An examination of this table shows that in the District of Columbia, North Carolina, and Texas the proportional enrollment of negroes was greater than that of the whites, while in other States it was less.

The following table shows the rate of increase in the enrollment in each of these States from 1880 to 1890:

From this table it appears that in all excepting four States, namely, North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, the enrollment of negro children in the public schools has increased more rapidly than that of the whites.

Summing up this article in a paragraph, the following conclusions may be stated: The negroes, while increasing rapidly in this country, are diminishing in numbers relative to the whites. They are moving southward from the border States into those of the south Atlantic and the Gulf. They prefer rural life rather than urban life. The proportion of criminals among the negroes is much greater than among the whites, and that of paupers is at least as great. In the matter of education, the number of negro attendants at school is far behind the number of whites, but is gaining rapidly upon that race.

Only one generation has elapsed since the slaves were freed. To raise a people from slavery to civilization is a matter, not of years, but of many generations. The progress which the race has made in this generation in industry, morality, and education is a source of the highest gratification to all friends of the race, to all excepting those who expected a miraculous conversion.

V.

MEMORIAL SKETCH OF JOHN F. SLATER.

John Fox Slater, of Norwich, Conn., who gave a generous fund to promote the education of tho freedmen, was a quiet, thoughtful, well-trained man of business, who rose by industry, sagacity, and prudence to the possession of a fortune. His chief occupation through life was the manufacturing of cotton and woolen goods in Connecticut and Rhode Island. In recent years, as his means increased, he was interested in many enterprises, some of them established in New York and others in the West. He was a close observer of the social, political, and religious progress of the country, and a frequent, unostentatious contributor to benevolent undertakings, especially such as were brought to his attention in the town where he resided and in the church which he attended. From all positions which made him conspicuous he was inclined to withdraw himself, and he probably underrated the influence which he might have exerted by the more public expression of his opinions; but whenever he did participate in public affairs he showed the same independence, sagacity, and resolution which marked the conduct of his business. Under these circumstances the story of his life is simply that of a private citizen who was faithful to the responsibilities which devolved upon him, and who gradually acquired the means to contribute liberally toward the welfare of others. Notwithstanding the well-known unwillinguess of Mr. Slater to attract the attention of the public, those who are concerned in the administration of his trust desire to put on record the characteristics of his long and useful life.

For three generations the Slater family has been engaged, either in England or the United States, in the improvement of cotton manufactures. Their English home was at Belper, Derbyshire, where William Slater, a man of considerable property, the grandfather of John F. Slater, resided more than a hundred years ago, until his death in 1782. At Belper and at Milford, not far from Belper, Jedediah Strutt was engaged as a partner of Sir Richard Arkwright, in the business of cotton spinning, then just becoming one of the great branches of industry in England.

Samuel Slater, fifth son of William Slater, was apprenticed to Mr. Strutt, and near the close of his service was for some years general overseer of the mill at Milford. Having completed his engagement he came to this country in 1789, and brought with

him such an accurate knowledge of the business of cotton spinning, that without any written or printed descriptions, without diagrams or models, he was able to introduce the entire series of machines and processes of the Arkright cotton manufacture in as perfect a form as it then existed in England. He soon came into relations with Moses Brown, of Providence, and through him with his son-in-law and his kinsman, William Almy and Smith Brown. With the persons last named he formed the partnership of Almy, Brown & Slater. For this firm Samuel Slater devised machinery and established a mill for the manufacture of cotton, at Pawtucket, R. I., in the year 1790, but as this proved an inadequate enterprise, he constructed a larger mill at the same place in 1793.

A few years later, about 1804, at the invitation of his brother Samuel, John Slater, a younger son of William, came from England and joined his brother in Rhode Island. The village of Slatersville, on a branch of the river Blackstone, was projected in 1806, and here until the present time the Slaters have continued the manufacture of cotton goods.

John F. Slater, son of John and nephew of Samuel, was born in the village just named, in the town of Smithfield, R. Î., March 4, 1815, and received a good educa tion in the academies of Plainfield, in Connecticut, and of Wrentham and Wilbraham, in Massachusetts. At the age of 17 (in connection with Samuel Collier) he began to manage his father's woolen mill at Hopeville, in Griswold, Conn., and there he remained until he became of age. In 1836 he took full charge of this factory, and also of a cotton mill at Jewett City, another village of the same town, where he made his home. Six years later he removed to Norwich, with which Jewett City was then connected by railway. Here he married, May 13, 1844, a daughter of Amos H. Hubbard, and here his six children were born. Only two of them, the eldest aud the youngest, a daughter and a son, survived the period of infancy, and of these the son alone is living. Norwich continued to be Mr. Slater's home until he died there, at the beginning of his seventieth year, May 7, 1884.

Before his last great gift, Mr. Slater made generous contributions to religious and educational enterprises. He was one of the original corporators of the Norwich Free Academy, to which he gave at different times more than $15,000. To the construction of the Park Congregational Church, which he attended, he gave the sum of $33,000, and subsequently a fund of $10,000, the income of which is to keep the edifice in repair. At the time of his death he was engaged in building a public library in Jewett City, which will soon be completed, at a cost of $16,000. His private benefactions and his contributions to benevolent societies were also numerous. During the war his sympathies were heartily with the Union, and he was a large purchaser of the Government bonds when others doubted their security.

Some years before his death, Mr. Slater formed the purpose of devoting a large sum of money to the education of the freedmen. It is believed that this humane project occurred to him, without suggestion from any other mind, in view of the apprehensions which all thoughtful persons felt, when, after the war, the duties of citizenship were suddenly imposed upon millions of emancipated slaves. Certainly, when he began to speak freely of his intentions, he had decided upon the amount of his gift and its scope. These were not open questions. He knew exactly what he wished to do. It was not to bestow charity upon the destitute, nor to encourage a few exceptional individuals; it was not to build churches, schoolhouses, asylums, or colleges; it was not to establish one strong institution as a personal monument; it was, on the other hand, to help the people of the South in solving the great problem which had been forced upon them, how to train, in various places and under differing circumstances, those who have long been dependent, for the duties belonging to them now that they are free. This purpose was fixed. In respect to the best mode of organizing a trust, Mr. Slater sought counsel of many experienced persons-of the managers of the Peabody educational fund in regard to their work; of lawyers and those who had been in official life, with respect to questions of law and legisla tion; of ministers, teachers, and others who have been familiar with charitable and educational trusts, or who were particularly well informed in respect to the condition of the freedmen at the South. The results of all these consultations, which were continued during a period of several years, were at length reduced to a satisfactory form, and were embodied in a charter granted to a board of trustees by the State of New York, in the spring of 1882, and in a carefully thought-out and carefully written letter, addressed to those who were selected to administer the trust. The characteristics of this gift were its Christian spirit, its patriotism, its munificence, and its freedom from all secondary purposes or hampering conditions. In broad and general terms, the donor indicated the object which he had in view; the details of management he left to others, confident that their collective wisdom and the experience they must acquire would devise better modes of procedure, as the years go on, than any individual could propose in advance.

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On the 18th of May, 1882, Mr. Slater met the board of trustees in the city of New York and transferred to them the sum of $1,000,000, a little more than half of it

being already invested, and the remainder being cash, to be invested at the discretion of the board. On that occasion the trustees addressed him a letter acknowledging his generosity, and they invited him always to attend their meetings; but he never met with them again, and declined to guide in any way their subsequent

action.

The gift of Mr. Slater was acknowledged by expressions of gratitude from every part of the country, and especially from those who were watching with anxiety the future of the blacks. The echoes of gratitude came also from distant lands. Henceforward, in the annals of Christian philanthropy, the name of John F. Slater will be honored among those who have given wisely, freely, and in their lifetime, to enlighten the ignorant and to lift up the depressed.

MEMOIR.

[By Rev. Dr. S. H. Howe, pastor of the Park Church, Norwich, Conn.]

Mr. John Fox Slater, founder of the fund that bears his name, was born in Rhode Island, March 4, 1815. His family came a generation before from England, and was identified with manufacturing interests in the countries both of its birth and its adoption. He who was to be associated in the public mind with industrial education among one of the races on the continent was born to the inheritance of a name which has held high eminence for its relation to industrial progress. One of his near relatives has been called the "father of American manufactures." Family tradition and family prominence along these lines early determined for him the career of a manufacturer, by which he laid the foundations of the fortune which he ultimately amassed. He early developed rare business aptitudes, as was evidenced by the intrustment to him of one of the mills of his father at the age of 17. From this early period he continued in the career of a manufacturer until his death, maintaining and enlarging the plant covered by his sole ownership not only, but also identified with other large manufacturing corporations as shareholder and director. Starting from the solid foundation of a good academical education, he found in business life a training and discipline which fitted him to grapple, with the hand of a master, with the largest questions in business and finance, and to achieve success where others failed. He had large experience in business life, and developed rare powers for the grasp of its intricate problems. His business successes were not due to the chances of trade, or the fluctuations of values, or to the daring and the ventures of speculation, but were the fruit of the sagacious and alert use of the opportunities which were in his own as in other men's reach. He possessed profound insight and exhaustive knowledge of affairs and men, with mental grasp and business training, some have believed, sufficient to have wisely controlled the financial interests of a nation. His judgment and counsel were sought by great corporations in the management of enterprises and industries which represented large investments and a vast outlay of capital. It is hot strange that his ventures were so largely successful, and that his failures and

losses were

exceptional and rare.

Then his sagacity in business, which amounted to genius, was allied to honorable methods and to inflexible business integrity. Few men have had an aversion so severe and uncompromising to unfairness and to doubtful practices. His opportunities for speculation were many, but he carefully held himself aloof from all but the legitimate channels of trade. He gathered fortune by honorable methods a fact of Some significance to those who handle his munificent trust, and a significant fact to those who are helped to manhood and culture by it. The hands which created this

noble foundation were clean hands.

Mr. Slater, as may be inferred from what has been said, was a man of wide intelligence, peculiarly receptive and hospitable to truth. To his strong Puritan sense of right and devotion to principle, he added that larger interest in the world and the age in which he lived, which gives scope and breadth to thought, and defends against mere local and provincial sympathies. And yet he was a public-spirited citizen in his adopted city, jealous of its good name, generous toward its charities. Toward his country he was patriotic and loyal, interested in its politics and its legislation. He was a man of strong, pronounced personality; of fine fiber and of genuine manliness-a gentleman by instinct and training and habit; reserved and selfrespecting, though genuinely sympathetic toward and accessible to all classes of men. He was sensitive concerning and deeply averse to that adulation which goes after great fortune for its own sake. It is the testimony of a friend who saw him most frequently through a long period of years and shared his confidence in a larger sense than others that in all his intercourse with him he had not heard a sentence that suggested the pride of fortune. He wished to be estimated for what he was and not for what he possessed. And this rule governed him in the estimate which he placed upon others. He was modest and unostentatious to the last degree. While

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he was touched and gratified by the honor which came to him in connection with his great gift to benevolence, he did nothing to invoke it or to stimulate it. He remained amidst it all the same quiet, reserved, unostentatious citizen. He was to those who knew him well a most delightful and resourceful conversationalist. His breadth of view, his versatility, his familiar acquaintance with affairs and men, with questions of finance, politics, and religion, his taste for art, his knowledge of the world gained from travel, made his companionship delightful to those who shared it. His interest in and gifts to benevolence antedated his later beneficence. Great gifts are never a bit of pure extemporization. Great things are not done on the spur of the moment. Those who develop unexpected resources on great occasions or show themselves capable of conspicuous sacrifices or services have had in advance their rehearsals. The noblest philanthropies are not extemporized or wrung forcibly from their authors by the stern importunity of death. Even legacies have generally a background of practical benevolence. Mr. Slater has given wisely and generously to objects that commended themselves to him. Many of these gifts were in the public eye, but it is the testimony of his nearest friends that he gave with larger liberality than the public could be aware of, with simplicity, and without ostenta tion, responding to cases of distress and suffering generously, but in such fashion as to conceal the giving hand.

But the conspicuous act of his life with which the public had most concern is of course the creation of the foundation for industrial education among the freedmen. Much that had gone before in his life had been leading up to this princely gift. He had always manifested a profound interest in education, had given largely, and had projected generous measures for educational work in the community, which, however, were yielded in the interest of his larger purpose. His interest in local educa tion has been most worthily commemorated by the splendid_memorial building erected in his honor by his son in connection with the Norwich Free Academy. Mr. Slater realized, and as his fortune grew was oppressed with, the sense of the responsibility of wealth, and planned long in advance to give in bulk to some worthy object of benevolence; and he resolved to execute this purpose in life rather than by bequest. The issues of the great civil war which unloosed the fetters of the slave, but which did not qualify him for the responsible duties of citizenship, gave Mr. Slater his great opportunity. He thought this problem through. He had been loyal, patriotic, and generous in his gifts when the struggle was upon the nation, and he rejoiced in the successful outcome; but here was a new field and an unlimited opportunity which he resolved to appropriate. His plan originated wholly and without suggestion from others with himself, and was elaborated to its minutest detail in advance of its publicity. Standing at this distance and looking through the experimental test of more than a decade of its working, it is impossible to resist the conviction that it was statesmanlike, patriotic, and Christian in its conception and spirit. Mr. Slater was wise to see what we have been learning, that the exigent want for the emancipated race was practical and industrial education. The higher education has its offices to take in exceptional instances, but for the masses of the race, so long submerged and held down to the low levels of intelligence where emancipation found it, the wisest, most practical, and resultful plan for its elevation was that devised by the founder of this educational fund. It was the instinct of patriotism and of practical statesmanship to go to the weakest spot in the body politic to strengthen it, as it was the impulse of Christian thought to place the ladder of ascent within reach of the foot of the lowest man, who was most hopeless of self-recovery. Perhaps this is occasion for surprise. Mr. Slater might have been patrician in his sympathies, exclusive and reserved in his associations. He had aptitudes and opportunities for aloofness from other than the privileged classes; he might have been exclusive in his sympathies rather than inclusive. But his sympathies swept him around to the opposite pole from that on which he stood. He crossed the whole diameter of society to find the lowest groove in our social and national life that he might do this conspicuous act of beneficence to the poorest of this nation's poor. Such examples of wise beneficence, which express the sympathy of the privileged for the unprivileged classes, do much to lighten the strain of selfgovernment in a nation like ours. They do much to allay the antagonisms of society and to bridge the chasm which opens between those zones of enormous wealth on the one hand and a degrading poverty which are drawn across the map of our modern life. When wealth consents after this fashion to reach out helping hands toward the nation's poor and gives aid toward self-help, then many of the perplexing prob

lems of modern socialism will be solved.

The wisdom of this foundation in its intent and aim can not easily be overstated. Not to create the conspicuous institution, that by concentration of forces focuses the public eye upon the giver, but rather and more wisely to distribute aid over a wide area, among a score or more of institutions; not to do the premature thing of providing foundations for university training for which the race has and for generations will have such scant preparation, but rather to make provision for training

along those practical and industrial lines, which is the exigent need, in order to selfhelp toward the creation of the home and an ordered life in the social community. The verdict of his fellow-workers in this field of philanthropic effort, after watching the experiment for a decade, is "Well done, good and faithful servant," and we may well believe that in these words we hear a higher verdict than man's.

The reflex influence of Mr. Slater's beneficence, we are persuaded, has been great. We can not estimate the good we do when we do good. The effect of this splendid beneficence in stimulating philanthropic enterprise, passing as it has into the currency of popular thought as a quickening inspiration, its impetus to the noble army of workers for the uplifting of the race, has been enormous. Its inspiration and influence upon this greatest decade of giving in all the history of the world has been immense we are confident. Other millions have gotten into the wake of this one; and we believe other men to whom God has given great wealth, and into whose hearts the passion of the cross has been poured, are to be moved by it to the breaking of their costly boxes of alabaster in the presence of the world's Christ. Such en are and are to be the saving and the enduring forces of the world. They may disappear from the eye; they cease to be seen as visible personalities, but they be come immortal in the world as quickening influences. They walk in uncrowned regality through the ages. Their gifts, their lives, will be reduplicated as they spread by contagion the spirit of philanthropy among men; passing for a sort of fresh incarnation into the minds and hearts of others, who catch their spirit, and go to spread it and give it fresh forms and embodiments. Over such lives even death can have no power.

Mr. Slater only lived to see the genesis of the work he did, and of the forces he started in the world. His great gift, at that time almost an unprecedented one, awakened wide-spread interest. The news spread over the land and was borne across the sea. Hundreds of letters congratulatory and appreciative poured in upon him. His friends gave expression to their admiration. His city, to whose name his beneficence had imparted a fresh eminence and fame, made him aware of her appreciation of the honor he had bestowed upon her; but amid it all he remained the Same unostentatious, quiet citizen-grateful and appreciative of the honor which had come to him, but accepting it rather as an unreckoned-upon accompaniment of his unselfish act. He remained in the routine of his accustomed business, and in the fellowship of friends and neighbors, as if he had only done a duty or accepted a privilege which lay in the path of his accustomed living. Two years later the fatal disease laid its hand upon him, when in the faith of a Christian he girded himself to go unto his Father's house. To many of us it was the summons to the presence of Him who was and is ever the Supreme Friend of the poor and the lowly, to hear His commendation: "In as much as ye have done these things unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done them unto me. Enter into the joy of thy Lord."

VI.

DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE ORIGIN AND WORK OF THE SLATER TRUSTEES, 1882 TO 1894.

Charter from the State of New York, approved April 28, 1882.

AN ACT to incorporate the trustees of the John F. Slater fund.

Whereas Messrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, Morrison R. Waite, of the District of Columbia, William E. Dodge, of New York, Phillips Brooks, of Massachusetts, Daniel C. Gilman, of Maryland, John A. Stewart, of New York, Alfred H. Colquitt, of Georgia, Morris K. Jesup, of New York, James P. Boyce, of Kentucky, and William A. Slater, of Connecticut, have, by their memorial, represented to the Renate and assembly of this State that a letter has been received by them from John F. Slater, of Norwich, in the State of Connecticut, of which the following is a copy: [Here the letter printed below is inserted.]

And whereas said memorialists have further represented that they are ready to accept said trust and receive and administer said fund, provided a charter of incorporation is granted by this State, as indicated in said letter; now, therefore, for the purpose of giving full effect to the charitable intentions declared in said letter; The people of the State of New York, represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows:

SEC. 1. Rutherford B. Hayes, Morrison R. Waite, William E. Dodge, Phillips Brooks, Daniel C. Gilman, John A. Stewart, Alfred H. Colquitt, Morris K. Jesup, James P. Boyce, and William A. Slater are hereby created a body politic and corporate by the name of The Trustees of the John F. Slater Fund, and by that name shall have perpetual succession; said original corporators electing their associates