“The money now expended for Negro education is largely wasted. Can we afford longer to allow this large element in our population to follow their present practices and remain in their present condition?” Such schools as Hampton Institute and Tuskegee have fairly well demonstrated that industrial education is at least a good thing for the Negro. In these and other such schools thousands have been given an inspiration for a higher plane of living. Indeed, it is claimed that very seldom is any graduate of these two schools convicted of crime:[153:6] The influence of Tuskegee on the Negro in a material way may be appreciated by the statement that in 1881 when the school was opened in Macon County, Alabama, not more than fifty or sixty Negroes in the county owned land, but in 1910, 503 Negroes in the county owned 61,689 acres, “probably the largest amount of land owned by the Negroes of any county in the United States.”[154:7] If a few Negro industrial schools make such a good showing, then why not multiply the number? Indeed, it is yet too early for either the Negro or his friends to indulge in too much optimism in regard to the matter. For while it may be true in general that whatever is done in behalf of a lower element in a society benefits the whole society, at the same time, it needs to be borne in mind that to the extent that it is done to the cost or by the neglect of a more homogeneous and wholesome element in the society or if it in any way militates against such element it is a questionable proceeding. What if the industrial education of the Negro should be found to conflict with the interests of the white laborer or skilled worker? Does any one suppose that it is the purpose of the South so to educate the Negro (or even allow him to be so educated) as to enable him to take the bread from the white man’s mouth? And does any one suppose that the laboring white man of the arrogant and aggressive Anglo-Saxon race will stand tamely by with folded arms while there is danger of its being done? This is the central point of the whole situation. But in the South the contest between these two conflicting interests is not yet, as the demand for labor skilled or unskilled is too great. The Negro has had and can have all the work he wants and more for the asking; indeed, often his labor is anxiously solicited. How long this will continue no one knows, positively. However, when the population of the country reaches 150,000,000 or 200,000,000 then labor will likely be as plentiful here as it is now in Europe. Then, the labor of the Negro will hardly be solicited, rather otherwise. The white man’s sympathetic attitude toward the Negroes’ many shortcomings is fast passing. When the Negro is required to measure up to the white man’s standard and is found wanting, what remains for him?