in dressmaking and the like, and these boys and
girls grew up having a kind of monopoly in their respective lines,
although controlled by their owners. But for a quarter of a century
very little attention has been paid to trade learning in many sections
of the South.

This condition confronts us to-day; however, it is claimed that it is
no fault of the children that they do not learn trades, and it is
further urged by many parents that the blame does not lie at their
hands; but that it is the fault of the times, of conditions and
circumstances; and still others claim that the trade unions are the
main cause. Many claim that, if their children are trained along
certain lines, they will be debarred by the opposition of the trade
unions. But these excuses seem too trivial. The opposition of the
labor organizations should urge greater activity in superior trade
learning in every pursuit, so that when the white striker walks out of
the shops the black man, skilled, trusted and tried, should walk in
and demonstrate his ability to do better and more work than the
outgoing striker.

We are to take no steps backward in industrial and intellectual
progress in the openin