These are Mr. Troy's words and they found reflection in the discussions of the Alabama legislature then in session. A compulsory education bill had been introduced; the problem was to pass a law that would apply to white people, not to Negroes. In this connection I heard a significant discussion in the state senate. I use the report of it, for accuracy, as given the next morning in the _Advertiser_: Senator Thomas said ... he would oppose any bills that would compel Negroes to educate their children, for it had come to his knowledge that Negroes would give the clothing off their backs to send their children to school, while too often the white man, secure in his supremacy, would be indifferent to his duty. At this point Senator Lusk arose excitedly to his feet and said: "Does the Senator from Barbour mean to say that the Negro race is more ambitious and has more aspirations than the white race?" "The question of the gentleman ... is an insult to the senate of Alabama," replied Senator Thomas deliberately. "It is an insult to the great Caucasian race, the father of all the arts and sciences, to compare it to that black and kinky race which lived in a state of black and ignorant savagery until the white race seized it and lifted it to its present position." The result of this feeling against Negro education has shown itself in an actual reduction of Negro schooling in many localities, especially in Louisiana, and little recent progress anywhere else, compared with the rapid educational development among the whites, except through the work of the Negroes themselves, or by Northern initiative. In cutting off an $8,000 appropriation for Alcorn College (coloured) Governor Vardaman, as a member of the board of trustees, said: "I am not anxious even to see the Negro turned into a skilled mechanic. God Almighty intended him to till the soil under the direction of the white man and that is what we are going to teach him down there at Alcorn College." Without arguing the rights or wrongs or necessities of their position, I have thus endeavoured to set down the purposes of the present political leadership in the South. _Economic Cause for White Supremacy_ Now the chief object of any aristocracy, the reason why it wishes to monopolise government and learning, is because it wishes to supervise the division of labour and the products of labour. That is the bottom fact.