. These articles would certainly merit
attention, even if put in competition with similar specimens of the
very best workmanship.

Neither the negroes nor their friends have any reason to regret that
an exhibit was made. It was in every sense of the word creditable. It
marks a progress simply wonderful, when all the circumstances are
taken into the account. It is prophetic of a very hopeful future. It
demonstrates that the negro race can enter every profession and
calling in which the white man is found. It proclaims in tones that
no one should misunderstand, that he who writes or speaks of the
colored people should be careful how he pronounces judgment in regard
to their capacity. They should be given a white man's chance. No
trade nor occupation should be closed against them. Open doors should
welcome to honorable competition, white and black alike. Let this be
so, and in less than half a century there will not be a trade, nor
profession, nor calling, in which black men will not be found in the
front. There will be preachers and professors, and editors, and
physicians, and lawyers, and statesmen, and teachers, and bankers,
and business men, and artisans, and mechanics and farmers, of
African descent, of whom, as brethren, the very greatest of white men
will not need to be ashamed. Let writers on the negro stop theorizing
about his capacity for this or that calling, and unite in demanding
that he have a fair chance to become what God has made him capable of
becoming. It is wrong, it is wicked for men who by voice and pen
influence public sentiment, to conclude that because the negro is now
a waiter, a boot-black, a barber, a laborer, that therefore he cannot
be anything else, or even that he cannot probably be anything else.
By the very force of circumstances he has been compelled to occupy
these positions. By an unjust public sentiment he has been shut out
from even an opportunity to prove his capacity to stand beside his
white brother in every calling.

Public sentiment should be reformed at this point; and the colored
people's exhibition of what they have achieved in the short space of
twenty years, in spite of opposition, and in spite of lack of
opportunity, assures us that if they are permitted they will
contribute no small share in securing the reformation. We advise all
leaders of public sentiment who do not desire twenty-five or thirty
years hence to be found eating their words of to-day, or explaining
how i