they left school, but they seemed to
know less about life and its conditions as they would meet it at their
homes. Having lived for a number of years in the midst of comfortable
surroundings, they were not as much inclined as the Hampton students to
go into the country districts of the South, where there was little of
comfort, to take up work for our people, and they were more inclined to
yield to the temptation to become hotel waiters and Pullman-car porters
as their life-work.

During the time I was a student at Washington the city was crowded with
coloured people, many of whom had recently come from the South. A large
proportion of these people had been drawn to Washington because they
felt that they could lead a life of ease there. Others had secured minor
government positions, and still another large class was there in the
hope of securing Federal positions. A number of coloured men--some of
them very strong and brilliant--were in the House of Representatives
at that time, and one, the Hon. B.K. Bruce, was in the Senate. All
this tended to make Washington an attractive place for members of the
coloured race. Then, too, they knew that at all times they could have
the protection of the law in the District of Columbia. The public
schools in Washington for coloured people were better then than they
were elsewhere. I took great interest in studying the life of our people
there closely at that time. I found that while among them there was
a large element of substantial, worthy citizens, there was also a
superficiality about the life of a large class that greatly alarmed me.
I saw young coloured men who were not earning more than four dollars a
week spend two dollars or more for a buggy on Sunday to ride up and down
Pennsylvania Avenue in, in order that they might try to convince the
world that they were worth thousands. I saw other young men who received
seventy-five or one hundred dollars per month from the Government, who
were in debt at the end of every month. I saw men who but a few months
previous were members of Congress, then without employment and in
poverty. Among a large class there seemed to be a dependence upon the
Government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had
little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the
Federal officials to create one for them. How many times I wished then,
and have often wished since, that by some power of magic I might remove
the great bulk of