Some may ask:  Shall we, then, not have some scholars, men learned in all that higher education gives?  Of course; and we should have them.  Men fitted by nature for special pursuits in life will make preparation for that work.  Water will find its level.  Genius cannot be repressed.  It will find an audience, even though the singer be Robert Burns at his plow in the remoteness of Ayr, or the philosophic AEsop in the humble garb of a Greek pedant’s slave.  Genius will take care of itself; it is the mass of mankind that must be led by the hand as we lead a small boy.  It is therefore that I plead, that the masses of the colored race should receive such preparation for the fierce competition of every day life that the odds shall not be against them.  I do not plead for the few, who will take care of themselves, but for the many who must be guided and protected lest they fall a prey to the more hardy or unscrupulous.

Mr. Magoun follows out his train of thought in the following logical deductions: 

Plainly, if this opportunity for furnishing the skilled labor of the South hereafter (as he has furnished the unskilled heretofore) slips away from the black man, he can never rise.  In the race for property, influence, and all success in life, the industrially educated white man—­whatever may be said of Southern white men “hating to work”—­will outstrip him.  Before an ecclesiastical body of representative colored men at Memphis, in the autumn of 1880, I urged this consideration, when asked to advise them about education, as the one most germane to their interests; and preachers and laymen, and their white teachers, approved every word, and gave me most hearty thanks.  I counseled aspiring young men to abstain from unsuitable attempts at merely literary training; from overlooking the intermediate links of culture in striving after something “beyond their measure;” from expecting any more to be shot up into the United States Senatorships, etc., by a revolution which had already wellnigh spent its first exceptional force (as a few extraordinary persons are thrown up into extraordinary distinction in the beginning of revolutions); from ambitious rejection of the steady, thorough, toilsome methods of fitting themselves for immediate practical duties and nearer spheres, by which alone any class is really and healthfully elevated.  To shirk elementary preparation and aspire after the results of scholarship without its painstaking processes is THE temptation of colored students, as I know by having taught them daily in college classes.  I rejoice in every such student who really climbs the heights of learning with exceeding joy.  But a far greater proportion than has thus far submitted to thorough-going preparation for skilled labor must do so, or there is no great future for them in this land as a race.

But already the absurdity of beginning at the apex of the educational fabric instead of at the base is being perceived by those who have in hand the education of colored youth.  A large number of colleges are adding industrial to their other features, and with much success, and a larger number of educators are agitating the wisdom of such feature.