The great and crying need in the work of education among the people is better teachers in their common schools. They can not be prepared in a day or a year; for it takes much money and much time. The training schools are without endowments, and their patrons are unable to pay more than the lowest tuition fees. If these schools—call them universities, colleges, institutes, seminaries—what you will, are to keep going at their present rate, to say nothing of improvement, white people must furnish the money, for the best of reasons; the negroes have not money to do this sort of work. Most of this money will have to come from Northern pockets, if it comes at all. The State of New York is worth more in property returned for taxation than all the Southern States together—leaving out Missouri, counted in the census of 1880 among “Western States.” THE JOHN F. SLATER FUND Begins to do its blessed work. This fund is dedicated to the work of “Uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern States and their posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Christian education,” and it seeks to accomplish this result by “the training of teachers among the people requiring to be taught.” This fund works through existing institutions; it does not found new schools; there are already more good and deserving schools than it can help. Many times the sum this fund affords could be wisely used. There is not space in this article to discuss the question, but my opinion may be stated: It is necessary that the United States government should aid the States to make their public schools more efficient. Whatever may be true of other sections, the Southern States, owing to the facts of their history and to conditions now existing, are not able to do the work that is upon them. As to the sentiment in these States on the subject of negro education, it may be said in brief: The outcry of small village papers does not always even reflect the sentiment of the people, and there are certain facts that indicate that the work of educating the negroes will go on with less and less hindrance. Three such facts I mention in closing this article: (1) The duty and necessity of educating the negro has been recognized by every representative church in the South. (2) This necessity is recognized in the educational system of every Southern State. (3) No man who believes he has any political or educational “future,” any longer opposes, under his proper name, the education of his negro fellow citizens. * * * * *