364 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inextinguishable brotherly love. The generosity of the Southern negro 

 both in spirit and in deed is his most lovable trait. There is always 

 room in the poorest cabin for the child of misfortune, and that family 

 is a rare one which does not contain one or more adopted children — the 

 orphaned or abandoned offspring of the unfortunate. In the hungry 

 barren lives of these poor negro children the first thought of wealth is 

 what it would do for father and mother or 'for my people.' Sixty 

 per cent, of the children between fourteen and twenty, who wish to be 

 wealthy, are actuated by thoughts of others. 



The following papers are typical of this spirit : 



Boy, 14. I would like to be rich so when any poor man come to my door, 

 I would give him something. 



Boy, 14. I would like very well to be rich because my father and mother 

 would not hafter work. All they would do to eat and sleep. 



Girl, 14. Yes, so I could take care of poor and motherless children. 



Boy, 18. My home would be better and I would pay some of those chil- 

 dren's tuitions who have to leave school, and I would try to make it possible 

 for them to earn more money. 



Scattered throughout the South are scores of educated negro men 

 and women whose lives of noble devotion to their people are testifying 

 to this spirit of brotherly love. Of inestimable value in their work 

 would be the aid of pastors, industrially trained, who by teaching and 

 example sanctioned 'property, economy, education and Christian char- 

 acter.' The inherent generosity of the negro character might easily be 

 made the moving force in material accumulation, and so clothe it with 

 righteousness. But perhaps the greatest foes of rational progress are 

 the untrained preachers who destroy initiative and check energy. 



This study certainly emphasizes the correctness of the statement 

 recently made by the Hon. William T. Harris:* "The crying need at 

 the present day is for an educated pulpit, among the colored people of 

 the South. The majority of these ministers are illiterate and ignorant, 

 and their congregations are filled with superstition, some acquired and 

 some hereditary, as a characteristic of the African race." 



• Quoted in Washington 'Post,' May 10, 1900, from Dr. Harris's address at 

 the graduation exercises of the Training School for Nurses at the Freedmen's 

 Hospital. 



