University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER IV.

One of the main problems as regards
the education of the Negro is how to
have him use his education to the best
advantage after he has secured it. In
saying this, I do not want to be understood
as implying that the problem of
simple ignorance among the masses
has been settled in the South; for this
is far from true. The amount of ignorance
still prevailing among the Negroes,
especially in the rural districts, is
very large and serious. But I repeat,
we must go farther if we would secure
the best results and most gratifying
returns in public good for the money
spent than merely to put academic education
in the Negro's head with the
idea that this will settle everything.

In his present condition it is important,
in seeking after what he terms the
ideal, that the Negro should not neglect
to prepare himself to take advantage of

the opportunities that are right about
his door. If he lets these opportunities
slip, I fear they will never be his again.
In-saying this, I mean always that the
Negro should have the most thorough
mental and religious training; for without
it no race can succeed. Because of
his past history and environment and
present condition it is important that he
be carefully guided for years to come in
the proper use of his education. Much
valuable time has been lost and money
spent in vain, because too many have
not been educated with the idea of
fitting them to do well the things which
they could get to do. Because of the
lack of proper direction of the Negro's
education, some good friends of his,
North and South, have not taken that
interest in it that they otherwise would
have taken. In too many cases where
merely literary education alone has been
given the Negro youth, it has resulted
in an exaggerated estimate of his importance
in the world, and an increase
of wants which his education has not
fitted him to supply.

But, in discussing this subject, one is
often met with the question, Should
not the Negro be encouraged to prepare
himself for any station in life that
any other race fills? I would say, Yes;
but the surest way for the Negro to
reach the highest positions is to prepare
himself to fill well at the present time
the basic occupations. This will give
him a foundation upon which to stand
while securing what is called the more
exalted positions. The Negro has the
right to study law; but success will
come to the race sooner if it produces
intelligent, thrifty farmers, mechanics,
and housekeepers to support the lawyers.
The want of proper direction of
the use of the Negro's education results
in tempting too many to live mainly by
their wits, without producing anything
that is of real value to the world. Let
me quote examples of this.

Hayti, Santo Domingo, and Liberia,
although among the richest countries in
natural resources in the world, are discouraging
examples of what must happen
to any people who lack industrial
or technical training. It is said that
in Liberia there are no wagons, wheelbarrows,
or public roads, showing very
plainly that there is a painful absence
of public spirit and thrift. What is
true of Liberia is also true in a measure
of the republics of Hayti and Santo
Domingo. The people have not yet
learned the lesson of turning their education
toward the cultivation of the soil
and the making of the simplest implements
for agricultural and other forms
of labour.

Much would have been done toward
laying a sound foundation for general
prosperity if some attention had been
spent in this direction. General education
itself has no bearing on the subject
at issue, because, while there is no well-established

public school system in
either of these countries, yet large numbers
of men of both Hayti and Santo
Domingo have been educated in France
for generations. This is especially true
of Hayti. The education has been altogether
in the direction of belles lettres,
however, and practically little in the,
direction of industrial and scientific
education.

It is a matter of common knowledge
that Hayti has to send abroad even to
secure engineers for her men-of-war, for
plans for her bridges and other work
requiring technical knowledge and skill.
I should very much regret to see any
such condition obtain in any large
measure as regards the coloured people
in the South, and yet this will be our
fate if industrial education is much
longer neglected. We have spent
much time in the South in educating
men and women in letters alone, too,
and must now turn our attention more

than ever toward educating them so as
to supply their wants and needs. It Is
more lamentable to see educated people
unable to support themselves than to
see uneducated people in the same condition.
Ambition all along this line
must be stimulated.

If educated men and women of the
race will see and acknowledge the
necessity of practical industrial training
and go to work with a zeal and determination,
their example will be followed
by others, who are now without ambition
of any kind.

The race cannot hope to come into
its own until the young coloured men
and women make up their minds to
assist in the general development along
these lines. The elder men and women
trained in the hard school of slavery,
and who so long possessed all of the
labour, skilled and unskilled, of the
South, are dying out; their places must
be filled by their children, or we shall

lose our hold upon these occupations.
Leaders in these occupations are needed
now more than ever.

It is not enough that the idea be in-Culcated
that coloured people should
get book learning; along with it they
should be taught that book education
and industrial development must go
hand in hand. No, race which fails to
do this can ever hope to succeed. Phillips
Brooks gave expression to the sentiment:
"One generation gathers the
material, and the next generation builds
the palaces." As I understand it, he
wished to inculcate the idea that one
generation lays the foundation for succeeding
generations. The rough, affairs
of life very largely fall to the earlier
generation, while the next one has the
privilege of dealing with the higher and
more æsthetic things of life. This is
true of all generations, of all peoples;
and, unless the foundation is deeply laid,
it is impossible for the succeeding one

to have a career in any way approaching
success. As regards the coloured men
of the South, as regards the coloured
men of the United States, this is the
generation which, in a large measure,
must gather the material with which to
lay the foundation for future success.

Some time ago it was my misfortune
to see a Negro sixty-five years old living
in poverty and filth. I was disgusted,
and said to him, "If you are worthy of
your freedom, you would surely have
changed your condition during the
thirty years of freedom which you have
enjoyed." He answered: "I do want
to change. I want to do something
for my wife and children; but I do not
know how,—I do not know what to do."
I looked into his lean and haggard face,
and realised more deeply than ever before
the absolute need of captains of
industry among the great masses of the
coloured people.

It is possible for a race or an individual

to have mental development
and yet be so handicapped by custom,
prejudice, and lack of employment as
to dwarf and discourage the whole
life. This is the condition that prevails
among the race in many of the
large cities of the North; and it is to
prevent this same condition in the South
that I plead with all the earnestness of
my heart. Mental development alone
will not give us what we want, but
mental development tied to hand and
heart training will be the salvation of
the Negro.

In many respects the next twenty
years are going to be the most serious
in the history of the race. Within
this period it will be largely decided
whether the Negro will be able to retain
the hold which he now has upon
the industries of the South or whether
his place will be filled by white people
from a distance. The only way he can
prevent the industrial occupations slipping

from him in all parts of the South,
as they have already in certain parts,
is for all educators, ministers, and
friends of the race to unite in pushing
forward in a whole-souled manner the
industrial or business development of
the Negro, whether in school or out
of school. Four times as many young
men and women of the race should be
receiving industrial training. Just now
the Negro is in a position to feel and
appreciate the need of this in a way that
no one else can. No one can fully appreciate
what I am saying who has not
walked the streets of a Northern city
day after day seeking employment, only
to find every door closed against him on
account of his colour, except in menial
service. It is to prevent the same thing
taking place in the South that I plead.
We may argue that mental development
will take care of all this. Mental
development is a good thing. Gold Is
also a good thing, but gold is worthless
without an opportunity to make itself
touch the world of trade. Education
increases greatly an individual's wants.
It is cruel in many cases to increase
the wants of the black youth by mental
development alone without, at the same
time, increasing his ability to supply
these increased wants in occupations in
which, he can find employment.

The place made vacant by the death
of the old coloured man who was trained
as a carpenter during slavery, and who
since the war had been the leading contractor
and builder in the Southern town,
had to be filled. No young coloured carpenter
capable of filling his place could
be found. The result was that his place
was filled by a white mechanic from the
North, or from Europe, or from elsewhere.
What is true of carpentry and
house-building in this case is true, in a
degree, in every skilled occupation;
and it is becoming true of common
labour. I do not mean to say that all of

the skilled labour has been taken out of
the Negro's hands; but I do mean to say
that in no part of the South is he so
strong in the matter of skilled labour as
he was twenty years ago, except possibly
in the country districts and the smaller
towns. In the more northern of the
Southern cities, such as Richmond and
Baltimore, the change is most apparent;
and it is being felt in every Southern city.
Wherever the Negro has lost ground industrially
the South, it is not because
there is prejudice against him as a skilled
labourer on the part of the native Southern
white man; the Southern white
man generally prefers to do business with
the Negro mechanic rather than with a
white one, because he is accustomed to
do business with the Negro in this respect.
There is almost no prejudice
against the Negro in the South in matters
of Business, so far as the native
whites are concerned; and here is the
entering wedge for the solution of the
race problem. But too often, where the
white mechanic or factory operative
from the North gets a hold, the trades-union
soon follows, and the Negro is
crowded to the wall.

But what is the remedy for this condition?
First, it is most important that
the Negro and his white friends honestly
face the facts as they are; otherwise the
time will not be very far distant when
the Negro of the South will be crowded
to the ragged edge of industrial life as
he is in the North. There is still time
to repair the damage and to reclaim
what we have lost.

I stated in the beginning that industrial
education for the Negro has
been misunderstood. This has been
chiefly because some have gotten the
idea that industrial development was opposed
to the Negro's higher mental development.
This has little or nothing
to do with the subject under discussion;
we should no longer permit such an

idea to aid in depriving the Negro of the
legacy in the form of skilled labour that
was purchased by his forefathers at the
price of two hundred and fifty years of
slavery. I would say to the black boy
what I would say to the white boy, Get
all the mental development that your
time and pocket-book will allow of,—the
more, the better; but the time has come
when a larger proportion—not all, for
we need professional men and women—
of the educated coloured men and women
should give themselves to industrial or
business life. The professional class
will be helped in so far as the rank
and file have an industrial foundation, so
that they can pay for professional service.
Whether they receive the training
of the hand while pursuing their academic
training or after their academic
training is finished, or whether they will
get their literary training in an industrial
school or college, are questions
which each individual must decide for
himself. No matter how or where educated,
the educated men and women
must come to the rescue of the race in
the effort to get and hold its industrial
footing. I would not have the standard
of mental development lowered one whit;
for, with the Negro, as with all races,
mental strength is the basis of all progress.
But I would have a large measure
of this mental strength reach the
Negroes' actual needs through the, medium
of the hand. Just now the need
is not so much for the common carpenters,
brick masons, farmers, and laundry
women as for industrial leaders who, in
addition to their practical knowledge,
can draw plans, make estimates, take
contracts; those who understand the
latest methods of truck-gardening and
the science underlying practical agriculture;
those who understand, machinery
to the extent that they can operate steam
and electric laundries, so that our women
can hold on to the laundry work in the
South, that is so fast drifting into the
hands of others in the large cities and
towns.

Having tried to show in previous
chapters to what a condition the lack
of practical training has brought matters
in the South, and by the examples
in this chapter where this state of things
may go if allowed to run its course, I
wish now to show what practical training,
even in its infancy among us, has
already accomplished.

I noticed, when I first went to Tuskegee
to start the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, that some of the
white people about there rather looked
doubtfully at me; and I thought I could
get their influence by telling them how
much algebra and history and science
and all those things I had in my head,
but they treated me about the same as
they did before. They didn't seem to
care about the algebra, history, and
science that were in my head only.

Those people never even began to have
confidence in me until we commenced
to build a large three-story brick building,
and then another and another, until
now we have forty buildings which
have been erected largely by the labour
of our students; and to-day we have the
respect and confidence of all the white
people in that section.

There is an unmistakable influence
that comes over a white man when he
sees a black man living in a two-story
brick house that has been paid for. I
need not stop to explain. It is the
tangible evidence of prosperity. You
know Thomas doubted the Saviour after
he had risen from the dead; and the
Lord said to Thomas, "Reach hither
thy finger, and behold my hands; and
reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into
my side." The tangible evidence convinced
Thomas.

We began, soon after going to Tuskegee,
the manufacture of bricks. We

also started a wheelwright establishment
and the manufacture of good
wagons and buggies; and the white
people came to our institution for that
kind of work. We also put in a printing
plant, and did job printing for the
white people as well as for the blacks.

By having something that these people
wanted, we came into contact with
them, and our interest became interlinked
with their interest, until to-day
we have no warmer friends anywhere in
the country than we have among the
white people of Tuskegee. We have
found by experience that the best way
to get on well with people is to have
something that they want, and that is
why we emphasise this Christian Industrial
Education.

Not long ago I heard a conversation
among three white men something like
this. Two of them were berating the
Negro, saying the Negro was shiftless
and lazy, and all that sort of thing.

The third man listened to their remarks
for some time in silence, and then he
said: "I don't know what your experience
has been; but there is a 'nigger'
down our way who owns a good house
and lot with about fifty acres of ground.
His house is well furnished, and he has
got some splendid horses and cattle.
He is intelligent and has a bank account.
I don't know how the 'niggers'
are in your community, but Tobe Jones
is a gentleman. Once, when I was hard
up, I went to Tobe Jones and borrowed
fifty dollars; and he hasn't asked me for
it yet. I don't know what kind of
'niggers' you have down your way, but
Tobe Jones is a gentleman."

Now what we want to do is to multiply
and place in every community these
Tobe Joneses; and, just in so far as
we can place them throughout the
South this race question will disappear.

Suppose there was a black man who
had business for the railroads to the

amount of ten thousand dollars a year.
Do you suppose that, when that black
man takes his family aboard the train,
they are going to put him into a Jim
Crow car and run the risk of losing that
ten thousand dollars a year? No, they
will put on a Pullman palace car for
him.

Some time ago a certain coloured man
was passing through the streets of one
of the little Southern towns, and he
chanced to meet two white men on the
street. It happened that this coloured
man owns two or three houses and lots,
has a good education and a comfortable
bank account. One of the white men
turned to the other, and said: "By
Gosh! It is all I can do to keep from
calling that 'nigger' Mister." That's
the point we want to get to.

Nothing else so soon brings about
right relations between the two races in
the South as the commercial progress of
the Negro. Friction between the races

will pass away as the black man, by
reason of his skill, intelligence, and
character, can produce something that
the white man wants or respects in the
commercial world. This is another reason
why at Tuskegee we push industrial
training. We find that as every year
we put into a Southern community coloured
men who can start a brickyard,
a saw-mill, a tin-shop, or a printing-office,
—men who produce something
that makes the white man partly dependent
upon the Negro instead of all
the dependence being on the other side,
—a change for the better takes place
in the relations of the races. It is
through the dairy farm, the truck-garden,
the trades, the commercial life,
largely, that the Negro is to find his
way to respect and confidence.

What is the permanent value of the
Hampton and Tuskegee system of
training to the South, in a broader
sense? In connection with this, it is

well to bear in mind that slavery unconsciously
taught the white man that
labour with the hands was something fit
for the Negro only, and something for
the white man to come into contact
with just as little as possible. It is true
that there was a large class of poor
white people who laboured with the
hands, but they did it because they
were not able to secure Negroes to
work for them; and these poor whites
were constantly trying to imitate the
slaveholding class in escaping labour,
as they, too, regarded it as anything
but elevating. But the Negro, in turn,
looked down upon the poor whites with
a certain contempt because they had to
work. The Negro, it is to be borne in
mind, worked under constant protest,
because he felt that his labour was being
unjustly requited; and he spent almost
as much effort in planning how to escape
work as in learning how to work.
Labour with him was a badge of degradation.
The white man was held up
before him as the highest type of civilisation,
but the Negro noted that this
highest type of civilisation himself did
little labour with the hand. Hence he
argued that, the less work he did, the
more nearly he would be like the white
man. Then, in addition to these influences,
the slave system discouraged
labour-saving machinery. To use labour-saving
machinery, intelligence was required;
and intelligence and slavery
were not on friendly terms. Hence the
Negro always associated labour with
toil, drudgery, something to be escaped.
When the Negro first became free, his
idea of education was that it was something
that would soon put him in the
same position as regards work that his
recent master had occupied. Out of
these conditions grew the habit of putting
off till to-morrow and the day after
the duty that should be done promptly
to-day. The leaky house was not repaired
while the sun shone, for then the
rain did not come through. While the
rain was falling, no one cared to expose
himself to stop the rain. The plough,
on the same principle, was left where the
last furrow was run, to rot and rust in
the field during the winter. There
was no need to repair the wooden
chimney that was exposed to the fire,
because water could be thrown on it
when it was on fire. There was no
need to trouble about the payment of a
debt to-day, because it could be paid as
well next week or next year. Besides
these conditions, the whole South at the
close of the war was without proper
food, clothing, and shelter,—was in
need of habits of thrift and economy
and of something laid up for a rainy
day.

To me it seemed perfectly plain that
here was a condition of things that
could not be met by the ordinary process
of education. At Tuskegee we

became convinced that the thing to do
was to make a careful, systematic study
of the condition and needs of the
South, especially the Black Belt, and
to bend our efforts in the direction of
meeting these needs, whether we were
following a well-beaten track or were
hewing out a new path to meet conditions
probably without a parallel in the
world. After eighteen years of experience
and observation, what is the result?
Gradually, but surely, we find
that all through the South the disposition
to look upon labour as a disgrace
is on the wane; and the parents who
themselves sought to escape work are
so anxious to give their children training
in intelligent labour that every
institution which gives training in
the handicrafts is crowded, and many
(among them Tuskegee) have to refuse
admission to hundreds of applicants.
The influence of Hampton and Tuskegee
is shown again by the fact that
almost every little school at the remotest
cross-road is anxious to be known
as an industrial school, or, as some of
the coloured people call it, an "industrous"
school.

The social lines that were once
sharply drawn between those who
laboured with the hands and those
who did not are disappearing. Those
who formerly sought to escape labour,
now when they see that brains and skill
rob labour of the toil and drudgery once
associated with it, instead of trying to
avoid it, are willing to pay to be taught
how to engage in it. The South is beginning
to see labour raised up, dignified
and beautified, and in this sees its
salvation. In proportion as the love of
labour grows, the large idle class, which
has long been one of the curses of the
South, disappears. As people become
absorbed in their own affairs, they have
less time to attend to everybody's else
business.

The South is still an undeveloped
and unsettled country, and for the next
half-century and more the greater part
of the energy of the masses will be
needed to develop its material resources.
Any force that brings the
rank and file of the people to have a
greater love of industry is therefore especially
valuable. This result industrial
education is surely bringing about. It
stimulates production and increases
trade,—trade between the races; and
in this new and engrossing relation
both forget the past. The white man
respects the vote of a coloured man
who does ten thousand dollars' worth
of business; and, the more business the
coloured man has, the more careful he
is how he votes.

Immediately after the war there was
a large class of Southern people who
feared that the opening of the free
schools to the freedmen and the poor
whites—the education of the head

alone—would result merely in increasing
the class who sought to escape
labour, and that the South would soon
be overrun by the idle and vicious.
But, as the results of industrial combined
with academic training begin to
show themselves in hundreds of communities
that have been lifted up, these
former prejudices against education are
being removed. Many of those who a
few years ago opposed Negro education
are now among its warmest advocates.

This industrial training, emphasising,
as it does, the idea of economic production,
is gradually bringing the South
to the point where it is feeding itself.
After the war, what profit the South
made out of the cotton crop it spent
outside of the South to purchase food
supplies,—meat, bread, canned vegetables,
and the like,—but the improved
methods of agriculture are fast changing
this custom. With the newer
methods of labour, which teach promptness

and system and emphasise the
worth of the beautiful, the moral value
of the well-painted house, the fence with
every paling and nail in its place, is
bringing to bear upon the South an influence
that is making it a new country
in industry, education, and religion.

It seems to me I cannot do better
than to close this chapter on the needs
of the Southern Negro than by quoting
from a talk given to the students at
Tuskegee:—

"I want to be a little more specific in
showing you what you have to do and
how you must do it.

"One trouble with us is—and the
same is true of any young people, no
matter of what race or condition—we
have too many stepping-stones. We
step all the time, from one thing to
another. You find a young man who
is learning to make bricks; and, if you
ask him what he intends to do after
learning the trade, in too many cases

he will answer, 'Oh, I am simply working
at this trade as a stepping-stone to
something higher.' You see a young
man working at the brick-mason's trade,
and he will be apt to say the same
thing. And young women learning to
be milliners and dressmakers will tell
you the same. All are stepping to
something higher. And so we always
go on, stepping somewhere, never getting
hold of anything thoroughly. Now
we must stop this stepping business,
having so many stepping-stones. Instead,
we have got to take hold of
these important industries, and stick to
them until we master them thoroughly.
There is no nation so thorough in their
education as the Germans. Why?
Simply because the German takes hold
of a thing, and sticks to it until he
masters it. Into it he puts brains and
thought from morning to night. He
reads all the best books and journals
bearing on that particular study, and he
feels that nobody else knows so much
about it as he does.

"Take any of the industries I have
mentioned, that of brick-making, for example.
Any one working at that trade
should determine to learn all there is to
be known about making bricks; read all
the papers and journals bearing upon
the trade; learn not only to make common
hand-bricks, but pressed bricks,
fire-bricks,—in short, the finest and best
bricks there are to be made. And, when
you have learned all you can by reading
and talking with other people, you
should travel from one city to another,
and learn how the best bricks are made.
And then, when you go into business
for yourself, you will make a reputation
for being the best brick-maker in the
community; and in this way you will
put yourself on your feet, and become
a helpful and useful citizen. When a
young man does this, goes out into one
of these Southern cities and makes a

reputation for himself, that person wins
a reputation that is going to give him a
standing and position. And, when the
children of that successful brick-maker
come along, they will be able to take
a higher position in life. The grandchildren
will be able to take a still
higher position. And it will be traced
back to that grandfather who, by his
great success as a brick-maker, laid a
foundation that was of the right kind.

"What I have said about these two
trades can be applied with equal force
to the trades followed by women. Take
the matter of millinery. There is no
good reason why there should not be,
in each principal city in the South, at
least three or four competent coloured
women in charge of millinery establishments.
But what is the trouble?

"Instead of making the most of
our opportunities in this industry, the
temptation, in too many cases, is to be
music-teachers, teachers of elocution,

or something else that few of the race
at present have any money to pay for,
or the opportunity to earn money to
pay for, simply because there is no
foundation. But, when more coloured
people succeed in the more fundamental
occupations, they will then be able to
make better provision for their children
in what are termed the higher walks of
life.

"And, now, what I have said about
these important industries is especially
true of the important industry of agriculture.
We are living in a country
where, if we are going to succeed at all,
we are going to do so largely by what we
raise out of the soil. The people in those
backward countries I have told you about
have failed to give attention to the cultivation
of the soil, to the invention and
use of improved agricultural implements
and machinery. Without this no people
can succeed. No race which fails
to put brains into agriculture can succeed;

and, if you want to realize the
truth of this statement, go with me into
the back districts of some of our Southern
States, and you will find many
people in poverty, and yet they are
surrounded by a rich country.

"A race, like an individual, has got to
have a reputation. Such a reputation
goes a long way toward helping a race
or an individual; and, when we have, succeeded
in getting such a reputation, we
shall find that a great many of the discouraging
features of our life will melt
away.

"Reputation is what people think we
are, and a great deal depends on that.
When a race gets a reputation along
certain lines, a great many things which
now seem complex, difficult to attain,
and are most discouraging, will disappear.

"When you say that an engine is
a Corliss engine, people understand
that that engine is a perfect piece of

mechanical work,—perfect as far as
human skill and ingenuity can make it
perfect. You say a car is a Pullman
car. That is all; but what does it mean?
It means that the builder of that car got
a reputation at the outset for thorough,
perfect work, for turning out everything
in first-class shape. And so with a race.
You cannot keep back very long a race
that has the reputation for doing perfect
work in everything that it undertakes.
And then we have got to get a
reputation for economy. Nobody cares
to associate with an individual in business
or otherwise who has a reputation
for being a trifling spendthrift, who
spends his money for things that he can
very easily get along without, who
spends his money for clothing, gewgaws,
superficialities, and other things, when
he has not got the necessaries of life.
We want to give the race a reputation
for being frugal and saving in everything.
Then we want to get a reputation
for being industrious. Now, remember
these three things: Get a reputation
for being skilled. It will not do
for a few here and there to have it: the
race must have the reputation. Get a
reputation for being so skilful, so industrious,
that you will not leave a job until
it is as nearly perfect as any one can
make it. And then we want to make a
reputation for the race for being honest,
—honest at all times and under all circumstances.
A few individuals here
and there have it, a few communities
have it; but the race as a mass must
get it.

"You recall that story of Abraham
Lincoln, how, when he was postmaster
at a small village, he had left on his
hands $1.50 which the government did
not call for. Carefully wrapping up this
money in a handkerchief, he kept it for
ten years. Finally, one day, the government
agent called for this amount; and
it was promptly handed over to him by

Abraham Lincoln, who told him that
during all those ten years he had never
touched a cent of that money. He
made it a principle of his life never to
use other people's money. That trait
of his character helped him along to the
Presidency. The race wants to get a
reputation for being strictly honest in
all its dealings and transactions,—honest
in handling money, honest in all its
dealings with its fellow-men.

"And then we want to get a reputation
for being thoughtful. This I
want to emphasise more than anything
else. We want to get a reputation
for doing things without being told to
do them every time. If you have work
to do, think about it so constantly, investigate
and read about it so thoroughly,
that you will always be finding ways
and means of improving that work.
The average person going to work
becomes a regular machine, never giving
the matter of improving the methods

of his work a thought. He is never at
his work before the appointed time, and
is sure to stop the minute the hour is
up. The world is looking for the person
who is thoughtful, who will say at
the close of work hours: 'Is there not
something else I can do for you? Can
I not stay a little later, and help you?'

"Moreover, it is with a race as it is
with an individual: it must respect itself
if it would win the respect of others.
There must be a certain amount of unity
about a race, there must be a great
amount of pride about a race, there
must be a great deal of faith on the
part of a race in itself. An individual
cannot succeed unless he has about him
a certain amount of pride,—enough
pride to make him aspire to the highest
and best things in life. An individual
cannot succeed unless that individual
has a great amount of faith in himself.

"A person who goes at an undertaking
with the feeling that he cannot

succeed is likely to fail. On the other
hand, the individual who goes at an
undertaking, feeling that he can succeed,
is the individual who in nine
cases out of ten does succeed. But,
whenever you find an individual that is
ashamed of his race, trying to get away
from his race, apologising for being a
member of his race, then you find
a weak individual. Where you find
a race that is ashamed of itself, that is
apologising for itself, there you will find
a weak, vacillating race. Let us no
longer have to apologise for our race
in these or other matters. Let us think
seriously and work seriously: then, as
a race, we shall be thought of seriously,
and, therefore, seriously respected."