But the chance for material success in connection with industrial life is relatively of less importance than is the chance for the individual to get development through the mastering of difficulties in the management of industrial operations. The mere mastering of these difficulties has made many of the Captains of Industry of this country. Poverty discourages many a youth who starts out in the busy industrial world, but the fact that others have conquered poverty is an earnest that others, for centuries to come, will get courage and strength out of adverse struggle. The colored man starts out, it is true, with an additional handicap, but here is the chance for Negro youth to learn to turn disadvantages to advantages. A colored man born in poverty and an ex-slave owns to-day one of the largest tailoring establishments in one of the most prominent streets in the city of Boston. This man had learned the sweet uses of adversity and knew how to lay hold of disadvantages. His establishment is patronized by people who buy from him not in spite of the fact that he is a Negro, but because he is a Negro. The world needs men, be they white or black, who can rise on successive failures to useful citizenship. No person can enter industrial life without for a time feeling some days of almost complete failure, but mistakes and weariness beget confidence and experience. All industrial operations and material progress should be used not as ends but as means of making life more comfortable, more useful and more beautiful. The intelligent farmer as he plants and works and harvests the cotton must remember that the production of cotton is not the end of his effort. Every bale of cotton can be turned into books, into opportunities for travel and study. The man who grows corn must remember that the growing of corn is not the end of life, but that the corn can be turned into refinements and beauties of a civilized life and a Christian home. No one can doubt that the people who have built the railroads and constructed the great steamships that bind country to country have added to the wealth and happiness of the world. Finally, it must be remembered that the mastering of difficulties should bring poise, purpose and vision. I want every Tuskegee student as he finds his place in the surging industrial life about him to give heed to the things which are “honest and just and pure and of good report,” for these things make for character, which is the only thing worth fighting for, either in this life or the next. v Making Religion A Vital Part of Living