South,
especially the Black Belt, and to bend our efforts in the direction of
meeting these needs, whether we were following a well-beaten track or
were hewing out a new path to meet conditions probably without a
parallel in the world. After eighteen years of experience and
observation, what is the result? Gradually, but surely, we find that
all through the South the disposition to look upon labour as a
disgrace is on the wane; and the parents who themselves sought to
escape work are so anxious to give their children training in
intelligent labour that every institution which gives training in the
handicrafts is crowded, and many (among them Tuskegee) have to refuse
admission to hundreds of applicants. The influence of Hampton and
Tuskegee is shown again by the fact that almost every little school
at the remotest cross-road is anxious to be known as an industrial
school, or, as some of the coloured people call it, an "industrous"
school.

The social lines that were once sharply drawn between those who
laboured with the hands and those who did not are disappearing. Those
who formerly sought to escape labour, now when they see that brains
and skill rob labour of the toil and drudgery once associated with it,
instead of trying to avoid it, are willing to pay to be taught how to
engage in it. The South is beginning to see labour raised up,
dignified and beautified, and in this sees its salvation. In
proportion as the love of labour grows, the large idle class, which
has long been one of the curses of the South, disappears. As people
become absorbed in their own affairs, they have less time to attend to
everybody's else business.

The South is still an undeveloped and unsettled country, and for the
next half-century and more the greater part of the energy of the
masses will be needed to develop its material resources. Any force
that brings the rank and file of the people to have a greater love of
industry is therefore especially valuable. This result industrial
education is surely bringing about. It stimulates production and
increases trade,--trade between the races; and in this new and
engrossing relation both forget the past. The white man respects the
vote of a coloured man who does ten thousand dollars' worth of
business; and, the more business the coloured man has, the more
careful he is how he votes.

Immediately after the war there was a large class of Southern people
who feared that the opening of the free schoo