nce of
colleges and universities for the so called "higher education" of
colored youth had been expended in the establishment and maintenance
of primary schools and schools of applied science, the race would have
profited vastly more than it has, both mentally and materially, while
the results would have operated far more advantageously to the State,
and satisfactorily to the munificent benefactors.

Since writing the above, I find in a very recent number of

Judge Tourgee's magazine, _The Continent_, the following reflections
upon the subject, contributed to that excellent periodical by Prof.
George F. Magoun of Iowa College. Mr. Magoun says:

May I offer one suggestion which observation a few years
since among the freedmen and much reflection, with
comparisons made in foreign countries, have impressed upon
me? It is this, that the key of the future for the black men
of the South is _industrial_ education. The laboring men of
other lands cannot hold their own in skilled labor save as
they receive such education, and this of a constantly
advancing type. The English House of Commons moved two years
since for a Royal Commission to study the technical schools
of the continent, and the report respecting France made by
this commission has been republished at Washington by the
United States Commissioner of Education. In our two leading
northwestern cities, St. Louis and Chicago, splendid manual
training-schools have been formed, and east and west the
question of elementary manual training in public schools is
up for discussion and decision. All this for _white_
laboring men. As long ago as December, 1879, the Legislature
of Tennessee authorized a brief manual of the Elementary
Principles of Agriculture to be "taught in the public
schools of the State," for the benefit of _white_ farmers
again. The Professor of Chemistry in the Vanderbilt
University, Nashville, prepared the book--107 pages. Where
in all this is there anything for the educational
improvement of the black laborer just where he needs
education most? The labor of the South is subject in these
years to a marvelous revolution. The only opportunity the
freedman has to rise is by furnishing such skilled labor as
the great changes going on in that splendid section of the
land require. How can he furnish it, unless the edu