time in the South in educating men and women in letters alone,
too, and must now turn our attention more than ever toward educating
them so as to supply their wants and needs. It is more lamentable to
see educated people unable to support themselves than to see
uneducated people in the same condition. Ambition all along this line
must be stimulated.

If educated men and women of the race will see and acknowledge the
necessity of practical industrial training and go to work with a zeal
and determination, their example will be followed by others, who are
now without ambition of any kind.

The race cannot hope to come into its own until the young coloured men
and women make up their minds to assist in the general development
along these lines. The elder men and women trained in the hard school
of slavery, and who so long possessed all of the labour, skilled and
unskilled, of the South, are dying out; their places must be filled by
their children, or we shall lose our hold upon these occupations.
Leaders in these occupations are needed now more than ever.

It is not enough that the idea be inculcated that coloured people
should get book learning; along with it they should be taught that
book education and industrial development must go hand in hand. No
race which fails to do this can ever hope to succeed. Phillips Brooks
gave expression to the sentiment: "One generation gathers the
material, and the next generation builds the palaces." As I understand
it, he wished to inculcate the idea that one generation lays the
foundation for succeeding generations. The rough affairs of life very
largely fall to the earlier generation, while the next one has the
privilege of dealing with the higher and more aesthetic things of life.
This is true of all generations, of all peoples; and, unless the
foundation is deeply laid, it is impossible for the succeeding one to
have a career in any way approaching success. As regards the coloured
men of the South, as regards the coloured men of the United States,
this is the generation which, in a large measure, must gather the
material with which to lay the foundation for future success.

Some time ago it was my misfortune to see a Negro sixty-five years old
living in poverty and filth. I was disgusted, and said to him, "If you
are worthy of your freedom, you would surely have changed your
condition during the thirty years of freedom which you have enjoyed."
He answered: "I do want to change. I