energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth, and the
conciliation of the South. This policy has been courageously and
insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant
for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch,
what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:

1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.

2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for
the Negro.

3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher
training of the Negro.

These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington's
teachings; but his propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped
their speedier accomplishment. The question then comes: Is it
possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective
progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights,
made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meagre chance for
developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any
distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic NO. And Mr.
Washington thus faces the triple paradox of his career:

1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and
property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive
methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend their rights and
exist without the right of suffrage.

2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time
counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to
sap the manhood of any race in the long run.

3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates
institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools,
nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers
trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.

This triple paradox in Mr. Washington's position is the object of
criticism by two classes of colored Americans. One class is
spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior, through Gabriel,
Vesey, and Turner, and they represent the attitude of revolt and
revenge; they hate the white South blindly and distrust the white race
generally, and so far as they agree on definite action, think that the
Negro's only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United
States. And yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually
made this programme seem hopeless than the recent course of the Un