n and women. When the
time for the collection came it was intensely satisfactory to observe
that the white side of the audience was just as eager to make its small
contributions as were the members of my own race. But I was anxious to
see how the late election had been conducted in that community. I soon
found out that the Republican party, composed almost wholly of the black
people, was represented by an election officer in the person of one of
the best-educated colored men in the town, that both the Democratic and
Populist parties were equally well represented, and that there was no
suspicion of unfairness.

But I wished to go a little deeper, and I soon found that one of the
leading stores in this community was owned by a colored man; that a
cotton-gin was owned by a colored man; that the sawmill was owned by
another colored man. Colored men had mortgages on white men's crops, and
vice versa, and colored people not only owned land, but in several cases
were renting land to white men. Black men were in debt to white men,
and white men were in debt to black men. In a word, the industrial and
commercial relations of the races were interwoven just as if all had
been of one race.

An object-lesson in civilization is more potent in compelling people to
act right than a law compelling them to do so. Some years ago a colored
woman who had graduated at Tuskegee began her life-work in a Southern
community where the force of white public sentiment was opposed to the
starting of what was termed a "nigger school." At first this girl was
tempted to abuse her white sister, but she remembered that perhaps the
white woman had been taught from her earliest childhood, through reading
and conversation, that education was not good for the negro, that it
would result only in trouble to the community, and that no amount of
abuse could change this prejudice.

After a while this colored teacher was married to an educated colored
man, and they built a little cottage, which, in connection with her
husband's farm, was a model. One morning one of the white women who
had been most intense in her feelings was passing this cottage, and
her attention was attracted to the colored woman who was at work in
her beautiful flower-garden. A conversation took place concerning the
flowers. At another time this same white woman was so attracted by this
flower-garden that she came inside the yard, and from the yard she went
into the sitting-room and examine