I know well all the arguments against educating the Negroes. I know the struggle that the South made in the days of her poverty to educate that race, even at the expense of her white children; expending upon them, out of taxes levied by the whites on the property of the whites, over $110,000,000, though over a fifth of the whites were left in ignorance.[101] I know the disappointment from which she has suffered. What is charged as to the educated Negro’s being just educated enough to make him worthless as a laborer and leave him useless for anything else has in it often too much truth. I am well aware that often the young Negro thinks his so-called education gives him a license to be insolent, and that not rarely it is but an aid to his viciousness. But, for all this, the economic laws are as invariable and as certain in their operation as any other laws of nature. In the first place, it seems to me that our plain duty is to do the best we can to act with justice and a broad charity and leave the consequences to God. But there are other reasons for our continuing in well-doing. And not for sentimental reasons and not for political reasons, but for reasons on which depend the future of the South and of the Southern people; for reasons as certain as that light is safer than darkness, and that intelligence is better than stupidity, or even mere craftiness, the South must educate all her population. She must do this, or she must fall behind the rest of the country. She has no option in this matter. She has the population and they are increasing. The matter seems to me to be not susceptible of question on sound economic grounds. We must educate them. It is not a question of choice, but of necessity. We have the Negro here among us to the number of ten millions and increasing at a rate of about twenty-five per cent. every ten years. They are here; what must we do with them? One of three courses must be taken: We must either debase them, keep them stationary, or improve them. Everyone will discard the first plan. No one can make the second feasible. A race, like a class, is always in a state of change, at least, under conditions like those in America. Then, we must adopt the third course. At this point, the question arises: How shall they be improved? One element says, Improve them, but only as laborers, for which alone they are fitted; another, with a larger charity, says, Enlarge this and give them a chance to become good mechanics, as they have shown themselves capable of improvement in the industrial field; a third class goes further yet, and says, Give them a yet further chance—a chance to develop themselves; enlighten them and teach them the duties of citizenship and they will become measurably good citizens. Yet another says, Give him the opportunity and push him till he is stuffed full of the ideas and the learning that have made the white race what it is.