Perhaps the most striking failure of the Whites to exercise an influence over the Negroes is through the negro schools. They are, to be sure, carried on under laws made by white men, administered by state and county white officials, but there the relation ends. Even from the point of view of an unsympathetic superior race, the schools are badly supervised; and when it comes to the teachers, the lower race is thrown back upon teachers of the lower race. In the North the raw children from the alien families are Americanized by their fellows in the public schools, under the influence of teachers taken from the class of the population which has most opportunity for training. Not so in the South, where the blind are expected to lead the blind, where negro teachers trained by Negroes are expected to inculcate the principles of white civilization. The refusal of the South to permit white people, and especially white women, to teach the Negroes, is a plant of recent growth. In slavery times the white mistresses and their daughters habitually taught the household servants their duties and set before them a standard of morals. Beyond that, they were often proud of teaching capable slaves to read and write. On every theory of the relation of the races this transmittal of civilization was not only allowable, but a sacred duty. Nowadays the mistresses have the smallest control over or influence upon their domestic servants; and, with few exceptions, the South absolutely refuses to improve the low estate of the Negroes by permitting the white young people to teach them. The arguments against putting white teachers into negro schools are altogether weak. The first is that it is unsafe for white women, but the Northern women who have been for years among Negroes as teachers have no fear nor cause for fear; and the influence of a pure and refined white woman would tend to diminish some of the worst crimes of the black race. It is urged, however, that even men could not teach Negroes, first, because the Negroes would not trust their girls to them; secondly, because it would cut off the field or negro employment; thirdly, because a white man does not wish to teach Negroes; and, finally, because none but inferior men would seek such employment.