tudents have the
knowledge of the trade. This same principle applies, whether in the
laundry, where the washing for seven or eight hundred people is done, or
in the sewing-room, where a large part of the clothing for this colony
is made and repaired, or in the wheelwright and blacksmith departments,
where all the wagons and buggies used by the school, besides a
large number for the outside public, are manufactured, or in the
printing-office, where a large part of the printing for the white and
colored people in this region is done. Twenty-six different industries
are here in constant operation.

When the student is through with his course of training he goes out
feeling that it is just as honorable to labor with the hand as with the
head, and instead of his having to look for a place, the place usually
seeks him, because he has to give that which the South wants. One other
thing should not be overlooked in our efforts to develop the black man.
As bad as slavery was, almost every large plantation in the South during
that time was, in a measure, an industrial school. It had its farming
department, its blacksmith, wheelwright, brickmaking, carpentry, and
sewing departments. Thus at the close of the war our people were in
possession of all the common and skilled labor in the South. For nearly
twenty years after the war we overlooked the value of the ante-bellum
training, and no one was trained to replace these skilled men and women
who were soon to pass away; and now, as skilled laborers from foreign
countries, with not only educated hands but trained brains, begin to
come into the South and take these positions once held by us, we are
gradually waking up to the fact that we must compete with the white man
in the industrial world if we would hold our own. No one understands his
value in the labor world better than the old colored man. Recently, when
a convention was held in the South by the white people for the purpose
of inducing white settlers from the North and West to settle in the
South, one of these colored men said to the president of the convention:
"'Fore de Lord, boss, we's got as many white people down here now as we
niggers can support."

The negro in the South has another advantage. While there is prejudice
against him along certain lines,--in the matter of business in general,
and the trades especially,--there is virtually no prejudice so far as
the native Southern white man is concerned. White men and black