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This is not saying that the higher education is responsible for the present condition of the negro.

Other influences have retarded his elevation and the development of proper character, and most important means have been neglected. I only say that we have been disappointed in our extravagant expectations of what this education could do for a race undeveloped, and so wanting in certain elements of character, and that the millions of money devoted to it might have been much better applied.

We face a grave national situation. It cannot be successfully dealt with sentimentally. It should be faced with knowledge and candor. We must admit our mistakes, both social and political, and set about the solution of our problem with intelligent resolution and a large charity. It is not simply a Southern question. It is a Northern question as well. For the truth of this I have only to appeal to the consciousness of all Northern communities in which there are negroes in any considerable numbers. Have the negroes improved, as a rule (always remembering the exceptions), in thrift, truthfulness, morality, in the elements of industrious citizenship, even in States and towns where there has been the least prejudice against their education? In a paper read at the last session of this Association, Professor W. F. Willcox of Cornell University showed by statistics that in proportion to population there were more negro criminals in the North than in the South. “The negro prisoners in the Southern States to ten thousand negroes increased between 1880 and 1890 twenty-nine per cent., while the white prisoners to ten thousand whites increased only eight per cent.” “In the States where slavery was never established, the white prisoners increased seven per cent. faster than the white population, while the negro prisoners no less than thirty-nine per cent. faster than the negro population. Thus the increase of negro criminality, so far as it is reflected in the number of prisoners, exceeded the increase of white criminality more in the North than it did in the South.”

This statement was surprising. It cannot be accounted for by color prejudice at the North; it is related to the known shiftlessness and irresponsibility of a great portion of the negro population. If it could be believed that this shiftlessness is due to the late state of slavery, the explanation would not do away with the existing conditions. Schools at the North have for a long time been open to the negro; though color prejudice exists, he has not been on the whole in an unfriendly atmosphere, and willing hands have been stretched out to help him in his ambition to rise. It is no doubt true, as has been often said lately, that the negro at the North has been crowded out of many occupations by more vigorous races, newly come to this country, crowded out not only of factory industries and agricultural, but of the positions of servants, waiters, barbers, and other minor ways of earning a living. The general verdict is that this loss of position is due to lack of stamina and trustworthiness. Wherever a negro has shown himself able, honest, attentive to the moral and economic duties of a citizen, either successful in accumulating property or filling honorably his station in life, he has gained respect and consideration in the community in which he is known; and this is as true at the South as at the North, notwithstanding the race antagonism is more accentuated by reason of the preponderance of negro population there and the more recent presence of slavery. Upon this ugly race antagonism it is not necessary to enlarge here in discussing the problem of education, and I will leave it with the single observation that I have heard intelligent negroes, who were honestly at work, accumulating property and disposed to postpone active politics to a more convenient season, say that they had nothing to fear from the intelligent white population, but only from the envy of the ignorant.