By proper education of the patrons, and merit on the part of Negro business enterprises and professional men, is a summary answer to the above question. It will be well for our present purposes to investigate this answer in detail. The natural inference therefrom--an inference whose justness is easily demonstrable--is that the education of the Negro race, so far and in such manner as it has already proceeded, is defective, when it comes to the question of training Negroes to support their own business enterprises and professional men. The very text books, not to mention the living teachers, in every department of education, whether professional or otherwise, are written by authors and for students other than Negroes. For every public, and well nigh every private educational institution of the land, the trustees of education have prescribed books which, besides suppressing whatever praiseworthy associations the race has had with the history and literature of our common country, never call the words of a Negro wise; nor his deeds noble. It is neither a sufficient nor true answer to the question, to say that Negroes have contributed nothing of educational or civic value to the literature or history of this country. Manifestly, then, our young people come out of school without confidence in the ability of their race to do what members of other races can do. This, I take it, is the reason why we find educated Negroes, as a rule, bestowing their patronage upon business enterprises and professional men of other races rather than upon their own representatives in the same vocation. This lack of confidence and race pride, characteristic of the educated as well as of the uneducated Negro, is the most destructive heritage bequeathed by slavery days to any once enslaved race in the history of the world. Hence, as a race, we need a thorough revision of our system of education which shall encourage the production of Negro authorship, on the one hand, and the confidence-and-pride-inspiring study of the worthfulness of the Negro's enviable record, on the other.