s he has schools, nor so many shops as he has churches, yet the reports
of the Negro National Business League, which recently met in Atlanta,
will show that he is making rapid progress in the business world.

All great men as well as races and nations suffered their offences.
Washington, Lincoln and Grant were great because they had to endure
hardships. Robert Small, Frederick Douglas and Booker Washington are
great because they were slaves.

The Negro of the South was emancipated 50 years ago without education,
without money, without clothes, without food, without even a place to
rest his head, and, in many instances, without a name. His greatest
possession was ignorance. If, during slavery, he was taught many useful
and helpful lessons, during slavery, also, he was denied the opportunity
of exercising and developing the greatest requisite of independence,
self-reliance. He was a new-born babe, as a ship in mid-ocean without a
rudder. It was nothing more than natural for him at times to drift, at
times to wander, and still at other times to steer in the wrong
direction.

Consequently, he made many mistakes, some of them serious. He made
mistakes in religion, mistakes in economics, and mistakes in politics,
but to my mind his greatest mistake was made in the matter of education.
Until the year '95 the masses of our people in the Black-Belt section of
the South believed that the end of education was to free one from manual
labor, especially from the labor of the farm. They furthermore believed
that it was the end of education to take the people from the country to
the cities and otherwise fit them for only three callings, namely, of
teacher, of preacher, and of politician. This conception of education
was entertained not only by the masses, but many of our schools and
colleges encouraged the same view.

Just at this period, when the relation between the races seemed most
strained, there loomed on the horizon the Booker Washington idea, "That
the kind of education most needed by our people was that which would
dignify, beautify, and make attractive and desirable country life and at
the same time fit our people for high and useful citizenship." Mr.
Washington further contended that any education which did not manifest
itself in the practical daily life of the people was not worthy of the
name.

This idea of Mr. Washington was indeed timely, but, like all other great
movements for reform, it was not accomplished withou