large brain, high
purpose, and strong will. Brains, purpose, will,--all are needed by
these unofficial statesmen. They must look many ways at once, but this
way they ought not to fail to look,--to the industrial harmonizing and
equality of the two races.

Exclude the colored men from the unions, and what can be expected but
that they serve as a vast reserve for the employers when strikes arise
between the capitalists and the employes? We read now and then of the
introduction of negroes as "strike-breakers," and the bitterness it
causes. But will not this be repeated on the largest scale if the
millions of negroes are to be systematically excluded from the unions?
There may be difficulties in including them,--difficulties partly
running back into other injustices, such as the practice of different
wage-rates for whites and blacks. But it would seem to be the larger
wisdom, in point of strategy, to enroll the two great wings of the host
of labor into a united army. And apart from strategy, that character of
the labor movement which most deeply appeals to the conscience and
judgment of mankind,--the uplift of the great multitude to better and
happier things,--that should rise above the barrier of race-prejudice as
above all other conventional and foolish divisions. Will the labor
leaders see and seize their opportunity at once to strengthen and to
ennoble their cause?

The education of the negroes presents a hundred special questions, but
its basal principles are not difficult to discern. Here, fortunately, we
have in the main an admirable loyalty and good-will on the part of the
white South. It is proved by deeds more than by words. The sum spent by
the Southern States in the last thirty years for the schooling of the
blacks--it is reckoned at $132,000,000, most of it, of course, from
white taxpayers--is the best evidence of its disposition. The occasional
complaints and protests seem no more significant than the occasional
grumbling at the North against its best-rooted institutions,--everywhere
and always the children of light must keep up some warfare with the
Philistines. The main difficulties at the South are two; limited means
for so great a task,--three or four months of schooling burdens
Mississippi more than ten months burdens Massachusetts; and the grave
puzzle as to what kind of elementary education best fits the negro
child.

This puzzle applies almost equally to the white child; throughout the
country and