"Having made two or three visits to the South he had got an impression of the extreme complexity and difficulty of the problem which Mr Washington was so nobly striving to solve. It was no wonder that it should be difficult, seeing that the whites had such a long start of the coloured people in civilisation. He believed that the general sentiment of white people was one of friendliness and a desire to help the negroes. The exercise of political rights and the attainment to equal citizenship must depend upon the quality of the people who exercised those rights, and the best thing the coloured people could do, therefore, was to endeavour to attain material prosperity by making themselves capable of prosecuting these trades and occupations which they began to learn in the days of slavery, and which now, after waiting for twenty years, they had begun to see were necessary to their well-being." At the present time the institution at Tuskegee represents a value of L100,000, if we include the endowment fund; and the annual cost of training 1100 or more students is not less than L16,000. The work continues to expand, as must ever be the case with all healthy enterprises of the kind. Perhaps the most hopeful symptom of all is the sanguine enthusiasm of Booker Washington himself, who, happily for himself and for those whom he seeks to benefit, is, and must ever be, an optimist. He believes that his race has a future, and that it is capable of being so uplifted as to become a benefit to the world. We must all allow that the right means are being used to bring about this new reformation; but, at the same time, we need not close our eyes to the fact that there are observers and even well-wishers of the coloured people who are not so hopeful. By way of giving what may be regarded as the more pessimistic view, take the following passage from an article in the _Daily Mail_ of October 23, 1901:--