Fifty Years of Freedomwith matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United States
speaking to a school official in one of our cities about the great opportunities that teachers have for this kind of work; and his reply was, "Yes, but many of our teachers teach only for the money they get, and they want the money simply to decorate their bodies." How far this is true of our teachers as a class I do not know; but that it is true of some of them I have not the slightest doubt. What we need, therefore, as we face the future, is to endeavor to get the active and hearty coöperation of all the teachers in all of our schools in this higher mission of character building in their pupils. The teachers, if they can only be made to see it, hold a place second in importance only to the home in the service which they can render in the stupendous task which confronts us as a race. We must all of us, as we begin this new half century of freedom, be more thoughtful about our homes, more concerned to make them proper habitats for the rearing of children; more concerned about our schools and the character of the men and women who are in charge of them; and more concerned about our churches to see that they are properly manned, properly conducted, properly supported by our presence and by our financial aid. None of these institutions can be allowed to deteriorate, to fall behind, without affecting unfavorably the progress of the race.

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(6). It is important that we impress ourselves with the evil of strong drink, and that we set definitely before us the work of educating the race with reference to the poisonous nature of alcohol and its baleful effects. Sobriety, abstinence from all alcoholic liquors as a beverage, we must be at special pains to impress upon all—old and young alike. We must organize temperance societies; we must encourage those that are already in existence; we must gather the children into temperance bands, in our Sabbath schools and in our day schools as far as may be possible. In the 12new half century upon which we have now entered, we must firmly resolve, and must bend every effort towards lessening the evil of strong drink among us. At the end of the present half century, let us hope that there will be less intemperance among us; that a larger number of homes among us will be definitely committed to total abstinence, than we find to-day. Whatever we can do to lessen this evil; whatever we can do to produce a sober, temperate people we must do, and we must all do our part to secure this result. Every member of the race is interested in, or, at least, ought to be, in saving it from the curse of intemperance, not only because it will help the race economically and morally, but also because it will set it in a better light before its 
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