college graduates, both of whom I had met while they were students at Fisk University, the colored people with great sacrifice had contributed building material and labor in the construction of a very substantial two-story building with attic and basement, which, however, is yet incomplete and unfurnished. The people with few exceptions, are extremely poor and very ignorant, and have an imperfect idea of what a school means with its proper appointments and teachers.

Kowaliga Industrial School.

In answer to the most urgent appeals of the two young educators, I arranged in my recent journeying in the South for a personal investigation. One of the former student acquaintances came for me in his "one horse shay" and with him as my courier and companion I rode through this rural district. I found that the white farmers are gradually leaving their plantations while the colored people are as gradually becoming land owners. Abandoned farms, which through poor culture have not paid the farmers for cultivation, can easily be secured by industrious colored people who are willing to deny themselves and work hard for an independent start in life.

The father of the young man whom I accompanied on my long ride through the country is one of these who has already won his success. His experience and achievement are typical in illustrating the trends and the probabilities.

Mr. J. A. Benson—at this present time forty-six years of age—was born a slave three miles from the great plantation which he now owns. When his owner's estate was divided he was a part of the property which fell to an heir in Talladega, Alabama. There as property he was sent, and there he worked as a slave until emancipation came. At the age of nineteen years, with a hundred dollars saved from his earnings as a free man he returned to his birthplace and purchased on credit 160 acres of land. His first year of crops gave him a handsome profit and soon he was able to pay for this land. Again he bought land, and again more year by year. Now I found him with his new house of twelve rooms nearly completed on the site of his old one, the construction of which was under the direction of a Negro contractor whose leading workman was a white man; a native of that same community. The mason who did the masonry was also a Southern white man. While engaged on this "job" both white men ate at the same table with the owner. In the "Merchant of Venice" we read of one who said, "I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you and so following, but I will not eat with you." Nevertheless there are times when "Necessity knows no law" and this was one of the times. It was the common opinion, however, that the excellent mason was much more expeditious than is common about his job, though he was working by the day. His work was completed in about one-half the usual time allowed for it. He stayed, not upon the order of his going. Doubtless a second experience would come with less self conquest than the first.

Mr. Benson began his independent life with his unpaid farm of 160 acres. Now he owns 3,000 acres of land paid for and without encumbrance, with the virtual ownership of a fine stream, at some points 500 feet wide, which for five miles runs through his extensive plantations. On this stream he has a brick yard, a saw mill, a grist mill and a cotton gin and compressing mill combined in one and operated by the water of this stream. The farm is worked on shares chiefly, the owner furnishing the land and the stock, the laborers dividing the products half and half.

Kowaliga Creek—through Mr. Benson's Plantations.

The leases are taken by a dozen responsible and experienced farmers, who sub-contract with the laborers under their immediate supervision. Of the 3,000 acres, one-half is devoted to corn, cotton, cane, etc.; 500 are used for pasturage and 1,000 furnish ample supply of pine, oak and hickory timber for the greedy teeth of his saw mill and the willing embrace of his planing mill. He has cows, cattle, mules, horses, barns and farm implements to meet all necessities. His teams go regularly to Montgomery markets and return with stores for the forty families who live upon his lands and work them, and for the community who purchase of him what things they have. Besides his possessions in land, Mr. Benson has been able to loan to his white neighbors some $6,000, which are secured by mortgages upon their farms. They are running behind and he is running ahead. While I was the guest of this man, opposite me at the table dined a white man who was engaged on the carpentry of the new house. He was a native Southerner but he showed no evidence of social injury, and if he did his carpentry work as thoroughly as he did that of the table he certainly earned his wages.

Mr. Benson has managed with his uncommon ability to pick up education enough to achieve and handle successfully and shrewdly these large interests; not only to know their details but also to realize their significance and somewhat of the larger world beyond his own dominions. The success of this self-made colored man may be somewhat exceptional in degree, but it is not at all phenomenal. The story with the variations of personality and place could be told a hundred times over among the colored people who began thirty years ago without a foot of land or a dollar of money.

Among the colored people in this rural community this man is one. For the most part life has gone on for the others without much advancement. They have not been left without a certain kind of school for their children taught for three months out of twelve chiefly by students who are themselves getting an education in institutions sustained by Northern benevolence; but the teaching has been without continuity and insufficient to make much impress on character. This far-seeing colored man realized this, and his own influence in life might have been greater if chances had come to him in his earlier days. He has, therefore, given his son a liberal education at college and has daughters now in the same path.

When the young man returned from his studies with Christian love in his heart to assist his father in business he took in the situation that there must be a school here commensurate with the needs, where the colored boys and girls might receive the blessings of an education large and thorough enough and of such a positive Christian quality as should change the life of the community. In some aspects it sadly needs radical change.

He called to his side one of his mates at Fisk University—a graduate of the college department—under the conviction that for such work as this there was a call for a thorough as well as a technical education; that there must be breadth of mental knowledge and mental vision as well as skill of hand. The young college man with his diploma in his pocket heard the call, as scores of samples from our institutions in our great system of schools are hearing theirs every year; and when once there these two young men began what is to be the Kowaliga Academic and Industrial School. They each had taken industrial training enough with their studies to know what they were about. They sought good counsel from others and thus the main school building was begun. Mr. Benson, the father, furnished a sufficient allotment of land for the site, the timber and the lumber which his mills sawed and