best
interest of the South and there would be no Negro problem. At present
he does not and cannot know this, for the white trash and vagrant
Negro form a wedge separating the new Southerner from the new Negro so
completely that they cannot know each other. Every unmentionable crime
committed by the vagrant Negro, every lynching bee conducted by white
trash, every Negro disfranchisement law passed by misguided
legislators, every unjust discrimination against the Negro by the
people drives this wedge deeper and deeper.

Render this wedge so thin that it will no longer be a barrier and the
Negro problem is solved. This cannot be done by banishing white trash
and the vagrant Negro; for that is neither possible nor practicable.
The only way to accomplish the thinning of this wedge is to transform
a large number into the new Southerners and the new Negroes. Will
education do this?

In order to transform the majority of white trash and vagrant Negroes
into new Southerners and new Negroes it will be necessary to instill
into them the following regenerating virtues:

1. The manners of a gentleman. Not the swagger of the dude nor the
cringing of a scapegoat, but the manners of a being permeated with the
Golden Rule.

2. Cultured homes. Not necessarily extravagant mansions, but
comfortable dwellings, wherein impoliteness, intemperance, slander and
indecent tales have given place to politeness, temperance, intelligent
conversation and refined pleasantries.

3. Business honesty. Not only punctual in the payment of debts, but
also truthful in making sales.

4. Thrift. Not the ability to hoard as a miser does, but the ability
to spend one's earnings economically, to purchase property and to lay
by a little for a rainy day.

5. Christian morality. Not the ability to shout well, and pray well
and testify well, but the ability to live the Christ life.

6. The ability to do something well that the world desires bad enough
to be willing to pay a good price for it. This includes not only
mechanical but also commercial and scholastic achievements.

7. Ability to lead in the light of modern civilization.

8. Love for justice and contempt for lawlessness.

Experience and thought convince me that the "highest education" is the
only agency that will instill all of these virtues into a people
without detriment to the multitudes that are forced to stop school
before graduation. Highest education is a new phrase; but can we not
truth