dicates that the
section of the State designated as 'Middle Florida' is considerably
behind all the rest in all stages of educational progress. The usual
plea is that this is due to the intolerable burden of Negro education,
and a general discouragement and inactivity is ascribed to this cause.
The following figures are given to show that the education of the
Negroes of Middle Florida does not cost the white people of that
section one cent. Without discussing the American principle that it is
the duty of all property to educate every citizen as a means of
protection to the State, and with no reference to what taxes that
citizen may pay, it is the purpose of this paragraph to show that the
backwardness of education of the white people is in no degree due to
the presence of the Negro, but that the presence of the Negro has been
actually contributing to the sustenance of the white schools."

Mr. Sheats then shows that the cost of the Negro schools was $19,467,
while the Negroes contributed to the school fund in direct taxes,
together with their proper proportion of the indirect taxes, $23,984.
He concludes: "If this is a fair calculation the schools for the
Negroes are not only no burden on the white citizens, but $4,525 for
Negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted
to the white schools."

Mr. Charles L. Coon, Superintendent of Schools at Wilson, N.C., is
quoted as demonstrating that had there been expended upon the Negro
schools the Negro's proportionate share of the receipts from indirect
taxes, as well as the direct taxes paid by them, $18,077 more in a
given year would have been expended on colored schools in Virginia,
$26,539 more in North Carolina, and $141,682 more in Georgia. These
figures would seem to show that in these States at least the Negro
schools are not only no burden upon the white taxpayers but that the
colored people do not get back in school facilities the equivalent of
all they themselves contribute in taxes.

In the matter of passenger transportation facilities Booker Washington
protested that injustice is done his people by most of the railroads
of the South, not in providing separate accommodations for blacks and
whites, but in furnishing the Negroes with inferior accommodations
while charging them the same rates. This injustice causes, he
believes, more resentment and bitterness among his people than all the
other injustices to which they are subjected combined. The