its own State, and pupils come to it from as far West as California.

THE ADELINE SMITH INDUSTRIAL HOME

The work of the Adeline Smith Industrial Home in connection with the college was begun in 1883. The Home, which is under the auspices of the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, accommodates about seventyfive girls, and the training which they receive in it gives them ideals of home life and practical skill in applying them to concrete situations. The work in domestic science and sewing is open to all of the girls in the school.

PRESIDENT COX

Philander Smith College has never had but two presidents; the first was the Rev. Thomas Mason, a white man from the North; the second and present incumbent of the office is the Rev. J. M. Cox, a Negro. President J. M. Cox was born in Alabama in 1860. He was educated at Clark University, where he graduated in 1884. He then entered Gammon Theological Seminary, completing the course in 1886 and being the first man to receive a degree from the seminary. He went directly to Little Rock, and for eleven years taught Greek and Latin in Philander Smith College. In 1897, after President Mason resigned, Professor Cox was made president, and he has been continuously in charge of the school since that time. During his long years

of service he has had a chance to see not only his students but his own children go out into fields of useful service. One son served in the army; another is a successful dentist; one daughter spent four years at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and is now teaching at Clark University; a second daughter is a teacher at Morgan College; and a third is still studying in college.

THE FUTURE OF THE SCHOOL

This school has a large field of usefulness open to it. The very pressing need for teachers and for other trained workers is a continual challenge to it. The school is cramped in its present quarters. It is hoped that the Centenary will make possible a much needed extension of the facilities and program of the school.

CHAPTER X

THE CAROLINAS

Claflin College and Bennett College SOUTH CAROLINA is one of the two States in the Union which have a larger Negro than white population. From the standpoint of Negro education conditions are far from satisfactory; 387 out of every one thousand of the Negro population over ten years of age being illiterate. In other words, the State has well over a quarter of a million Negroes over ten years of age who cannot write, and the prospect of rapidly and radically changing this situation is not as bright as might be desired.

PRESIDENT

L. M. DUNTON

The public school has gotten too far behind its task to quickly catch up with it. the State Agent for Negro lina says:

The school buildings are in most instances wretched, the terms short, the salaries low, practically no equipment, and the preparation and fitness of the teachers generally very inferior. . . . We cannot expect the health and morals of the Negro race to be improved as

long as 100 children are crowded into a room where there is room for only 50 or 60 children, with the ventilation and other sanitary conditions bad. The children cannot make much progress in schools with a term of only two or three months, under teachers not prepared for the work and having twice the number of children they ought to have. . . . Practically every Negro school is overcrowded, some of them dreadfully so. The houses are generally in a very dilapidated condition. . . . Often the number of seats is entirely inadequate, and at the same time the seats are generally of every imaginable kind and condition. A great many classrooms have no blackboard. Most Negro teachers in Negro schools have charge of from seventy-five to a hundred children, and often they have more than a hundred children in their rooms. Often the teaching is only a farce.

These fragments from an official State report help to suggest something of the distressing need for Negro education in the State and of the utter inadequacy of equipment and facilities for meeting that need. The same report recommends the lengthening of the school term to five months. It also records the fact that for the first time a recognized public high school for Negroes exists in the State; in other words, for the first time in the history of the State there is one public high school for a Negro population totaling well up toward a million.

THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH AT WORK

In the midst of this overwhelming need the Methodist Episcopal Church has long been at work. The South Carolina Conference was organized in 1866. Three years later the buildings and grounds