The "calls" to preach, I am glad to say, are not
nearly so numerous now as they were formerly, and the calls to
some industrial occupation are growing more numerous. The
improvement that has taken place in the character of the teachers
is even more marked than in the case of the ministers.
During the whole of the Reconstruction period our people
throughout the South looked to the Federal Government for
everything, very much as a child looks to its mother. This was
not unnatural. The central government gave them freedom, and the
whole Nation had been enriched for more than two centuries by the
labour of the Negro. Even as a youth, and later in manhood, I had
the feeling that it was cruelly wrong in the central government,
at the beginning of our freedom, to fail to make some provision
for the general education of our people in addition to what the
states might do, so that the people would be the better prepared
for the duties of citizenship.
It is easy to find fault, to remark what might have been done,
and perhaps, after all, and under all the circumstances, those in
charge of the conduct of affairs did the only thing that could be
done at the time. Still, as I look back now over the entire
period of our freedom, I cannot help feeling that it would have
been wiser if some plan could have been put in operation which
would have made the possession of a certain amount of education
or property, or both, a test for the exercise of the franchise,
and a way provided by which this test should be made to apply
honestly and squarely to both the white and black races.
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