pent in
slavery he had little cause or incentive to accumulate money or
property. Thirty-five years ago this was something which he had to
begin to learn. While the great bulk of the race is still without
money and property, yet the signs of thrift are evident on every hand.
Especially is this noticeable in the large number of neat little homes
which are owned by these people on the outer edges of the towns and
cities in the South.

I wish to give an example of the sort of thing the Negro has to
contend with, however, in his efforts to lift himself up.

Not long ago a mother, a black mother, who lived in one of our
Northern States, had heard it whispered around in her community for
years that the Negro was lazy, shiftless, and would not work. So, when
her only boy grew to sufficient size, at considerable expense and
great self-sacrifice, she had her boy thoroughly taught the
machinist's trade. A job was secured in a neighbouring shop. With
dinner bucket in hand and spurred on by the prayers of the now
happy-hearted mother, the boy entered the shop to begin his first
day's work. What happened? Every one of the twenty white men threw
down his tools, and deliberately walked out, swearing that he would
not give a black man an opportunity to earn an honest living. Another
shop was tried with the same result, and still another, the result
ever the same. To-day this once promising, ambitious black man is a
wreck,--a confirmed drunkard,--with no hope, no ambition. I ask, Who
blasted the life of this young man? On whose hands does his lifeblood
rest? The present system of education, or rather want of education, is
responsible.

Public schools and colleges should turn out men who will throw open
the doors of industry, so that all men, everywhere, regardless of
colour, shall have the same opportunity to earn a dollar that they now
have to spend it. I know of a good many kinds of cowardice and
prejudice, but I know none equal to this. I know not which is the
worst,--the slaveholder who perforce compelled his slave to work
without compensation or the man who, by force and strikes, compels his
neighbour to refrain from working for compensation.

The Negro will be on a different footing in this country when it
becomes common to associate the possession of wealth with a black
skin. It is not within the province of human nature that the man who
is intelligent and virtuous, and owns and cultivates the best farm in
his county, is th