she hadn't reached it, and that she was too old ever to reach it. But it was much that he had reached it."
One woman expressed the opinion to me in private that it is not so much race-hatred as the turbulent element in our population that is on the increase. She said that riots were everywhere becoming more frequent, and it was but natural that race-hatred should sometimes be made the pretext for these. One woman who believed that the prejudice was growing greater reminded her hearers that the best way to remedy the evil was to make every effort to raise the standard of the race, so that there could be no possible excuse for it. The young poet of the occasion voiced the same sentiment in the lines:
For our problem is hard;
We must figure it out;
And our backs they are scarred
By hard blows that were stout;
But we'll rise by our worth,
In this prejudiced earth,
For our work makes the man.
Be a man, be a man![1]
Over and over again it was pointed out that industrial education is one of the chief needs of the race—education that shall fit the negro to do the work that he can get to do; education that shall redeem his life from drudgery by enabling him to take a scientific interest in his work, by developing his intellect so that he may apply it to discovering the shortest and best methods for accomplishing the desired results.
In many parts of the South there is no prejudice against the negro in business relations. But the negro, because of his lack of education, has too often failed to take advantage of his opportunities, and so they have been taken away from him. Men must be trained to fill the places that are still open to them. Further, where white men refuse to work with colored men, a sufficient number of skilled colored men must be found to carry on a business by themselves. For this, not only ability to do one's own work, but ability to superintend the work of others, is necessary.
- ↑ Mr. Charles Henry Shoeman, of Ann Arbor.
