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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