It was a great surprise to us to learn that, at all the schools we visited, the pupils (except in the state schools) pay from five to seven dollars a month for board and tuition. Those who cannot pay, work ten hours a day for the privilege of two hours schooling in the evening. It was in this way Booker Washington obtained his education, working his way one hundred miles to reach Hampton. The day scholars in two rural schools we visited in the black belt of Alabama paid one dollar a month for their tuition for eight months, as the state only pays, on an average, thirty dollars a month to a teacher for three months, and provides neither school-house nor books. Where, we ask, do we find among the well-to-do working classes of the North, to say nothing of the poorest, such an effort to educate their children? Of the moral effect of the education so obtained there seems to be no question. The leaders of the race say, “all we ask is time and a fair chance,” and judging of their future by their past since the emancipation, we think they are right. We were surprised at their clear judgment and general information about their people, at their freedom from malice, and kindly feeling toward the whites, and in this connection we may quote a conversation with Mr. Chavis, a negro graduate of Gammon Theological Seminary, and in charge of the Bennet School at Greensboro, N. C. He says: “The whites complain that the educated negro declines ‘hired work’ and that education is ruining him. Those men who have acquired a profession or trade, or learned how to cultivate the land on scientific principles, refuse to enter the employ of the whites at six or eight dollars a month, because independently they can earn more, and then the whites say ‘there is a negro spoiled by education.’ “The girls who graduate from the schools have acquired knowledge which enables them to support themselves at good wages until they marry, which they generally do five years after they graduate, generally to the men with whom they have been educated. If they by chance go into domestic service, they get from four to six dollars a month, and are treated as in the old slave days, which they naturally resent; they therefore seek independent occupations.” “How about their morals?” we asked. “I can confidently assert, that of the girls I have educated very few have gone astray, and in the face of temptations to which the whites are not subjected. We teach them it is a part of their duty in life to encourage and guide their ignorant sisters. We strive in this school to found our education upon a strong Christian basis, and we feel that God has already blessed our work.” “What occupations are open to your young people?”