accomplishment. There will no longer be one law for the Negro and one for the white man; one Constitution for the North and one for the South. What Charles Sumner said will then be true in practice as well as in theory: “It is vain to say this is the country of the white man. It is the country of man.”

Three centuries ago the ancestors of American Negroes were savages, inhabiting a vast continent dark with the shadow of an unrecorded past. Today the descendants of these savages dwelling in our country number ten millions. They have come in contact with a great civilization and have absorbed its elements with a marvellous rapidity. They have learned to work, have acquired the language and adopted the religion of a great people. The world knows amid what trials and sacrifices all of this has been accomplished. Though his new life and upward career did not begin until 1865, the Negro has impressed the country with his innate worth as a factor in a great civilization. He has thoroughly vindicated his capacity for indefinite improvement. The beneficiary of a splendid philanthropy, he has more than justified the hopes of his friends, and he has belied the predictions of his foes. The material progress of the former slaves in forty years is one of the marvels of a wonderful country. They have 130,000 farms worth $400,000,000; homes, not including the farms mentioned, valued at $325,000,000, and personal property worth $165,000,000, making a grand total of $899,000,000 which they present to the world for their first generation of freedom.

The race has developed in the meantime 30,000 school teachers, 700 physicians and more than 700 lawyers. There are 1,800,000 Negro children enrolled in the schools; 40,000 students in higher institutions of learning; 30,000 students learning trades; 12,000 pursuing classical courses; 12,000 taking scientific courses and 1,000 in business courses. 40,000 young men and women have graduated from secondary institutions of learning and 4,000 from colleges. The Negro has $12,000,000 worth of school property, and church property valued at $40,000,000.

The capacity, the thrift and the frugality of the black man need no encomium. The record speaks for itself. In its comment on similar statistics the Boston Herald recently said, “When we think that forty years ago the Negroes were the poorest people on the face of the earth, that their only home was the wide, wide world and their roof was an expanse of blue sky, is it not wonderful that within a short generation they have not only been able to house and clothe themselves and children, but to educate in part nearly one half of their 

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