e, nothing more than the
teaching of these thousands simply how to read and write, who could
estimate the value of the achievement? Who could measure the scope of
its influence and tell where that influence will end! When you have
once taught a man to read you have placed in his hands the key with
which he may--if he be industrious--unlock all the stores of
knowledge in his own language. When you have once taught a man to
read you have opened up to him unlimited possibilities, and laid the
foundations for a broad and liberal culture. When you have once
taught a man to read you have introduced him into the best society of
all the ages; you have made him the companion of Shakespeare, Milton
and Bunyan; of Bacon and of Burke; of Tennyson, Longfellow, Bryant
and Emerson; and you have quite unfitted him for slavery. When years
ago a kind mistress, in the State of Maryland, undertook to teach a
little slave boy to read, little did she think that she was awakening
aspirations never again to be quenched; little did she dream that she
was unchaining extraordinary powers, and kindling the first fires of
eloquence in the soul of a Douglass. The alphabet was made for
freemen. It is the weapon most dreaded by tyrants. When Martin Luther
would break most effectually and for all time the papal yoke from the
neck of Germany, he translated the Bible and set the people to
reading. I am thankful to-day for the pen of Lincoln and for the
sword of Grant; but more thankful by far for the patient "school
ma'am" who taught the negro his letters, and set a million of us to
reading.

* * * * *

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. III.--WHAT THE A. M. A. IS DOING.

BY SUPT. ALBERT SALISBURY.

In two previous articles (Oct. and Nov., 1884) I have set forth the
general aspects of Industrial Education and its relations to a
missionary work like that of the American Missionary Association. I
wish now to set forth, briefly, the practical possibilities and the
present undertakings of the Association in this line.

Among all the industrial schools of this continent, Hampton Institute
stands easily first in the amount of invested capital, or plant, and
in the variety and extent of its operations. It is, moreover, unique;
there is nothing else like it, and perhaps never will be, either in
its scope or in the genius which marks its administration. To give
any adequate account of the work in actual operation there would
occupy all