_Mr. Councilman; Mr. Principal; and you, My Fellow-Citizens_:
It is a very great pleasure to be here this afternoon and say a few
words of greeting to you. Let me by way of beginning say a word of
special greeting to my comrades of the Grand Army. I had a colored
cavalry regiment in my brigade at Santiago, and they did well.
My friends, let me say what a pleasure it has been in driving along the
streets to have the Governor and the Mayor point out to me house after
house owned by colored citizens, who by their own industry, energy, and
thrift had accumulated a small fortune honestly and were spending it
wisely. Every good American must be interested in seeing every other
American citizen rise, help himself upward, so as to be better able to
do his duty by himself and those dependent upon him and by the State at
large. It seems to me that it is true of all of us that our duties are
even more important than our rights. If we do our duties faithfully in
spite of all difficulties, then sooner or later the rights will take
care of themselves.
What I say to this body of my colored fellow-citizens is just exactly
what I would say to any body of my white fellow-citizens. What we
need in this country is typified by what I have been shown to-day as
having been done by people of your race. We need education, morality,
industry; we need intelligence, clean living, and the power to work
hard and effectively. No man interested, as every President must be,
in the welfare of all his fellow-Americans, could be otherwise than
deeply pleased, not only at the evidences of thrift and prosperity
among what must be evidently many hundreds of your number here in this
city, as shown by the homes that I have seen, but interested also in
seeing an educational institute like this carried on as this institute
evidently is carried on. The costliest crop for any community is the
crop of ignorance. It is perfectly true that education in mind alone
won’t make a good citizen; but it is equally true that you can not get
the best citizen without education. We need to have our people of every
race educated, as the Principal said in his words of introduction,
in heart, mind, and hand; educated so that head and hand can do their
several tasks, and so that there shall be behind head and hand also the
heart, the conscience, the sense of clean and just living, which make
the foundation of all good citizens. This is just as true for the white
man as for the colored man. It is true of every man.
I want to say a special word of acknowledgment to the school teachers,
men and women alike, who are doing the work of education; and in saying
that word I also want to point out this: it is absolutely essential
that we should have people do well in the professions; but there is
only a limited amount of room in the professions and there is almost an
unlimited amount of room in agriculture and in the mechanical trades.
Do your very best to develop good teachers, good doctors, to develop
good preachers—preachers who shall preach to the colored man as it
should be preached to the white man, that “by their fruits you shall
know them,” and that the truly religious man is the man who is decent
and clean in his private life; who is orderly and law-abiding; the
man who hunts down the criminal and does all he can to stop crime and
wrong-doing; the man who treats his neighbor well; who is a good man in
his own family and therefore a good man in the state. That is what we
have a right to expect from the Christian leadership of the churches.
All honor to the teacher, to the doctor, to the preacher; but remember
that it is impossible that the bulk of any people shall be teachers,
or doctors, or lawyers, or preachers. The bulk have got to be men
engaged in the trades, as mechanics, as wage-workers, as farmers. Every
man who is a good farmer, a thrifty, progressive, saving mechanic, who
owns his own house, who is free from debt, and able to bring up his
children well, and to keep his wife as she should be kept, is not only
a first-class citizen, but is doing a mighty work in helping to uplift
his race.