In view of these considerations it is evident that a race that does not read must ever be a laggard race. Our racial organization must, therefore, found libraries throughout the regions in which Negroes dwell, to the end that we may have the benefit of all the elevating influences of good literature.
Our problem is, however, deeper than the mere founding of libraries, as is apparent from the following considerations: During their sojourn in America the great majority of Negroes have had such work assigned to them as required much bodily exercise. But a comparatively few have led sedentary lives. The laboring Negroes have been accustomed to sing as they worked or have relieved the monotony of their labors by jovial bantering. The occupations of a race eventually make themselves felt in more or less marked racial characteristics.
Thus, when a cotton factory was established recently to be operated by Negro labor, it failed, the manager assigning as a partial cause thereof the fact that the Negroes did not make the best operatives, in that sitting still and being quiet caused them to be rather listless and sleepily inclined. While, in other instances, tendencies in that direction have perhaps been overcome, this one case serves to suggest that the inattention to reading on the part of so many may be traceable to the same inherited indisposition to sit still and be quiet, necessary concomitants of the reading habit.
Our racial organization must not, therefore, feel that its labors are complete when the libraries are founded. Systematic efforts must be put forth to create in our people a thirst for reading so that they may have ears to hear what the past and present are thundering at us.
WE EAT TO LIVE.
However brave, brilliant and resourceful a general commanding an army may be, however loyal and enthusiastic are his soldiers, he must inevitably fail if he neglects his commissary department. The cravings of the human stomach must be provided for or there will be no soul left in the emaciated body to aspire for higher things.
In arranging, therefore, for the welfare of the race our racial organization must not neglect the material needs of our people. An advancing army must protect at all hazzards its base of supplies. We now outline a course of action in keeping with this thought.
The man who knows that there is a prejudice against him, owes it to himself to so contrive that he shall be as nearly as possible independent of the workings of this prejudice. Negroes, therefore, should, in the main, seek those callings in which they shall be above the whims and prejudices of men.
The land owner, the farmer, can come as near to being independent of his fellows as a man may in these days attain. The sun, the elements, the soil, his own strong arm, are his chief reliance and these forces are not subject to enslavement, nor can prejudice weaken them. Nature has no favorites among men. The rains fall upon the just and the unjust alike. Back to the farms, therefore, should in a large measure be our cry. With a strong agricultural backbone the position of the race is much the more secure. The conditions that operated to cause the Negroes to so largely abandon the farms must be studied and altered when possible.