places. There were young men educated in foreign tongues, but few in
carpentry or in mechanical or architectural drawing. Many were trained in
Latin, but few as engineers and blacksmiths. Too many were taken from the
farm and educated, but educated in everything but farming. For this reason
they had no interest in farming and did not return to it. And yet
eighty-five per cent. of the Negro population of the Southern states lives
and for a considerable time will continue to live in the country
districts. The charge is often brought against the members of my race--and
too often justly, I confess--that they are found leaving the country
districts and flocking into the great cities where temptations are more
frequent and harder to resist, and where the Negro people too often become
demoralized. Think, though, how frequently it is the case that from the
first day that a pupil begins to go to school his books teach him much
about the cities of the world and city life, and almost nothing about the
country. How natural it is, then, that when he has the ordering of his
life he wants to live it in the city.

Only a short time before his death the late Mr. C.P. Huntington, to whose
memory a magnificent library has just been given by his widow to the
Hampton Institute for Negroes, in Virginia, said in a public address some
words which seem to me so wise that I want to quote them here:

"Our schools teach everybody a little of almost everything, but, in my
opinion, they teach very few children just what they ought to know in
order to make their way successfully in life. They do not put into their
hands the tools they are best fitted to use, and hence so many failures.
Many a mother and sister have worked and slaved, living upon scanty food,
in order to give a son and brother a "liberal education," and in doing
this have built up a barrier between the boy and the work he was fitted to
do. Let me say to you that all honest work is honorable work. If the labor