g days in the dawn of the new century. A
thinking people is a prosperous people. We are to be measured by what
we can accomplish, not by the color of the skin, the texture of the
hair, the color of the eye or the contour of the head. But we are to
be measured as skilled farmers, mechanics, printers, artists and
scholars.

This age demands substantial progress in every department of industry,
in the home, at the fireside, in the shop and on the farm. To labor
with skill, to facilitate and hasten its benign results with trained
hands and cultivated brain, must ever be the fiery incentive of our
people, in order that they may keep abreast of the times in all
practical operations as skilled laborers, and, as such, vindicate
their usefulness as citizens.

As laborers and citizens, the black face must stand for integrity in
the community, the emblem of sterling worth, the black diamond
intrinsic in value.

The time has come when one person ceases to employ another because he
is of color, but he employs the one who can give more than value
received. The race needs to bring the hand and the head nearer
together.

The boy who has completed a college education should, in the course of
time, raise more corn to the acre, if he be a farmer, than his
uneducated father; for his knowledge of geology should better fit him
to know the condition and nature of the soil; if a mechanic, his
knowledge of geometry and of physics should enable him to be an adept.

The question of labor during the last few years has become, in many
respects, intensely sectional. North of Mason and Dixon's line, the
color of the skin has to do with the employment of the colored man
along certain lines of skilled labor. While this is true in the South,
the prejudice is not so rank as in the North, except where the colored
laborer comes in contact with the Yankee or the foreigner.

SECOND PAPER.

THE NEGRO AS A LABORER.

BY PROF. R. G. ROBINSON, B. L.

[Illustration: Prof. R. G. Robinson, B. L.]

PROF. R. G. ROBINSON.

Prof. R. G. Robinson, B. L., the subject of our sketch, was
born in Hamilton, Bermuda Islands, B. W. I., February 16,
1873. In pursuit of education he came to the United States
at the early age of eleven, going directly to New Hampshire.
In the fall of '85 he entered Dow Academy in Franconia, N.
H. By economy and thrift he maintained himself in this
institution for eight years