title: Some addresses at the Sociological conference ...
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L \ » << o u « *p> ^ * t "l A zy ^ lA iP HOWARD UNIVERSITY RECORD M Volume 12 JANUARY 1918 Number 1 Some Addresses at The Sociological Conference held in connection with THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL Howard U n iversity March 1-2 , 1917 HOWARD UNIVERSITY Washington, D.C. HOWARD UNIVERSITY RECORD: Published by Howard University in January, March April, May, June, November and December. Subscription price, one year, twenty-live cents Entered at the Post Office at Washington, D.C., as second class mail matter. 2 . ck oM HOWARD UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEES i r. Ex-Chief Justice STANTON J. PEELLE, EL. D., President of Hoard of Trustees STEPHEN M. NEWMAN, D. D., President of the University GEORGE Wm. COOK, LL. M., Secretary andBusiness Manager EDWARD L. PARKS, D. D.. Treasurer and Registrar Term expires 1918 Justice GEORGE W. ATKINSON, LL. D., Washington. I). C. Rev. H. PAUL DOUGLASS, D. D., New York City. ANDREW F. HILYER, LL.M., Washington, D. C. Rev. STEPHEN M. NEWMA N, D. D., Washington, D. C. Ex-Chief Justice STANTON J. PEELLE, LL. D., Washington. D. C. Rev. ULYSSES G. 13. PIERCE, D. D., Washington, D. C. Rev. CHA RLES H. RICH A RDS. D. D.. New York City. Term expires 1919 Justice JOB BARNARD, LL. D., Washington, D. C. WILLIAM V. COX, A. M., Washington, D. C. Rev. FRANCIS J. GRIMKE, D. D., Washington, D.C Bishop JOHN HURST, Baltimore, Md. Hon. CUNO II. RUDOLPH, Washington, D. C. WILLIAM A. SINCLAIR, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. Term expires 1920 Mr. JOHN T. EMLEN, Philadelphia, Pa. THOMAS JESSE JONES, Ph. D., Washington, D. C. Rev. JESSE E. MOORLAND, D. D., Washington, D. C. Hon. JAMES C. NAPIER, LL. D., Nashville, Tenn. CHARLES B. PURVIS, M. D., Boston, Mass. Justice WENDELL PHILIPS STAFFORD, Washington, I). C. JAMES H. N. WARING, M. D., Kings Park, L. I. MARCUS F. WHEATLAND, M. D., Newport, R. I. HONORARY MEMBERS Mr. JOHN A. COLE, Chicago.: 111. Bishop BENJAMIN F. LEE, D. D., Wilberforce, Ohio. Mr. HENRY E. PELLEW, Washington. D. C. Hon. JOSEPH D. SAYERS. Austin, Texas. Hon. WILLIAM H. TAFT, LL. D., New Haven, Conn. Bishop BENJAMIN TUCKER TANNER, LL. D., Philadelphia. Pa Bishop WILBUR P. THIRKIELD, LL.D., New Orleans. La Hon. GEORGE TI. WHITE. Philadelphia. Pa. . » PATRON EX-OFFICIO Hon FRANKLIN K. LA NE. Secretary of the Interior m w**t* 1 >»■($ L. ft 6q 5 ^ SOCIOLOGICAL CONFERENCE X N the plans for celebrating the Semi-Centennial of Howard University the holding of a Sociological Con- ference took an important place. Cordial acceptances of the invitation to attend were received from many persons in different parts of the country and the result gave great satisfaction. Forenoon and afternoon sessions were held Thursday and Fri- day, March 1-2, 1917. The general topic was “Fifty Tears of Progress by the American Negro Papers were presented and discussions held upon four as- pects of this progress, viz: 1. Ownership of Rural and Urban Homes. II. Business Enterprises. III. Education , IV, Health and Sanitation. This copy of the Record contains the introductory address by President Newman of the University, the brief statement by Dr. J. H. N. Waring, Chairman of the Committee which arranged the Conference, three addresses by Mr. R. R. Wright, Jr., Mr. Wm, Anthony Aery, and Mr. Eugene K. Jones, together with the conclusions which were drawn up by a committee and adopt- ed by the Conference. Add ress of Welcome by President Newman ADI ES and GENTLEMEN: It becomes my wel- come duty to greet you in the name of Howard Uni- versity. I wish at the very outset to state something which I ask you to bear in mind. We do not ask you or any other of our friends to come from different parts of the country to these meetings in connection with our Fiftieth Anniversary, simply to bring congratulatory speeches and become aroused by some kind of sentiment over the history of Howard Univer- sity. We wish to go deeper than that. Our problem is one of life and service. We desire to hold such meetings as may promote life in the mind and heart of each one who comes and, through each attendant, in the minds and hearts of those with whom you may come in contact after you go away. Please do not regard us as standing here for the sake of evoking any special oratory from our history. The mission of this Conference is broader than that. It relates, as the topic of the day states it, to the progress of the American Negro in fifty years. Neither do we wish that progress to be regarded simply in the past. Won- derful things can be said about it, but if there are any difficulties in the way, if there are, at any points through this long stream of years, things which should be mentioned which make against seeming progress, let us sift those—to be weighed, held in the balance. It is often true that when there is loss, it is only seem- ing loss, and that success is really found. You, of course, know in your personal life that you have often been most successful when you have seemed to be defeated. Out of defeat comes that inner victory of the heart and mind which is incomparably more valuable than any statistics of outward circumstances can show. I wish to call your attention to another thing. The block of fifty years which is to pass in survey by us in this Conference is the smallest block of respectable size which can be considered in such an undertaking as this which we have in hand. Fen years will give us, perhaps, hints; twenty-five years will give us a few plainer suggestions; fifty years is the smallest block of time from which we can determine what the trend is. One hundred years would be better, but fifty years compasses a generation, and while 4 it is true that there is no exact boundary between generations, still it is true that in twenty* five years not all of any generation pass off the stage. Within fifty years there is a practical change of generations. Now, in all the history of the world, it has become evident that the progress we seek is, to a great extent, between generations ana not within any one generation. Progress takes place between a generation whose footsteps we hear dying away in the distance and those whose steps we hear com- ing along to take part in the present. The legacies which are important for the world are left between generations. Each gen- eration takes up the burden, does its work under the inspiration of the past, and thus takes not only forward steps, but passes to a higher level of undertaking. For instance, let me mention this. 1 can remember the time when the talk of sociology was largely occupied with groups — years and years ago. The group method of trying to reach the people was the method pre-eminent in the minds of the workers, as illustrated, of course, by the ef- forts on many sides, before the Civil War. All attempted to treat men by the group method, but we have got beyond all that. The watchword now is ''treat men as people.” We treat the great problems we have from the point of view of the people, the people as a whole; the people as in all kinds of work; a uni- form record not because they are all alike in their characteristics but because they need the same amount of attention on the part of the specialists and workers. Today is no day for the talk of groups, small or large, as the case may be. The work of every one must be toward the great, coming democracy of the future; it must bear upon the worth of the work of the great coming democracy, embracing the children of men. So, I say, the breadth of such a survey as this is incontest- able. We are not here for a little thing. We are here for one of the biggest possible outlooks that men can have. Our stand- point is not the standpoint of the University, nor the standpoint of the community, nor of the group, but the standpoint of the world with its people. I want also to say, in this connection, that while this Con- ference is called together to look at matters brought before it from the historical point of view, it is not intended that it shall have no glimpse, or take no glimpse, of the future. It is not intended that we shall not occupy ourselves with the future. A great many race, and other conferences and congresses, have been held to look forward into the future. No view of the future is safe and sound until it has made a wide foundation in the life of the past. What is that foundation, is the Question which we shall try to view and, to some extent, settle by the meetings of this Conference to- day and tomorrow. The history of fifty years is to be a great resume of possibilities which are to come out from these discus- sions. Let me then close by suggesting again that our effort is to get at life. We may get at statistical tables from one year’s end to another and know nothing about life. What are the advan- tages of rural and urban homes; what is the prevention of disease by sanitation; what is the work of education; what is the estab- lishment of business enterprises; what do they all amount to un- less the souls of men of any race or color, standing all of them together upon the basis of humanity, what are they all, unless the life of the spirit be growing in Divine power for the work of the world. Let me call attention, as statistics are given, to the fact that behind these statistics there is an indescribable, a mag- nificent view, for each one of you to take, of the business of life — life and power. With these words, indicating to some extent the scope of the Conference which is historical — which is not to be limited to statistics and outlays of statements of similar kinds, — and with the hope that this Conference may have not simply a set of speeches in it, which may be interesting at the time but with- out helpful suggestion — as I am sure these speeches will be help- ful — 1 turn the Chair of the meeting over to Dr. Waring to take charge of the exercises. 6 Introductory Statements by Dr. J. H. N. Waring, Chairman general Committee appointed by the board of Trus- J tees of Howard University to arrange for the celebra- tion of the Semi-Centennial, selected me to be the chairman of the Committee on this Sociological Conference, and it was thought best by this latter committee that in my capacity as chairman, I should make a brief statement of the purposes of the conference. The Committee selected for discussion the general subject, “Fifty Years of Progress by the American Negro, ” for during the fifty years existence of the University it has sustained a very in- timate and vital relation not only to this progress of the American Negro but also to the general progress of the country and, indeed, of the world. Through the sons and daughters who have been sent into every part of the earth, the influence of Howard has en- tered into the warp and woof of the social fabric for the past half century and it has seemed to the Committee, therefore, that it is a very fitting time to review the progress of the American Negro during the past fifty years with reference to education, acquisition of homes, his success in business, and the general problem of health and sanitation. In such a review, two very definite ob- jects may be accomplished. First, we may be able to set forth to the interested public a reliable and definite amount of information upon these points, and in the second place, we may reveal to some extent the part which the University and her graduates have played in this great march of progress. In the minds of some of us who have been thinking along these lines, there opens up in connection with this Sociological Conference another and a larger opportunity for service. While the general government has made certain studies of great value with reference to the social conditions, amidst which the colored peo- ple of America are struggling, there yet remains a wider, a more comprehensive, a more vital field which as yet is almost entirely unexplored and undeveloped. May we not hope that Howard University, standing as she does upon the high ground of social 7 and educational effort, may undertake and consummate those soci- ological students which will give to the American people and to the world exact and comprehensive knowledge of every phase the life of the American Negro. There exists in this Committee on sociological conference a strong hope, amounting almost to a belief, that the work which will be accomplished during the sessions will be so val uable, so far reaching, so definite and determining that the Board of Trustees will be led enthusiastically to provide for just such investigations and studies. The Committee has been fortunate in the extreme in secur- ing the services of men who have been conspicuous in the various lines of work to be discussed here, men who have given and are still giving their lives and their earnest efforts to the upbuilding of the American Negro. 1 wish to take this opportunity as a member of the Board of Trustees and as Chairman of the Committee on the Sociologi- cal Conference to express our appreciation and gratitude for their acceptance of the invitation to participate in these meetings. £ Address by R. R. Wright, Jr., Editor Christian Recorder, Philadelphia, Pa. Upon Ownership of Rural and Urban Homes MAN who owns a home has a different moral interest in his community from a man who does not own one. And then there is another interest which has moral value, and that is patriotism — the love of country. We all nat- urally love the place where we were born, but when that place is ours, our fathers had it, our grandfathers had it, we struggle to get it. There is a deeper love and it strikes me that one of the greatest things that our country can do for Negroes is the en- couragement of home ownership, on which there is founded a strong sentiment of patriotism. And to go a step further. The home ownership also is the basis, of the Negro's re-entrance — as Dr. Young has just said, into politics. We went into this political exercise, not knowing what we were doing, but when we get homes and there are problems of sanitation, and housing, and taxation, and dozens of other problems, we have a real reason for political activity and it will be a difficult thing for Negroes to be kept out of political activ- ity when they acquire homes. We are now shifting our politics from a theoretical economy to a political sociology and the ques- tion of social justice, the questions of municipal operations, are being more and more thrust to the fore in our politics, and the men who will settle these questions are home owners. Then from the strictly economic point of view, or industrial point of view, home ownership means — as Mr. Young has stated — stability, not only moral stability but what precedes it, an economic and industrial stability. The man who purchases his home has to keep his job. He has to do that first, before he purchases, and then after he purchases he must do the same, and so the encour- agement of home ownership tends more and more to the stability of our industrial system and the Negro becoming more and more a home owner, becoming more and more a factor in our indus- trial improvement. Viewed from that point, I can see how a University such as this great University should stop and consider why we have "owned homes. ” Not because we have so many million dollars 9 worth of property, but because there are so many hundred thous- and Negroes becoming, year after year, more and more settled and more and more interested in their country — more and more a part of it. I had planned to say a word about the statistics. There are no statistics of ownership of property by colored people that I have ever seen published. There are guesses. The best we have is what* the United States Census gives, but the Census is far off on the Negro of the North. The records of the Negro in the North have usually been records of things which are detrimental to the race. We have the record of death. We have the records of arrest. We have the records of imprisonment, etc. In local statistics and nowhere else do we find records of the ownership of property, the registration of graduates from our schools, etc., and so, when one goes to get the property in the North, he is at a great dis- advantage. Furthermore — the color question is not so much to the front in the North as it is in the South. (I am glad Mr. Pelham is here; he works on the Census statistics.) When I first saw the Census statistics of farmers in Pennsylvania I wrote to the Cen- sus Office and said, "Why, you have no colored farmers in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, why is that?" I said, "Look up the record of James T. Patterson and see whether you have him colored or white," I have made my summer home there for several years and Mr. Patterson’s people have made their home there for over a hundred years, and across from him is another colored farmer. And I asked the Census Department to look up the record. I got the response that they would do it, but when the Bulletin came out I saw there was no record of Negro farm- ers there. What has happened there has happened in many other places where the Census enumerator, not very keen on the colored question, has let the colored man go in as white, and when it comes to figures, we don’t get the credit we should. I want to make another observation about the Negro ownership in the North and that is this: It was my privilege to visit about. 85 Negro rural communities. In most of these rural communities in the North the Negroes who owned property fifty years ago, got their property largely by gift from white people. One of the 10 largest of these pieces of property is in Greene County, Ohio, and another in Darke County, Ohio, also Brown County, and many in Indiana, where Negroes were emancipated or manumitted, and sent to these places, their owners frequently giving them a thousand acres of land; for instance, in Brown County, 2,000 acres of land were given to a former slave; sometimes as much as $10,000 was also given. In 1866, in Greene County, Ohio, for example, all of the property — the farms owned by Negroes (being more than 100,000 acres) were given them by white peo- ple. That is generally true in all the rural communities of Negroes in the North, which shows that this ownership of property by col- ored people during these fifty years means the exercise of their own or their fathers’ energy; their fathers' thrift or their own thrift; and the conservation by themselves of their parents. An interesting study of Negro property in the North is that showing that there is a great deal of property in Indiana, Michi- gan, and Ohio, which Negroes have received from the Govern- ment in 60 or 160 acre lots. In most cases where they have re- ceived this property from the Government — where the pioneer Negro father went out and cleared the forest — this property is still in the hands of Negroes, and one of the most interesting of these cases is in Cass County, Michigan, which probably is known to all of you. In conclusion let me speak of city ownership. Mr. Work made a study of city ownership in Chicago, and there has been a study made of city ownership in Philadelphia. Outside of this I do not know of any intensive study of city ownership of property 11 among colored people. In 1909, by personal effort, I located 3,373 Negroes in the State of Pennsylvania who had an assessed property value of $5,000,000. About" six years before this time a study of Negro property in the city of Philadelphia revealed ownership to the amount of $280,000 worth of property. In 1909 there was therefore something like $5,589,000 worth of property owned in 105 towns, and I calculate that is about fifty per cent of the holdings of colored people in the state of Pennsyl- vania to-day. I would conclude that there are about 6,500 Ne- groes who are property holders— who have (exclusive of the value of the property in churches and institutions) property valued at between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000 — an amount gotten at only approximately because of 200 district assessors who stated that they had no Negroes in their districts who owned property, al- though the ministers in the community, in 1887, returned names of colored property holders, which were afterwards verified by an assessor who at first stated there were no Negro property holders in his district. So what we have is entirely an estimate. It is interesting to study how the Negro acquires his proper- ty. There is more in the method of acquirement than there is in the figures which we give. The city of Philadelphia probably has more colored owned homes than any of the large cities of the country. Most of these are acquired through the Pennsylvania Building and Loan System of purchase. It may be known to you that Pennsylvania has more homes than any state in the Union; that, though New York has 9,000,000 people, Philadelphia has a half a million more homes — dwelling places — in it than New York has, and Philadelphia has more homes that are owned by the people who live in them than any other city in our country. Now this is largely due to the fact that the easy method of pur- chase, through the building and loan association, relieves a man of the fear of foreclosure mortgage, and also of the necessity of having to pay a large sum at any time. I happen to be the President of one of these associations and in talking with dozens and dozens of these Negroes who have come from the South, especially, we find this difficulty,. that he fears the mortgage will be foreclosed. As soon as we can explain to him that there is no two-year or four- year or five-year mortgage, at the end of which time he will, if he is unable to pay the $1,000 or $1,200, lose all of his holdings, he is convinced that the purchase of the home is not only a sensible thing but a very easy thing, and I wish that Howard University might study the Pennsylvania system of building and loan asso- ciations as a method of purchasing homes for poor people. This method has proved a wonderful benefit to white and colored in Pennsylvania and if it could be adopted throughout our country, it would increase the holdings of colored people in the next ten years, a very, very large per cent. 13 Address by Wm. Anthony Aery, Press Service Hampton Institute, Va. Upon Business Enterprises ERHA PS you will pardon a personal word if I tell you that I belong to that relatively small group of white people who serve as buffers between the great mass of white people on the one hand and a great mass of colored people on the other, and sometimes white people misunderstand what I try to do and certain colored people misunderstand what I try to do, but I have to assure you that what we do at Hampton and what white people of my class are doing is done with a Christian spirit, and if I say things that are critical or harsh, you will un- derstand. Now, the paper that Mr. Work read you just now empha- sizes very strongly and very emphatically certain success elements. You have the daring, the initiative, the industry, the thrift that made this wonderful paper possible, but as the men in the white busi- ness world are learning, it is not enough for us to make progress or to be satisfied with investigating — that is not the best. What we have to do is apply the survey method of looking after the facts, whatever they may be, pleasing or displeasing, and in the consideration of these facts, realize that they are mere foundations. As I see the problem, it seems to me that every day that you and I work together for this national prosperity and for the pros- perity of the colored and white people, we must be willing to adopt the foundations that are built upon character, upon intelli- gence, upon thrift, upon cooperation, upon racial good will. Now when you take facts into consideration, and build on them, you have something which we can go out and work with in the fu- ture. Of course there are certain business dangers. One is that we shall forget the weakness in our present organization. When we go out to carry out a big campaign, whether it is for education or even in politics, the thing we must try to do — the thing that men try to do, is to perfect their organization, and the big thing in organization is to make every man in the organization feel the force of somebody’s personality. Because of this, — in Howard University you have had strong personality at work in the form of your presidents, in the form of your professors — you have been 14 able to inject some new life and new hope and new ambition in- to more and more a common cause, and with new hope and am- bition these people have gone out into the North and South — everywhere — carrying out the concrete ideas of Howard Univer- sity. Now,*that is the thing we have got to work for, not only in Howard and Hampton, but at Harvard and Cambridge. The colored business men and women must come together and decide what is going to be the big platform on which they are going to work. Then when you have decided on your platform and you can get people trained — students in stenography, in typewriting, in bookkeeping, in the technique of business — and establish some offices, it seems to me that you take the history of the past and capitalize it. Now, what do we mean? We mean to put the thing to work without abusing it. When you put money to work, what do you do? You make money work over and over and over again, and when you capitalize personality, you use peo- ple over and over, but you do not wear them out. That is the thing we have got to do. Capitalize our manhood; capitalize our womanhood; make our young men and women in school realize the great obligation they owe. For instance, frequently in the South, and I think Bishop Thirkield will bear me out, the question comes up again and again, of giving some money for colored schools, and what do we find? No money. Difficulties in getting money. And when a group of people look you in the eye and say, * f We have no money, ” what can we do about it? It means that some individual has got to take the risk. The leader, the man who takes the risk, if there are profits, gets them. But the man in the South especially, who wants to help education, must have money and he can not have money unless people have wants to be satisfied, and they will not have wants to be satisfied unless they are educated. And it all comes back to education, to good homes, and to the development of character. But how far can business men of this country go, if we are sending out to them people lacking in education? How much education do you suppose a white boy or a colored boy can get when he has to go to a one-room school, taught by a teacher who has never gotten out of the fourth grade 15 of the local schools, who gets $15 or $18 a month and teaches from three to five months in the year? How much of an impetus is given that boy or that girl to go on and earn money, and be a good farmer or merchant, and make it possible for us to put money into the schools? My friends, it seems to me this morning, as never before that on this talk about the facts that have been brought out by reference to Census reports— the facts that Mr. Work has brought out, — we must build up a program of action, something that we really can do. This is to be a progress pro- gram. If you find that the great bulk of the people you are try- ing to help are living in the country, you have got to work on a platform which must appeal to and help that class of people, and the big thing is not so much to tell them what kind of fertilizer to put into the ground as it is to build them up as men, and help the men on the land, and then the men on the land will build up their farms. And you can apply the same kind of reasoning to the merchant. When you really help a merchant, you do not help him by going in and loaning money necessarily. When a man wants to borrow money but objects to telling you what he wants to use it for, in all probability he is not likely to use that money wisely, and if he goes to the bank and wants to borrow money he must establish a good credit. As was said some years ago, the big thing is character. The man who has good character in this country can get credit, and I think again that Bishop Thirkield will bear me out, that there does not seem to be another place in the country where the aver- age colored man, without education, but with character, can get more real credit than he can in the South. Somebody was saying a moment ago that we are considering the colored man now, because he is moving out of the South. Yes, we are, and the North is as much distressed in some in- stances about it as the South. The South will let him go away but in many, many cases they won’t let him come in. And he is going to move out of the South, and he is going to keep on moving out of the South until we have a better place, a more secure place for him to live in. Now, one of the points that I would like to make perfectly clear to you is that the best people of the South today, 16 while they are not saying much about it, — they may not be mak- ing many promises as to what they are going todo, — but the best people have this whole thing on their hearts and they realize that certain things must be done for colored people, not because they are colored, but because they are folks, and whenever anything in this world comes that is worth while, whether it is a new idea or a new life, or anything else worth while, there is trouble, there is pain, there is danger — in many instances there is death. But out of that travail and that pain and that death we are going to have a new life. Some one talked, a little while ago, about men selling their farms and going into the North with material possessions. There is another side too. Not long ago, standing on the station plat- form there at the Atlanta terminal, what did I see? Perhaps fifty men, with nothing but overalls on. Many of them had nothing in their possession but a dirty white handkerchief; some had cheap suitcases. These men were going out to Columbus and Chicago. A great many are bound to fail. Why. Because they are colored? No, because they are of the class unfitted to meet the com- petition they are going to face, and what we have to do first is to protect these people who may have left their homes unwisely. People get panicky. Not long ago I heard of a case where a man left his property, unharvested crops, perhaps $2,000 worth. Can anyone explain why he left? He became panic striken. When we teach our boys and girls the fundamental ideas of economics and sociology and psychology and their business methods, and the other things which we can do through schools, it seems to me we are going to get what we call a methed of social control which is going to make it possible to avert a repetition of this kind of exodus. Then, again, in the matter of the school attendance. I have looked into this matter. I am not blaming anybody. I am not blaming colored people. I am not blaming white people, but here are the facts. They are according to the Census of 1910 and I judge the ratios are just about the same now. There were, between the ages of 6 and 20, in this country, 3,420,000 colored children; of that number we have 1,600,000, or in other words, 47.3 of the colored children in school. Of that 17 aggregate, let as take that group clown to 14 years of age. We had 68 per cent, in school. Now let us compare that for just a moment with the white situation. For the white children as a whole we had 64.5 per cent, in school as against 47.3 per cent, in school — for the colored — for that group 6 to 20 years. In the case of the group 10 to 14 years of age; we had 91.1 per cent, of the white children in school; we had 68 per cent, of the colored children. Now, it seems to me, that no matter who is to blame for that situation, these colored children are colored children and 9 therefore the colored people of the whole county are under obli- gation to strain every nerve and use every possible effort to see that at least 91 per cent, of the colored children between these ages, are put into the schools. That is merely fair. And so we could go on and make other comparisons but I want to leave that with you, it seems to me, as a responsibility. On the other hand, were I speaking to just as large a group of Southern white peo- ple, I’d say to them, that you can not afford, morally or econom- ically, not to do the square thing by these children; and they are waking up to see that point. Of course people do not like to put on shoes that they don't want to fit, and it would be a very easy matter when so many things have been said, that we should not say this at all. Now, you say you have reduced the illiteracy of the colored people. Yes, but you still have about 30.4 per cent, and you can not get the results you ought to have until you make every possi- ble effort- to cut down that illiteracy. As regards farming. In farming, as in other occupations, we are employing more and more of machine labor. Take the state of North Carolina, white people and colored people have a great abundance of man labor and a great scarcity of machine labor, and what happens. North Carolina trails down at the end of the list for agricultural output, per acre, and Iowa goes way ahead. Now, we are not saying that Iowa ought to be held back, but what we need to do is to show men on the land that they really can use machines to the greatest advantage. The facts that I have here about the Negro farmer are very similar to those that have been presented by other speakers but there is one thing I would like to try to emphasize and that is, that, whereas we have 218,000 Negro farm owners, we have 672,964 Negro tenants. That is that great tenant class, mining the land in the South, and mining the land everywhere. This is not peculiar to colored tenants. Wherever we have great numbers of white tenants we have the problem of the ignorant man getting just as much as he can out of the land in order simply to keep body and soul togeth- er, and what then do you find is true? That these tenants move from one county to another, from one state to another, and move just as often as they possibly can. When the boll weevil strikes Alabama, when the floods come to Alabama, when the white man at the bank says, "We can not extend you any more credit/’ what happens? He must get out, and in many cases he has to get out by selling the very last thing on earth, which he has. He burns his bridges behind him. Now that tenant goes out and tries it in Chicago and finds that he does not make a go of it and then wants to come back South. Do you suppose that the South is ready to receive him again? No. If the man, however, who has been a farm owner and has sold his land and gone away, happens to make up his mind to go back, all he needs to do is to announce the fact and they will say to him, "We want you back." That difference between the owner and the tenant is a dif- ference that is based upon an economic difference and not a racial difference. And if we can learn, I think, the two great groups in this country, that many of the things that trouble us are sim- ply economical and sociological and psychological rather than racial, I think we will get somewhere. Something was said, just a moment ago, about farming and manufacturing. The figures in the case show very clearly that in this country there has been for instance, a cutting down on the percentage of those people in agriculture as compared with those engaged in trade and transportation pursuits. At present the Negro has about 56 per cent, of his number in agriculture as com- pared with 32 per cent, of the white people. The country as a whole has about 20 percent, in trade and transportation; the col- ored people has about 6 per cent. The country as a whole has about 28 per cent, engaged in manufacturing and economic in- dustries; the colored people has 4 per cent. You can see, my friends, the wonderful possibility there is for you to enter into a 19 new line of opportunity that some people think is closed to them on account of their race. It isn’t at all; it just simply means that we have not organized our forces and we are not moving in lines that are opening up every day that we are here. Another condition of this progress that we are talking about. 