f God now seems to utter "Speak
to the people that they go forward." "Go forward" in what respect? Teach
the millions of poor colored laborers of the South how much power they
have in themselves, by co-operation of effort, and by a combination of
their small means, to change the despairing poverty which now drives
them from their homes, and makes them a millstone around the neck of any
community, South or West. Secondly, that we shall go forward in asking
to enter the same employments which other people enter. Within the past
ten years we have made almost no advance in getting our youth into
industrial and business occupations. It is just as hard for instance, to
get a boy into a printing-office now as it was ten years ago. It is
simply astonishing when we consider how many of the common vocations of
life colored people are shut out of. Colored men are not admitted to the
printers' trade-union, nor, with very rare exceptions are they employed
in any city of the United States in a paid capacity as printers or
writers; one of the rare exceptions being the employment of H. Price
Williams, on the _Sunday Press_ of this city. We are not employed as
salesmen or pharmacists, or saleswomen, or bank clerks, or merchants'
clerks, or tradesmen, or mechanics, or telegraph operators, or to any
degree as State or government officials, and I could keep on with the
string of "ors" until to-morrow morning, but the patience of an audience
has its limit.

Slavery made us poor, and its gloomy, malicious shadow tends to keep us
so. I beg to say, kind hearers, that this is not spoken in a spirit of
recrimination. We have no quarrel with our fate, and we leave your
Christianity to yourselves. Our faith is firmly fixed in that "Eternal
Providence," that in its own good time will "justify the ways of God to
man." But, believing that to get the right men into the right places is
a "consummation most devoutly to be wished," it is a matter of serious
concern to us to see our youth with just as decided diversity of talent
as any other people, herded together into but three or four occupations.

It is cruel to make a teacher or a preacher of a man who ought to be a
printer or a blacksmith, and that is exactly the condition we are now
obliged to submit to. The greatest advance that has been made since the
War has been effected by political parties, and it is precisely the
political positions that we think it least desirable our youth should
fill. We