ly in different localities, ranging from
10 per cent. in North Carolina, to 20 per cent. in Virginia, 50 and 60
per cent. in some parts of Georgia, and 75 per cent. in some parts of
Florida. A writer from Montgomery, Ala., even claimed 90 per cent. of
home-owners among his acquaintances.

Many, also, are coming into the ownership of land. Mr. Morris stated
four years ago that colored people owned 680,000 acres of land in
Georgia, and 5,000,000 acres in the whole South. Dr. Haygood estimates
that they own about $10,000,000 worth of taxable property in Georgia,
and it is stated that "within twenty-five years the colored people of
sixteen Southern States have accumulated real and personal property
estimated at more than $200,000,000." This, certainly, is a most
remarkable showing for a people of whom it was freely prophesied that
they would never be more than an indolent race of beggars. It shows that
if they can only be given "a white man's chance" they will be as thrifty
and prosperous as their Caucasian brothers, and that the wealth which
this rapidly increasing race will produce in the next half century will
much of it be their own property. Poverty is no more an essential
characteristic of the African than of the white American, and it looks
as though the Negro was likely to win his fair share of our prosperity
in the years to come.

The capacity for improvement is also indicated by the large variety of
occupations which the Negro is successfully pursuing. It has been
imagined by some that the work he could do is exceedingly limited in its
range, and that he must needs be a barber, a waiter, or a small farmer.
But at the New Orleans Exposition not long ago, an entire gallery across
one end of the building was assigned to the colored people, and they
more than filled it with an astonishing array of their products in all
sorts of work. There were exhibits of mechanical, agricultural and
artistic skill; specimens of millinery, tailoring, painting,
photography, sculpture; many useful inventions; models of engines,
steamboats, rail-cars; specimens of all kinds of tools, pianos, organs,
pottery, tinware, and so on. It was made manifest that the Negro can
succeed in any trade or occupation that the white man follows. They are
diversifying their labor more and more. They are physicians, lawyers,
master-mechanics, bridge-builders. They edit, own and manage a hundred
newspapers.

The avidity with which they receive education