e affirmative.'

From an able Southern white man, a resident of New Orleans, I received
recently a letter containing these words:--

'I believe we have reached the bottom, and a sort of quiescent period.
I think it most likely that from now on there will be a gradual increase
of the Negro vote. And I honestly believe that the less said about it,
the surer the increase will be.'

Education--and by education I mean education of all sorts, industrial,
professional, classical, in accordance with each man's talents--will
not only produce breadth and tolerance, but will help to cure the apathy
which now keeps so many thousands of both white men and Negroes from
the polls: for it will show them that it is necessary for every man
to exercise all the political rights within his reach. If he fails
voluntarily to take advantage of the rights he already has, how shall he
acquire more rights?

And as ignorance must be met by education, so prejudice must be met with
its antidote, which is association. Democracy does not consist in mere
voting, but in association, the spirit of common effort, of which the
ballot is a mere visible expression. When we come to know one another
we soon find that the points of likeness are much more numerous than the
points of difference. And this human association for the common good,
which is democracy, is difficult to bring about anywhere, whether among
different classes of white people, or between white people and Negroes.
As one of the leaders of the Negro race, Dr. Du Bois, has said,--

'Herein lies the tragedy of the age. Not that men are poor: all men know
something of poverty. Not that men are wicked: who is good? Not that men
are ignorant: what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of each
other.'

After the Atlanta riot I attended a number of conferences between
leading white men and leading colored men. It is true those meetings
bore evidence of awkwardness and embarrassment, for they were among the
first of the sort to take place in the South, but they were none the
less valuable. A white man told me after one of the meetings,--

'I did not know that there were any such sensible Negroes in the South.'

And a Negro told me that it was the first time in his life that he had
ever heard a Southern white man reason in a friendly way with a Negro
concerning their common difficulties.

More and more these associations of white and colored men, at certain
points of contact, must and wil