our national progress along material lines that has not been vitalized by the touch of the inventor's genius.

Into this vast yet specific field of scientific industry the colored man has, contrary to the belief of many, made his entry, and has brought to his work in it that same degree of patient inquisitiveness, plodding industry and painstaking experiment that has so richly rewarded others in the same line of endeavor, namely, the endeavor both to create new things and to effect such new combinations of old things as will adapt them to new uses. We know that the colored man has accomplished something—indeed, a very great deal—in the field of invention, but it would be of the first importance to us now to know exactly what he has done, and the commercial value of his productions. Unfortunately for us, however, this can never be known in all its completeness.

A very recent experiment in the matter of collecting information on this subject has disclosed some remarkably striking facts, not the least interesting of which is the very widespread belief among those who ought to know better that the colored man has done absolutely nothing of value in the line of invention. This is but a reflex of the opinions variously expressed by others at different times on the subject of the capacity of the colored man for mental work of a high order. Thomas Jefferson's remark that no colored man could probably be found who was capable of taking in and comprehending Euclid, and that none had made any contribution to the civilization of the world through his art, would perhaps appear somewhat excusable when viewed in the light of the prevailing conditions in his day, and on which, of course, his judgment was based; but even at that time Jefferson knew something of the superior quality of Benjamin Banneker's mental equipment, for it is on record that they exchanged letters on that subject.

Coming down to a later day, when our race as a whole had shared, to some extent at least, in the progress of learning, so well informed an exponent of popular thought as Henry Ward Beecher is said to have declared that the whole African race in its native land could be obliterated from the face of the earth without loss to civilization, and yet Beecher knew, or should have known, of the scholarly Dr. Blyden, of Liberia, who was at one time president of the college of Liberia at Monrovia, and minister from his country to the Court of St. James, and whose contributions to the leading magazines of Europe and America were eagerly accepted and widely read on both continents.

Less than ten years ago, in a hotly contested campaign in the State of Maryland, a popular candidate for Congress remarked, in one of his speeches, that the colored race should be denied the right to vote because "none of them had ever evinced sufficient capacity to justify such a privilege," and that "no one of the race had ever yet reached the dignity of an inventor." Yet, at that very moment, there was in the Library of Congress in Washington a book of nearly 500 pages containing a list of nearly 400 patents representing the inventions of colored people.

Only a few years later a leading newspaper in the city of Richmond, Va., made the bold statement that of the many thousands of patents annually granted by our government to the inventors of our country, "not a single patent had ever been granted to a colored man." Of course this statement was untrue, but what of that? It told its tale, and made its impression—far and wide; and it is incumbent upon our race now to outrun that story, to correct that impression, and to let the world know the truth.

In a recent correspondence that has reached nearly two-thirds of the more than 12,000 registered patent attorneys in this country, who are licensed to prosecute applications for patents before the Patent Office at Washington, it is astonishing to have nearly 2,500 of them reply that they never heard of a colored inventor, and not a few of them add that they never expect to hear of one. One practising