of the chief factors in securing the future wealth of the
country. These reasons combine with overwhelming force to show that an
exodus is undesirable and impossible, and that the Negro is here to
stay.

And he is to be here in greatly increased numbers. The fecundity of the
race is remarkable. The 4,000,000 blacks that were freed by the
emancipation proclamation are 8,000,000 now. They multiply by births
alone 7 per cent. faster than the whites by births and immigration
combined. It is estimated that they are increasing at the rate of 500 a
day and that their numbers are now doubling every twenty years. This may
be a little exaggerated, but it is not far out of the way. If they are
increasing and continue to increase at this rate, in twenty years they
will be 16,000,000 strong, or nearly as many as the entire population of
the whole country in 1840; by 1930, they will number 32,000,000, or more
than we had of all races here at the outbreak of our Civil War; by the
middle of the next century they will number 64,000,000, or more than our
present population within the borders of the Republic. Discount this
estimate as much as you please, the increase in the colored race is sure
to be tremendous, and it is plain that the race problem will increase in
difficulty and in momentous consequences to the Nation until it is
settled on Christian principles. And the work of settling it admits of
no delay.

The Negro is to be a very important factor in promoting the future
prosperity of the country. Already it is manifest that his value to the
South as a freed man is far greater than the price formerly set upon him
as a chattel. The unrequited toil of the slave is seen in the light of
history to be the dearest kind of labor. It was frequently said after
the war that the emancipated Negro would be worthless as a laborer; that
he was naturally lazy, shiftless, and a shirk, and that he would relapse
into a vagabond. But, as a matter of fact, far more good work has been
done in the South since the war than before, and for the most part the
Negro has done it. Great crops of cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, corn,
and other staples have been raised and marketed; mines have been
developed, railroads built, manufactories established, and hundreds of
other industries opened and pushed in the new era of prosperity which
has dawned in the South; and while the capital and brains for this have
been furnished by the whites, and largely from the North