ial training. The business
high schools are a great feature of the free school system. All
this is comparatively new. It has come because of the
necessities of an industrial age.

"'Knowledge for its own sake' is becoming more and more a
luxury, in which the sons and daughters of the rich indulge,
while the representatives of families that are merely well to
do feel that they must acquire knowledge for practical uses.
And this tendency is likely to continue, for, as we have said,
the field of the practical is expanding. Take, for example,
electricity and its uses. All that was known of this subject in
the time of our grandfathers could be learned in a few days or
weeks. To be an up-to-date electrical scientist and practical
electrician in 1901 means that years have been devoted to hard
work."

The crude notion held by some, that in far-off climes, to the American
Negro unknown, who, with small capital and limited education; with an
inherited mental inertia that is being dispelled and can only be
eradicated by contact with superior environment, that there awaits him
peace, plenty, and equality, is an ignis fatuus the most delusive. Peace
is the exhaustion of strife, and is only secure in her triumphs in being
in instant readiness for war; equality a myth, and plenty the
accumulation of weary toil.

With travel somewhat extensive and diversified; residence in tropical
latitudes of Negro origin, I have a decided conviction, despite the
crucial test to which he has been subjected in the past and the present
disadvantages under which he labors, nowhere is the promise along all
the lines of opportunity brighter for the American Negro than here in
the land of his nativity. For he needs the inspiriting dash, push, and
invincible determination of the Anglo-Saxon (having sufficient of his
deviltry) to make him a factor acknowledged and respected. But the fruit
of advantage will not drop as ripe fruit from the tree; it can be
gotten only by watchful, patient tillage, and frugal garnering.
Ignorance and wastefulness among the industrious but uneducated poor
render them incapable to cope with the shrewd and unprincipled. The
rivalry to excel in outward appearance and social amenities beyond the
usual moderate means on the part of the educated is a drawback to any
people, but one disastrous to the Negro in his march through arduous
toil and restricted condition