people, among them young men who have been well educated in
the languages and in literature; but not a single one could be found
who had been so trained in mechanical and architectural drawing that
he could carry on the business which this ex-slave had built up, and
so it was soon scattered to the wind. Aside from the work done in the
institutions that I have mentioned, you can find almost no coloured
men who have been trained in the principles of architecture,
notwithstanding the fact that a vast majority of our race are without
homes. Here, then, are the three prime conditions for growth, for
civilisation,--food, clothing, shelter; and yet we have been the
slaves of forms and customs to such an extent that we have failed in a
large measure to look matters squarely in the face and meet actual
needs.

It may well be asked by one who has not carefully considered the
matter: "What has become of all those skilled farm-hands that used to
be on the old plantations? Where are those wonderful cooks we hear
about, where those exquisitely trained house servants, those cabinet
makers, and the jacks-of-all-trades that were the pride of the South?"
This is easily answered,--they are mostly dead. The survivors are too
old to work. "But did they not train their children?" is the natural
question. Alas! the answer is "no." Their skill was so commonplace to
them, and to their former masters, that neither thought of it as being
a hard-earned or desirable accomplishment: it was natural, like
breathing. Their children would have it as a matter of course. What
their children needed was education. So they went out into the world,
the ambitious ones, and got education, and forgot the necessity of the
ordinary training to live.

God for two hundred and fifty years, in my opinion, prepared the way
for the redemption of the Negro through industrial development.
First, he made the Southern white man do business with the Negro for
two hundred and fifty years in a way that no one else has done
business with him. If a Southern white man wanted a house or a bridge
built, he consulted a Negro mechanic about the plan and about the
actual building of the house or bridge. If he wanted a suit of clothes
or a pair of shoes made, it was to the Negro tailor or shoemaker that
he talked. Secondly, every large slave plantation in the South was, in
a limited sense, an industrial school. On these plantations there were
scores of young coloured men and women w