white man as the latter can have, but the methods of the
modern bank, placing a time limit on debts, is his detestation. He much
prefers the _laissez-faire_ of the Southern plantation store.

_Lack of Initiative._ It was the policy of slavery to crush out the
combining instinct, and it was well done; for, outside of churches and
secret societies, the Negro has done little to increase the social
efficiency which can combine many men into an organic whole, subject to
the corporate will and direction. He has, however, made some hopeful
beginnings.

_Suspicion of his own race._ He was taught to watch other Negroes and tell
all that they did. This was slavery's native detective force to discover
incipient insurrection. Each slave learned to distrust his fellow. And
added to this is the knowledge one Negro has that no other has had half
sufficient experience in business to be a wise counsellor, or a safe
steward of another man's funds. Almost all Negroes who have acquired
wealth have entrusted its management to white men.

_Ignorance._ The causes of his ignorance all know. That he has thrown off
one-half of it in forty years is a wonderful showing; but a great incubus
remains in the other half, and it demands the nation's attention. What the
census calls literacy is often very shallow. The cause of this shallowness
lies, in part, in the poor character and short duration of Southern
schools; in the poverty that snatches the child from school prematurely to
work for bread; in the multitude of mushroom colleges and get-smart-quick
universities scattered over the South, and in the glamour of a
professional education that entices poorly prepared students into special
work.

Add to this, too, the commercialism of the age which regards each day in
school as a day out of the market. Boys and girls by scores learn the
mechanical parts of type-writing and stenography without the basal culture
which gives these callings their greatest efficiency. They copy a
manuscript, Chinese-like, mistakes and all; they take you phonetically in
sense as well as sound, having no reserve to draw upon to interpret a
learned allusion or unusual phrase. Thus while prejudice makes it hard to
secure a place, auto-deficiency loses many a one that is secured.

We have discussed the leading characteristics of the Negro, his inborn
excellencies and inbred defects, candidly and as they are to be seen in
the great mass whose place determines the status of the