eir own in the sharp competition of professional life are a
great, if not the greatest, need of the coloured race in this country.
Over wide areas most of their clergy are illiterate, immoral,
self-seeking, bitter sectarians, and the most determined opponents of
every kind of improvement. So, too, the lack of lawyers, editors and
physicians of sufficiently broad and thorough training to be able to
defend their weaker brethren against designers or incapable advisers is
a very discouraging feature of the situation. The negroes do not, as a
rule, seek the leadership or counsel of competent and honest whites in
matters of religion or of business, hence the greater need of
well-qualified men of their own race."

It need hardly be emphasised that those who are favouring the cause of
industrial education, as a means best calculated to raise the coloured
race, are quite as earnest in their desire for negroes to advance to
higher culture when exceptional capacity shows itself. In the nature of
things, however, this higher culture can be extended only to a
comparatively few individuals. Referring to those who are unable to push
their way so far, and yet are aiming at becoming scholars, Mr Powell
adds:--

"If they had the industrial education now given in some schools they
might support themselves in the same communities where they teach,
acquiring decent homes of their own, which would be a much-needed
example and incentive to all about them. The lack of anything worthy to
be called home is the most appalling obstacle to the elevation of the
negro. If these higher schools should furnish this industrial training,
as some of them are beginning to do, nine-tenths, or, in many cases,
nineteen-twentieths, of the pupils who never finish even the
grammar-school course might be put in the way of living for the rest of
their lives like human beings instead of like beasts."

The fact is, that the industrial training is not only becoming more
widely recognised as being what the coloured people most urgently need,
it tends largely to make the students more independent by placing them
in a situation in which they can pay their own way instead of receiving
outside aid. Then, while the negroes have splendid capacities for
service, there is surely no other people who so greatly need to be made
to realise the value and dignity of labour. As Mr Powell further says:--

"It was one of the greatest evils of slavery that manual labour was
consider