want, the widest, largest culture of the land; the instant opening, not simply of the common schools; and then an easy passage to the bar, the legislature, and even the judgeships of the nation. And they oft times get there. But how different the policy with the Negro. He must have “an education which begins at the bottom.” “He should have an industrial education,” &c. His education must, first of all, produce the power of self-support, &c. Now, all this thought of Dr. Wayland is all true. But, my friends, it is all false, too; and for the simple reason that it is only half truth. Dr. Wayland seems unable to rise above the plane of burden-bearing for the Negro. He seems unable to gauge the idea of the Negro becoming a thinker. He seems to forget that a race of thoughtless toilers are destined to be forever a race of senseless boys; for only beings who think are men. How pitiable it is to see a great good man be-fuddled by a half truth. For to allege “Industrialism” to be the grand agency in the elevation of a race of already degraded labourers, is as much a mere platitude as to say, “they must eat and drink and sleep;” for man[Pg 15] cannot live without these habits. But they never civilize man; and civilization is the objective point in the movement for Negro elevation. Labor, just like eating and drinking, is one of the inevitabilities of life; one of its positive necessities. And the Negro has had it for centuries; but it has never given him manhood. It does not now, in wide areas of population, lift him up to moral and social elevation. Hence the need of a new factor in his life. The Negro needs light: light thrown in upon all the circumstances of his life. The light of civilization. [Pg 15] Dr. Wayland fails to see two or three important things in this Negro problem:— (a) That the Negro has no need to go to a manual labor school.[4] He has been for two hundred years and more, the greatest laborer in the land. He is a laborer now; and he must always be a laborer, or he must die. But: (b) Unfortunately for the Negro, he has been so wretchedly ignorant that he has never known the value of his sweat and toil. He has been forced into being an unthinking labor-machine. And this he is, to a large degree, to-day under freedom. (c) Now the great need of the Negro, in our day and time, is intelligent impatience at the exploitation of his labor, on the one hand; on the other hand
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