performance. On almost all the Southern plantations, and in the
cities also, negro mechanics were bred, excellent blacksmiths, good
carpenters, and house-builders capable of executing plans of high
architectural merit. Everywhere were negroes skilled in trades, and
competent in various mechanical industries.

The opportunity and the disposition to labor make the basis of all our
civilization. The negro was taught to work, to be an agriculturist, a
mechanic, a material producer of something useful. He was taught this
fundamental thing. Our higher education, applied to him in his present
development, operates in exactly the opposite direction.

This is a serious assertion. Its truth or falsehood cannot be established
by statistics, but it is an opinion gradually formed by experience, and
the observation of men competent to judge, who have studied the problem
close at hand. Among the witnesses to the failure of the result expected
from the establishment of colleges and universities for the negro are
heard, from time to time, and more frequently as time goes on, practical
men from the North, railway men, manufacturers, who have initiated
business enterprises at the South. Their testimony coincides with that of
careful students of the economic and social conditions.

There was reason to assume, from our theory and experience of the higher
education in its effect upon white races, that the result would be
different from what it is. When the negro colleges first opened, there
was a glow of enthusiasm, an eagerness of study, a facility of
acquirement, and a good order that promised everything for the future. It
seemed as if the light then kindled would not only continue to burn, but
would penetrate all the dark and stolid communities. It was my fortune to
see many of these institutions in their early days, and to believe that
they were full of the greatest promise for the race. I have no intention
of criticising the generosity and the noble self-sacrifice that produced
them, nor the aspirations of their inmates. There is no doubt that they
furnish shining examples of emancipation from ignorance, and of useful
lives. But a few years have thrown much light upon the careers and
characters of a great proportion of the graduates, and their effect upon
the communities of which they form a part, I mean, of course, with regard
to the industrial and moral condition of those communities. Have these
colleges, as a whole,--[This sentence