In all the Northern cities heroic efforts are made to assimilate the foreign population by education and instruction in Americanism.  In the South, in the city and on plantation, the same effort is necessary for the negro, but it must be more radical and fundamental.  The common school must be as fully sustained and as far reaching as it is in the North, reaching the lowest in the city slums and the most ignorant in the agricultural districts, but to its strictly elemental teaching must be added moral instructions, and training in industries and in habits of industry.  Only by such rudimentary and industrial training can the mass of the negro race in the United States be expected to improve in character and position.  A top-dressing of culture on a field with no depth of soil may for a moment stimulate the promise of vegetation, but no fruit will be produced.  It is a gigantic task, and generations may elapse before it can in any degree be relaxed.

Why attempt it?  Why not let things drift as they are?  Why attempt to civilize the race within our doors, while there are so many distant and alien races to whom we ought to turn our civilizing attention?  The answer is simple and does not need elaboration.  A growing ignorant mass in our body politic, inevitably cherishing bitterness of feeling, is an increasing peril to the public.

In order to remove this peril, by transforming the negro into an industrial, law-abiding citizen, identified with the prosperity of his country, the cordial assistance of the Southern white population is absolutely essential.  It can only be accomplished by regarding him as a man, with the natural right to the development of his capacity and to contentment in a secure social state.  The effort for his elevation must be fundamental.  The opportunity of the common school must be universal, and attendance in it compulsory.  Beyond this, training in the decencies of life, in conduct, and in all the industries, must be offered in such industrial institutions as that of Tuskegee.  For the exceptional cases a higher education can be easily provided for those who show themselves worthy of it, but not offered as an indiscriminate panacea.

The question at once arises as to the kind of teachers for these schools of various grades.  It is one of the most difficult in the whole problem.  As a rule, there is little gain, either in instruction or in elevation of character, if the teacher is not the superior of the taught.  The learners must respect the attainments and the authority of the teacher.  It is a too frequent fault of our common-school system that, owing to inadequate pay and ignorant selections, the teachers are not competent to their responsible task.  The highest skill and attainment are needed to evoke the powers of the common mind, even in a community called enlightened.  Much more are they needed when the community is only slightly developed mentally and morally.  The process of educating