Legislation cannot solve the negro problem in this country. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, the Civil Rights Bill and the Constitution itself cannot solve the negro problem. We must go behind the Constitution, behind the amendments; we must go to the public sentiment. What effect has a law if there is not a public sentiment to back it up? We have had the Civil Rights Bill for several years, but what did it amount to in some sections of the country? It amounted to nothing, because there was not a public sentiment to sustain it. And it seems to me that we want to educate the public sentiment and it is evident that the solution of this great vexing problem can only come through the gradual and thorough development of the negro’s mental and moral nature. I say _thorough_, because some men think that the negro need have only an elementary training, that he is not prepared for a higher training. Why is he not? If it has taken centuries of culture, with the best masters and the best teachers, to uplift the white race, why is it not necessary to uplift the black race? God has made of one blood all nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth; and we believe that there are only individual and not race distinctions as to their mental and moral capabilities. Therefore, what one race requires another race requires; and we feel assured that, when this has been done, the millions of minds, both in this country and in Africa, that are now rough and unshapen as the rock from the quarry, will begin to show signs of symmetry under the constant hammer and steady chisel of competent workmen. Then, and not till then, the negro’s sun of progress and prosperity, whose earliest rays already gladden his eastern horizon, will rise and climb the firmament of his glory until it reaches its zenith, and from that zenith it will shed forth a light that all the nations of the earth shall behold, whose heat shall melt away all prejudice, in whose light all indignities and all inhumanities shall vanish; and all these nations, in one united, harmonious voice, shall cry aloud, “Ethiopia, Ethopia has indeed and in truth stretched forth her hands unto God.” * * * * * CASTE IN AMERICA. BY SECRETARY STRIEBY. India has four castes, America two. The Hindoo castes are the priest, soldier, merchant and laborer or Soodra. The last is the largest and lowest and bears the weight of all the upper classes, whom it is born to serve and by whom it is despised. The highest caste may come down to the employments of the soldier or merchant, but not to those of the Soodra, but, according to Hindoo orthodoxy, the Soodra can as little enter a higher caste as a stone can become a plant.