ducational power it was supreme, for it was the contact of living
souls.

From such schools about two thousand Negroes have gone forth with the
bachelor's degree. The number in itself is enough to put at rest the
argument that too large a proportion of Negroes are receiving higher
training. If the ratio to population of all Negro students throughout
the land, in both college and secondary training, be counted,
Commissioner Harris assures us "it must be increased to five times its
present average" to equal the average of the land.

Fifty years ago the ability of Negro students in any appreciable
numbers to master a modern college course would have been difficult to
prove. To-day it is proved by the fact that four hundred Negroes, many
of whom have been reported as brilliant students, have received the
bachelor's degree from Harvard, Yale, Oberlin, and seventy other
leading colleges. Here we have, then, nearly twenty-five hundred Negro
graduates, of whom the crucial query must be made, How far did their
training fit them for life? It is of course extremely difficult to
collect satisfactory data on such a point,--difficult to reach the men,
to get trustworthy testimony, and to gauge that testimony by any
generally acceptable criterion of success. In 1900, the Conference at
Atlanta University undertook to study these graduates, and published
the results. First they sought to know what these graduates were
doing, and succeeded in getting answers from nearly two-thirds of the
living. The direct testimony was in almost all cases corroborated by
the reports of the colleges where they graduated, so that in the main
the reports were worthy of credence. Fifty-three per cent of these
graduates were teachers,--presidents of institutions, heads of normal
schools, principals of city school-systems, and the like. Seventeen
per cent were clergymen; another seventeen per cent were in the
professions, chiefly as physicians. Over six per cent were merchants,
farmers, and artisans, and four per cent were in the government
civil-service. Granting even that a considerable proportion of the
third unheard from are unsuccessful, this is a record of usefulness.
Personally I know many hundreds of these graduates, and have
corresponded with more than a thousand; through others I have followed
carefully the life-work of scores; I have taught some of them and some
of the pupils whom they have taught, lived in homes which they have
build