rtunities, making it all the more remarkable that, in the way of
social, educational and industrial progress, the negroes are where they
are to-day. In those days of uncertainty the prophets of evil made their
voices heard. As Booker Washington recently remarked in the
_International Monthly_: "There were not a few who predicted that, as
soon as the negro became a free man, he would not only cease to support
himself and others, but he would become a tax upon the community."
Persons who held notions of this kind doubtless supposed that negroes
had some physical kinship with the native American Indians, who have
never shown any disposition to take to field labour; and while they
involve the Government in no small annual expense, their tribes are
gradually dying out. The negroes, on the contrary, are fast multiplying,
and their value as field labourers, and as workers in other departments
of service, is a grateful contrast to the general incapacity of the
Indians. In the article just referred to, Booker Washington is able to
bear this high testimony to the general worth of his own people:--

"Few people in any part of our country have ever seen a black hand
reached out from a street corner asking for charity. In our Northern
communities a large amount of money is spent by individuals and
municipalities in caring for the sick, the poor, and other classes of
unfortunates. In the South, with very few exceptions, the negro takes
care of himself, and of the unfortunate members of his race. This is
usually done by a combination of individual members of the race, or
through the churches or fraternal organisations. Not only is this true,
but I want to make a story illustrate the condition that prevails in
some parts of the South. The white people in a certain Black Belt county
in the South had been holding a convention, the object of which was to
encourage white people to emigrate into the county. After the
adjournment of the convention an old coloured man met the president of
the meeting on the street and asked the object of the convention. When
told, the old coloured man replied, ''Fore God, Boss, don't you know
that we niggers have just as many white people in this county as we can
support?'"

The more we become acquainted with the general character and capacity of
the negro, the more are we likely to become convinced that, instead of
these people being any drawback to life in the South, those States, so
favoured by Nature, co