ls to the freedmen and
the poor whites--the education of the head alone--would result merely
in increasing the class who sought to escape labour, and that the
South would soon be overrun by the idle and vicious. But, as the
results of industrial combined with academic training begin to show
themselves in hundreds of communities that have been lifted up, these
former prejudices against education are being removed. Many of those
who a few years ago opposed Negro education are now among its warmest
advocates.

This industrial training, emphasising, as it does, the idea of
economic production, is gradually bringing the South to the point
where it is feeding itself. After the war, what profit the South made
out of the cotton crop it spent outside of the South to purchase food
supplies,--meat, bread, canned vegetables, and the like,--but the
improved methods of agriculture are fast changing this custom. With
the newer methods of labour, which teach promptness and system and
emphasise the worth of the beautiful, the moral value of the
well-painted house, the fence with every paling and nail in its place,
is bringing to bear upon the South an influence that is making it a
new country in industry, education, and religion.

It seems to me I cannot do better than to close this chapter on the
needs of the Southern Negro than by quoting from a talk given to the
students at Tuskegee:--

"I want to be a little more specific in showing you what you have
to do and how you must do it.

"One trouble with us is--and the same is true of any young
people, no matter of what race or condition--we have too many
stepping-stones. We step all the time, from one thing to another.
You find a young man who is learning to make bricks; and, if you
ask him what he intends to do after learning the trade, in too
many cases he will answer, 'Oh, I am simply working at this
trade as a stepping-stone to something higher.' You see a young
man working at the brick-mason's trade, and he will be apt to say
the same thing. And young women learning to be milliners and
dressmakers will tell you the same. All are stepping to something
higher. And so we always go on, stepping somewhere, never getting
hold of anything thoroughly. Now we must stop this stepping
business, having so many stepping-stones. Instead, we have got to
take hold of these important industries, and stick to them un