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312 THE CRISIS

but of at least 250,000 among all men who believe n men. it must not be a namby-pamby box of salve, but a voice that thunders fact and is more anxious to be true than pleasing. There should be a campaign of trace distribution - short well written facts and arguments - rained over this land by millions of copies, particularly in the South, where the white people know less about the Negro than in any other part of the civilized world. The press should be utilized - the 400 Negro weeklies, the great dailies and eventually the magazines, when we get magazine editors who will lead public opinion instead of following afar with resonant brays. Lectures, lantern-slides and moving pictures, co-operating with a bureau of information and eventually becoming a Negro encyclopedia, all these efforts along the line of making human beings realize that Negroes are human. 

Such is the program of work against obstructions. Let us now turn to constructive effort. This may be summed up under (1) economic co-operation (2) a revival of art and literature (3) political action (4) education and (5) organization. 

Under economic co-operation we must strive to spread the idea among colored people that the accumulation of wealth is for social rather than individual ends. We must avoid, in the advancement of the Negro race, the mistakes of ruthless exploitation which have marked modern economic history. To this end we must seek not simply home ownership, small landholding and saving accounts, but also all forms of co-operation, both in production and distribution, profit sharing, building and loan associations, systematic charity for definite, practical ends, systematic migration from mob rule and robbery, to freedom and enfranchisement, the emancipation of women and the abolition of child labor. 

In art and literature we should try to loose the tremendous emotion wealth of the Negro and the dramatic strength of his problems through writing, the stage, pageantry, and other forms of art. We should resurrect forgotten ancient Negro art and history, and we should set the black man before the world as both a creative artist and a strong subject for artistic treatment. 

In political action we should organize the votes of Negroes in such congressional districts as have any number of Negro voters. We should systematically interrogate candidates on matters vital to Negro freedom and uplift. We should train colored voters to reject the bribe of office and to accept only decent legal enactments both for their own uplift and for the uplift of laboring classes of all races and both sexes. 

In education we must seek to give colored children free public school training. We must watch with grave suspicion the attempt of those who, under the guise of vocational training, would fasten ignorance and menial service on the Negro for another generation. our children must not in large numbers, be forced into the servant class; for menial service is still, in the main, little more than an antiquated survival of impossible conditions. It has always been as statistics show, a main cause of bastardy and prostitution and despite its many marvelous exceptions it will never come to light of decency and honor until the house servant becomes the Servant in the House. It is our duty then, not drastically but persistently, to seek out colored children of ability and genius, to open up to them broader, industrial opportunity and above all, to find that Talented Tenth and encourage it by the best and most exhaustive training in order to supply the Negro race and the world with leaders, thinkers and artists. 

For the accomplishment of all these ends we must organize. Organization among us already has gone far but it must go much farther and higher. Organization is sacrifice. It is sacrifice of opinions, of time, of work, and of money, but it is, after all the cheapest way of buying the most priceless of gifts - freedom and efficiency. I thank God that most of the money that supports the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People comes from black hands; a still larger proportion must so come, and we must not only support but control this and similar organizations and hold them unwaveringly to our objects, our aims and our ideals. 

Mr. Taylor's Funeral 
By Charles W Chesnutt [[Text contained within image]]

Mr. David Taylor had been for many years chief steward, during the season of navigation, upon a steamboat running between Groveland and Buffalo, on one of the Great Lakes. The salary and perquisites made the place a renumerative one, and Mr. Taylor had saved considerable money. During the winter time he ran a coal yard, where he supplied poor people with coal in small quantities at a large profit. He invested his savings in real estate, and in the course of time became the owner of a row of small houses on a side street in Groveland, as well as of a larger house on the corner of the adjacent main street. 

Mr. Taylor was a stout mulatto, with curly hair and a short gray mustache. He had been a little wild in his youth, but had settled down into a steady old bachelor, in which state he remained until he was past forty-five, when he surprised his friends by marrying a young wife and taking her to live with him in the corner house. 

Miss Lula Sampson was a very personable young woman, of not more than twenty-two or twenty-three. She had not been without other admirers; but Mr. Taylor's solid attractions had more than counter-balanced the advantages of these others in the way of youth and sprightliness. For Miss Sampson, while not without her sentimental side, had a practical vein as well, and concluded that on the whole it would be better to be a rich old man's darling than a poor young man's slave. 

They lived together very comfortably in the corner house, and Mrs. Taylor enjoyed to the full such advantages as regular rents and savings-bank dividends carried in their train. Mr. Taylor had been for many years a leading member of the Jerusalem Methodist Church, in which he had at various times acted as class-leader, trustee and deacon, and of which he had been at all times the financial backer and manager. Mrs. Taylor had been brought up, so to speak, in the Mt. Horeb Baptist Church, and had at one time sung in the choir; but after her marriage she very dutifully attended service with her husband, only visiting the Baptist church on special occasions, such as weddings or funerals or other events of general public interest. 

One day in May, 1900, a month or more after the opening of navigation in the Spring, Mr. Taylor left Groveland on the steamer Mather for Buffalo, on one of her regular semi-weekly trips to that port. When the steamer returned several days later without him, his wife and friends felt some concern at his nonappearance, as no message had been received from him in the meantime. Inquiry on the steamer merely brought out the fact that Taylor had not been on hand when the boat was ready to leave port, and that she had sailed without him; in fact he had not been missed until the Mather was some miles out. 

When several days more elapsed without news from the absent man, his wife's uneasiness because a well-defined alarm. She could account for his absence on no hypothesis except that some harm had befallen him. And upon reading an item in a newspaper, about a week after Mr.