of
street life they are equal to the French or Italians.

May we not hope that the conflict of these two opposite races is working
out some advantages to both, and that the final result will justify all
that the conflict has cost?

SIGNS OF PROGRESS AMONG THE NEGROES by Booker T. Washington

In addition to the problem of educating eight million negroes in our
Southern States and ingrafting them into American citizenship, we now
have the additional responsibility, either directly or indirectly, of
educating and elevating about eight hundred thousand others of African
descent in Cuba and Porto Rico, to say nothing of the white people of
these islands, many of whom are in a condition about as deplorable as
that of the negroes. We have, however, one advantage in approaching the
question of the education of our new neighbors.

The experience that we have passed through in the Southern States during
the last thirty years in the education of my race, whose history and
needs are not very different from the history and needs of the Cubans
and Porto Ricans, will prove most valuable in elevating the blacks of
the West Indian Islands. To tell what has already been accomplished in
the South under most difficult circumstances is to tell what may be done
in Cuba and Porto Rico.

To this end let me tell a story.

In what is known as the black belt of the South--that is, where the
negroes outnumber the whites--there lived before the Civil War a white
man who owned some two hundred slaves, and was prosperous. At the close
of the war he found his fortune gone, except that which was represented
in land, of which he owned several thousand acres. Of the two hundred
slaves a large proportion decided, after their freedom, to continue on
the plantation of their former owner.

Some years after the war a young black boy, who seemed to have "rained
down," was discovered on the plantation by Mr. S-----, the owner. In
daily rides through the plantation Mr. S----- saw this boy sitting by
the roadside, and his condition awakened his pity, for, from want of
care, he was covered from head to foot with sores, and Mr. S----- soon
grew into the habit of tossing him a nickel or a dime as he rode by. In
some way this boy heard of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute
in Alabama, and of the advantages which it offered poor but deserving
colored men and women to secure an education through their own labor
while taking the course of study