It not only makes "a carpenter of a man; it makes a man of a carpenter." In one sense, therefore, it is of greater value than any other institution for the training of men and women that we have, from Cambridge to Palo Alto.

It is almost the only one of which it may be said that it points the way to a new epoch in a large area of our national life.
To work out the plan on paper, or at a distance--that is one thing.

For a white man to work it out--that too, is an easy thing.

For a coloured man to work it out in the South, where, in its constructive period, he was necessarily misunderstood by his own people as well as by the whites, and where he had to adjust it at every step to the strained race relations--that is so very different and more difficult a thing that the man who did it put the country under lasting obligations to him.
It was not and is not a mere educational task.

Anybody could teach boys trades and give them an elementary education.