grounded in
the underlying scientific principles of concrete things. The time when
the world bowed before merely abstract, impractical knowledge has
well-nigh passed; the demand of this age and hour is not so much what a
man knows,--though the world respects and reveres knowledge and always
will, I hope,--what the world wants to know is what a man can do and how
well he can do it.

We must not be misled by high-sounding phrases as to the kind of
education the race should receive, but we should remember that the
education of a people should be conditioned upon their capacity, social
environment, and the probable life which they will lead in the immediate
future. We fully realize that the ignorant must be taught, the poor must
have the gospel, and the vicious must be restrained, but we also realize
that these do not strike the "bed-rock" of a permanent, lasting
citizenship.

If the Negro will add his proportionate contribution to the economic
aspect of the world's civilization, it must be done through intelligent,
well-directed, conscientious, skilled industry. Indeed, the feasible
forms of civilization are nothing but the concrete actualization of
intelligent thought applied to what are sometimes called common things.

The primary sources of wealth are agriculture, mining, manufacturing,
and commerce. These are the lines along which the thoughtful energy of
the black race must be directed. I mean by agriculture, _farming_--the
raising of corn, cotton, peas, and potatoes, pigs, chickens, horses, and
cows.

Land may be bought practically anywhere in the South almost at our own
price. Twenty years hence, with the rapidly developing Southern country
and the strenuous efforts to fill it up with foreign immigrants, it will
be difficult, if not impossible, for us to buy land. God gave the
children of Israel the "Land of Canaan" but, Oh, what a life and death
struggle they had to take possession of it and hold on to it. God has
given to the Negro here in this Southern country two of the most
fundamental necessities in his development--_land_ and _labor_. If you
don't possess this land and hold this labor, God will tell you as He has
often told other races--"to move on."

The Creator never meant that this beautiful land should be forever kept
as a great hunting-ground for the Indian to roam in savage bliss, but he
intended that it should be used. The Indian, having for scores of
generations failed to develop this land, God