However, the Negro takes great pride in his church, and in his way is intensely religious. The late Booker T. Washington said: “Of these millions of black people there is only a very small percentage that does not have formal or informal connection with some church.” It is, indeed, likely that more than one-half of the male Negro adults are actual members of church, while not more than _one_ in four or five white male adults have such connection. Notwithstanding such a showing, religion does not seem to have any controlling influence over the life and character of the Negro. Nevertheless, the Negro enjoys his religion, for he is an emotional animal. It is the emotional element in religion that appeals to him and makes his face to shine. The promise of never-ending pleasure in a world to come may be but faintly comprehended by him, but the fear of a far off punishment deters him but little from crime. He is the optimist of the human race, and lives in the eternal present. He has no sorrows from the past, and no care except for the immediate future. He keeps without effort or intention two injunctions of Scripture: “Visit the sick,” and “have no care for to-morrow.” He goes to camp meetings or revivals, sings, prays, and shouts until the small hours of the night. He may think he thus pays the Lord His due, even though the next day, if he works at all, he sleeps on the plow-handle, or with half-closed eyes cuts up the tobacco or the cotton. However, he may be free from the painful necessity to work the next day, if his wife or mother should have just returned from a white neighbor with an “apronful,” even if he did not visit some tempting smoke-house or hen-roost on the way home from his religious revelry. How can Negro criminality and immorality be lessened? The answer is not easy, and what follows is merely suggestive. Up to the present, what little the Negro has accomplished, in most part has been due to the white blood he has received, or to white direction and sympathy. The Negro is woefully lacking in initiative and persistence. He would be greatly benefited by some sort of probationary oversight. If the Filipinos are not fit for self-government collectively, much less the Negro individually. A great part of them are no more fit to profit by their freedom than so many children. Nothing so promotes health of body and strength of character as regular and persistent industry. To the Negro should be preached the “gospel of salvation” through work. Somehow get him to work six days in the week, instead of working two and loafing four, as many now do. Industrial schools such as Hampton and Tuskegee meet a great need but they touch but few.