ant by the death of the old coloured man who was
trained as a carpenter during slavery, and who since the war had been
the leading contractor and builder in the Southern town, had to be
filled. No young coloured carpenter capable of filling his place could
be found. The result was that his place was filled by a white mechanic
from the North, or from Europe, or from elsewhere. What is true of
carpentry and house-building in this case is true, in a degree, in
every skilled occupation; and it is becoming true of common labour. I
do not mean to say that all of the skilled labour has been taken out
of the Negro's hands; but I do mean to say that in no part of the
South is he so strong in the matter of skilled labour as he was twenty
years ago, except possibly in the country districts and the smaller
towns. In the more northern of the Southern cities, such as Richmond
and Baltimore, the change is most apparent; and it is being felt in
every Southern city. Wherever the Negro has lost ground industrially
in the South, it is not because there is prejudice against him as a
skilled labourer on the part of the native Southern white man; the
Southern white man generally prefers to do business with the Negro
mechanic rather than with a white one, because he is accustomed to do
business with the Negro in this respect. There is almost no prejudice
against the Negro in the South in matters of business, so far as the
native whites are concerned; and here is the entering wedge for the
solution of the race problem. But too often, where the white mechanic
or factory operative from the North gets a hold, the trades-union soon
follows, and the Negro is crowded to the wall.

But what is the remedy for this condition? First, it is most important
that the Negro and his white friends honestly face the facts as they
are; otherwise the time will not be very far distant when the Negro of
the South will be crowded to the ragged edge of industrial life as he
is in the North. There is still time to repair the damage and to
reclaim what we have lost.

I stated in the beginning that industrial education for the Negro has
been misunderstood. This has been chiefly because some have gotten the
idea that industrial development was opposed to the Negro's higher
mental development. This has little or nothing to do with the subject
under discussion; we should no longer permit such an idea to aid in
depriving the Negro of the legacy in the form of skilled labou