tor, one sermon well
preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived--these will tell
more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to
plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through
swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through
commerce, education and religion!

[Footnote A: In the original, this was 'drudggery'.]

_The Talented Tenth_

By PROF. W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS

A strong plea for the higher education of the Negro, which those who are
interested in the future of the freedmen cannot afford to ignore. Prof.
DuBois produces ample evidence to prove conclusively the truth of his
statement that "to attempt to establish any sort of a system of common
and industrial school training, without _first_ providing for the higher
training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the
winds."

[Illustration: W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS.]

The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional
men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal
with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this
race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of
the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a
difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational
experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the
object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily
men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess
artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make
manhood the object of the work of the schools--intelligence, broad
sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of
men to it--this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must
underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill
of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man
mistake the means of living for the object of life.

* * * * *

If this be true--and who can deny it--three tasks lay before me; first to
show from the past that the Talented Tenth as they have risen among
American Negroes have been worthy of leadership; secondly, to show how
these men may be educated and developed; and thirdly, to show their
relation to the Negro problem.