e to "materialize" a race, millions
of which hold neither houses nor railroads, nor bank stocks, nor
factories, nor coal and gold mines.

Another reason for the growth of a better understanding of the objects
and influence of industrial training is the fact, as before stated, that
it has been taken up with such interest and activity by the Southern
whites, and that it has been established at such universities as Cornell
in the East, and in practically all of the state colleges of the great
West.

It is now seen that the result of such education will be to help the
black man to make for himself an independent place in our great American
life. It was largely the poverty of the Negro that made him the prey of
designing politicians immediately after the war; and wherever poverty
and lack of industry exist to-day, one does not find in him that deep
spiritual life which the race must in the future possess in a higher
degree.

To those who still express the fear that perhaps too much stress is
put upon industrial education for the Negro I would add that I should
emphasize the same kind of training for any people, whether black or
white, in the same stage of development as the masses of the colored
people.

For a number of years this country has looked to Germany for much in the
way of education, and a large number of our brightest men and women are
sent there each year. The official reports show that in Saxony, Germany,
alone, there are 287 industrial schools, or one such school to every
14,641 people. This is true of a people who have back of them centuries
of wealth and culture. In the South I am safe in saying that there is
not more than one effective industrial school for every 400,000 colored
people.

A recent dispatch from Germany says that the German Emperor has had a
kitchen fitted up in the palace for the single purpose of having his
daughter taught cooking. If all classes and nationalities, who are
in most cases thousands of years ahead of the Negro in the arts of
civilization, continue their interest in industrial training, I cannot
understand how any reasonable person can object to such education for a
large part of a people who are in the poverty-stricken condition that is
true of a large element of my race, especially when such hand training
is combined, as it should be, with the best education of head and heart.

THE NEGRO IN THE REGULAR ARMY by Oswald Garrison Villard

When the Fifty-fourth Mas