BENJAMIN WILLIAM ARNETT

Shall we encourage our young men to be farmers and mechanics? Yes, a thousand times yes, encourage them to become producers as well as consumers, to be owners and tillers of the soil as well as cultivators and rentors; teach them that it is just as honorable to be an honest farmer as to be a lawyer, teacher or a preacher, and the royal road to success and happiness is built on honest labor, either of muscle or brain.

We have a great nation to help govern. We who are citizens of this great republic are favored children, yet we are all the time complaining; but that is one of the inalienable privileges of an American to complain about his neighbor and government-always crying for a change. But, with all of its faults, this is the best government for man on the face of the earth

More than half the illiteracy of the whole nation is in the South, who where are found a little more than one-fourth of the nation's white population. The church never faced a graver responsibility than the work of giving Christian culture to the illiterate white millions of the South, and the A.M.E. Church is doing for the colored what the M.E. Church is doing for the whites in the North.

Our ears are saluted from the east and west, north and south alike saying: I like a Negro in his place. But there are no two communities which agree as to his proper place. So they have been trying to fix him in first one place and then in another; but just as soon as public sentiment changed, or he saw an opportunity, he changed to such places as he thought his intelligence, industry, courage and endurance commanded.

I would stand at the cradle of every colored boy and girl in the land and bid them to awake from their slumber, put on their clothes and shoes, prepare their toilet, eat an early breakfast, throw their satchel of books on their shoulders and hasten to the school house and remain until they have secured a parchment of graduation

Men who cannot read are the mercy of a few men who are interested in self more than in good government. The country is the sufferer; for the effect of one ballot is felt to the utmost extremity of the body politic; it touches every industry and trade, it accelerates or retards the wheels of commerce, and fills the avenues of trade with life and general activity such as is found in no other country.

In acquiring knowledge there is no law that applies to the white boy that does not apply to the black boy. They all have to travel the same road to reach the same end….A man that desires to be wise must study, whether he be black or white.

I would stand at the cradle of every colored boy and girl in the land and bid them to awake from their slumber, put on their clothes and shoes, prepare their toilet, eat an early breakfast, throw their satchel of books on their shoulders and hasten to the school house and remain until they have secured a parchment of graduation

In acquiring knowledge there is no law that applies to the white boy that does not apply to the black boy. They all have to travel the same road to reach the same end….A man that desires to be wise must study, whether he be black or white.

Men who cannot read are the mercy of a few men who are interested in self more than in good government. The country is the sufferer; for the effect of one ballot is felt to the utmost extremity of the body politic; it touches every industry and trade, it accelerates or retards the wheels of commerce, and fills the avenues of trade with life and general activity such as is found in no other country.

More than half the illiteracy of the whole nation is in the South, who where are found a little more than one-fourth of the nation's white population. The church never faced a graver responsibility than the work of giving Christian culture to the illiterate white millions of the South, and the A.M.E. Church is doing for the colored what the M.E. Church is doing for the whites in the North.

Our ears are saluted from the east and west, north and south alike saying: I like a Negro in his place. But there are no two communities which agree as to his proper place. So they have been trying to fix him in first one place and then in another; but just as soon as public sentiment changed, or he saw an opportunity, he changed to such places as he thought his intelligence, industry, courage and endurance commanded.

Shall we encourage our young men to be farmers and mechanics? Yes, a thousand times yes, encourage them to become producers as well as consumers, to be owners and tillers of the soil as well as cultivators and rentors; teach them that it is just as honorable to be an honest farmer as to be a lawyer, teacher or a preacher, and the royal road to success and happiness is built on honest labor, either of muscle or brain.

We have a great nation to help govern. We who are citizens of this great republic are favored children, yet we are all the time complaining; but that is one of the inalienable privileges of an American to complain about his neighbor and government-always crying for a change. But, with all of its faults, this is the best government for man on the face of the earth