civilization--to learn that there are a few simple, cardinal principles
upon which a race must start its upward course, unless it would fail, and
its last estate be worse than its first.

It has been necessary for the Negro to learn the difference between being
worked and working--to learn that being worked meant degradation, while
working means civilization; that all forms of labor are honorable, and all
forms of idleness disgraceful. It has been necessary for him to learn that
all races that have got upon their feet have done so largely by laying an
economic foundation, and, in general, by beginning in a proper cultivation
and ownership of the soil.

Forty years ago my race emerged from slavery into freedom. If, in too many
cases, the Negro race began development at the wrong end, it was largely
because neither white nor black properly understood the case. Nor is it
any wonder that this was so, for never before in the history of the world
had just such a problem been presented as that of the two races at the
coming of freedom in this country.

For two hundred and fifty years, I believe the way for the redemption of
the Negro was being prepared through industrial development. Through all
those years the Southern white man did business with the Negro in a way
that no one else has done business with him. In most cases if a Southern
white man wanted a house built he consulted a Negro mechanic about the
plan and about the actual building of the structure. If he wanted a suit
of clothes made he went to a Negro tailor, and for shoes he went to a
shoemaker of the same race. In a certain way every slave plantation in the
South was an industrial school. On these plantations young colored men and
women were constantly being trained not only as farmers but as carpenters,
blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses,