be put into a position to hold on to many of the industries which it
is now in danger of losing, because in too many cases brain, skill, and
dignity are not imparted to the common occupations. Any individual or
race that does not fit itself to occupy in the best manner the field or
service that is right about it will sooner or later be asked to move on
and let another take it.

But I may be asked, Would you confine the Negro to agriculture,
mechanics, the domestic arts, etc.? Not at all; but just now and for a
number of years the stress should be laid along the lines that I have
mentioned. We shall need and must have many teachers and ministers, some
doctors and lawyers and statesmen, but these professional men will
have a constituency or a foundation from which to draw support just in
proportion as the race prospers along the economic lines that I have
pointed out. During the first fifty or one hundred years of the life of
any people, are not the economic occupations always given the greater
attention? This is not only the historic, but, I think, the common-sense
view. If this generation will lay the material foundation, it will be
the quickest and surest way for enabling later generations to succeed in
the cultivation of the fine arts, and to surround themselves with some
of the luxuries of life, if desired. What the race most needs now, in my
opinion, is a whole army of men and women well-trained to lead, and
at the same time devote themselves to agriculture, mechanics, domestic
employment, and business. As to the mental training that these educated
leaders should be equipped with, I should say, give them all the
mental training and culture that the circumstances of individuals will
allow,--the more the better. No race can permanently succeed until its
mind is awakened and strengthened by the ripest thought. But I would
constantly have it kept in the minds of those who are educated in books
that a large proportion of those who are educated should be so trained
in hand that they can bring this mental strength and knowledge to
bear upon the physical conditions in the South, which I have tried to
emphasize.

Frederick Douglass, of sainted memory, once, in addressing his race,
used these words: "We are to prove that we can better our own condition.
One way to do this is to accumulate property. This may sound to you like
a new gospel. You have been accustomed to hear that money is the root of
all evil, etc.; on the other