ep the Negro
in the country and smaller towns, where he succeeds best, and stop the
influx into the large cities, where he does not succeed so well. The
race, like the individual, which produces something of superior worth
that has a common human interest, wins a permanent place, and is bound
to be recognized.

At a county fair in the South, not long ago, I saw a Negro awarded the
first prize, by a jury of white men, over white competitors, for the
production of the best specimen of Indian corn. Every white man at the
fair seemed to be proud of the achievement of the Negro, because it was
apparent that he had done something that would add to the wealth and
comfort of the people of both races in that county. At the Tuskegee
Normal and Industrial Institute, in Alabama, we have a department
devoted to training men along the lines of agriculture that I have
named; but what we are doing is small when compared with what should be
done in Tuskegee, and at other educational centres. In a material sense
the South is still an undeveloped country. While in some other affairs
race prejudice is strongly marked, in the matter of business, of
commercial and industrial development, there are few obstacles in the
Negro's way. A Negro who produces or has for sale something that the
community wants finds customers among white people as well as black.
Upon equal security, a Negro can borrow money at the bank as readily as
a white man can. A bank in Birmingham, Alabama, which has existed ten
years, is officered and controlled wholly by Negroes. This bank has
white borrowers and white depositors. A graduate of the Tuskegee
Institute keeps a well-appointed grocery store in Tuskegee, and he tells
me that he sells about as many goods to one race as to the other. What
I have said of the opening that awaits the Negro in the business of
agriculture is almost equally true of mechanics, manufacturing, and all
the domestic arts. The field is before him and right about him. Will
he seize upon it? Will he "cast down his bucket where he is"? Will his
friends, North and South, encourage him and prepare him to occupy
it? Every city in the South, for example, would give support to a
first-class architect or housebuilder or contractor of our race. The
architect or contractor would not only receive support, but through
his example numbers of young colored men would learn such trades as
carpentry, brickmasonry, plastering, painting, etc., and the race would