be prepared for
the proper growing and marketing of these crops forests had to be cleared,
houses to be built, public roads and railroads constructed. In all these
works the Negro did most of the heavy work. In the planting, cultivating
and marketing of the crops not only was the Negro the chief dependence,
but in the manufacture of tobacco he became a skilled and proficient
workman, and in this, up to the present time, in the South, holds the lead
in the large tobacco manufactories.

In most of the industries, though, what happened? For nearly twenty years
after the war, except in a few instances, the value of the industrial
training given by the plantations was overlooked. Negro men and women were
educated in literature, in mathematics and in the sciences, with little
thought of what had been taking place during the preceding two hundred and
fifty years, except, perhaps, as something to be escaped, to be got as
far away from as possible. As a generation began to pass, those who had
been trained as mechanics in slavery began to disappear by death, and
gradually it began to be realized that there were few to take their
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 addres