\«>. l.j THE COLORED HACK. 2r»0 



is a good deal of prejudice in this country, north and south, 

 but I will tell you something there is very little prejudice 

 in, and that is the American dollar. You are going to buy 

 your corn every time from the individual who can produce 

 it and sell it the cheapest, whether that man is white, brown, 

 blue or green in color. It doesn't matter about the color of 

 his skin, when you buy corn. You buy the cheapest and 

 best corn. The importance, then, in an industrial educa- 

 tion, is helping to get the negro boy through the south to 

 use care and skill until he can sit under a red umbrella and 

 raise corn just like a white man does, and I do believe in 

 that kind of thing. In a word, my friends, in the south 

 the problem, in a large degree, is to give the young man so 

 much love for agricultural life, showing them how to lift it 

 up out of drudgery and out of toil, until a man will feel, 

 after he gets his education, that he must return to his 

 father's farm, and not yield to the temptation to go to the 

 city and try to live by his wits instead of living by honest, 

 productive toil. AYc find that in proportion as we can 

 teach our young men to put brain and dignity into an agri- 

 cultural life and into all its avenues, they do return to the 

 farm and do teach their mothers and fathers, by reason of 

 their brain and skill, how to raise upon an acre of land fifty 

 bushels of corn where only twenty-five bushels were grow- 

 ing before. 



Some time ago in a northern city I found a white man 

 washing shirts. I do not know as you have ever seen a 

 white man washing shirts. I have. As usual, this white 

 man was sitting down. The white man doesn't do much 

 work unless he does sit down, but he gets there, neverthe- 

 less. When the world wants corn or cotton, it doesn't 

 care whether it is made by a negro standing up or a white 

 man sitting down. All it wants is the best product. This 

 man was washing shirts sitting down. Once in a while he 

 would touch a button and start a machine to work, and it 

 seems to me he was washing shirts at the rate of fifty an hour. 

 This man was sitting down, and half the time he was read- 

 ing a newspaper. One of those things that will wash fifty 

 shirts an hour and let a white man sit down at the same time 



