To-day Negroes may work freely as menials at low wages; they may work freely as farm laborers under conditions of semi-slavery; higher than that they meet unusual difficulties—the difficulty of saving capital from low wages to farm or go into business; the difficulty of securing admission to the trades even when competent; the difficulty of securing protection under the law and of rearing a family in decency; the difficulty of educating their children; the difficulty of protecting their rights by the ballot. To be sure, if they are unusually gifted and pushing they may push higher at the risk of insult and bitter opposition. Thus the fact remains that the mass of the willing, eager workers of the race are held back and forced down by a deep and growing race prejudice, and these, pressing down on the lower strata, encourage in them laziness and vagrancy and crime. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is an organization for giving the colored race a reasonable opportunity to help itself. SCHOOLS. The philanthropist of a city like New York is bewildered and often exasperated by the demands and begging of colored schools in the South. To some extent this is inevitable, and is due to the fact that the United States is undertaking to give elementary education to a race of ten million people very largely by private philanthropy instead of making this a State and even a national charge, and leaving to voluntary effort the college work and work of social uplift. But beyond this the philanthropic world is to some extent itself to blame because of the encouragement it gives to unknown and unvouched-for enterprises and to unwise and unjustifiable attempts to duplicate existing foundations. The representative of a great fund once called on the writer and expressed great sorrow that an alleged school in the South to which one of the most prominent New York philanthropists had given $5,000 was found on investigation to be no school at all. This was unfortunate, but there are hundreds of good and deserving schools starving for help which this philanthropist did not give to because their representatives did not appear so glib or plausible. It is not the smoothest talker who necessarily is doing the best work. [Illustration: _THE NATIONAL PASTIME._ _Seventy-five per cent. of the Negroes lynched have not even been accused of rape._ ] Again, indiscriminate and ill-advised giving encourages such things as are happening in Atlanta. Atlanta needs public elementary schools, but it does not need more private schools. The existing schools are equipped for excellent work in industries, agriculture, college training and some professional work. With adequate help and endowment they could do splendid work.