industry, thrift, the inclination to settle down to the necessary hard work of the world, or have they bred idleness, indisposition to work, a vaporous ambition in politics, and that sort of conceit of gentility of which the world has already enough?  If any one is in doubt about this he can satisfy himself by a sojourn in different localities in the South.  The condition of New Orleans and its negro universities is often cited.  It is a favorable example, because the ambition of the negro has been aided there by influence outside of the schools.  The federal government has imposed upon the intelligent and sensitive population negro officials in high positions, because they were negroes and not because they were specially fitted for those positions by character or ability.  It is my belief that the condition of the race in New Orleans is lower than it was several years ago, and that the influence of the higher education has been in the wrong direction.

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.”