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222 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

taught. I argued that the want of money was the root of all evil to the colored
people. They were shut out from all lucrative employments and compelled
to be merely barbers, waiters, coachmen and the like at wages so low that
they could lay up little or nothing. Their poverty kept them ignorant and their
ignorance kept them degraded. We needed more to learn how to make a good
living than to learn Latin and Greek. After listening to me at considerable
length, she was good enough to tell me that she favored my views, and
would devote the money she expected to receive abroad to meeting the want
I had described as the most important; by establishing an institution in which
colored youth should learn trades as well as to read, write, and count. When
about to leave Andover, Mrs. Stowe asked me to put my views on the subject
in the form of a letter, so that she could take it to England with her and show
it to her friends there, that they might see to what their contributions were to
be devoted. I acceded to her request and wrote her the following letter for
the purpose named.

''ROCHESTER, March 8, 1853.

"My DEAR MRS. STOWE:

"You kindly informed me, when at your house a fortnight ago, that you
designed to do something which should permanently contribute to the
improvement and elevation of the free colored people in the United States.
You especially expressed an interest in such of this class as had become free
by their own exertions, and desired most of all to be of sen ice to them. In what
manner, and by what means you can assist this class most successfully, is the
subject upon which you have done me the honor to ask my opinion .... I assert
then that poverty, ignorance, and degradation are the combined evils; or in
other words, these constitute the social disease of the free colored people of
the United States.

"To deliver them from this triple malady, is to improve and elevate
them, by which I mean simply to put them on an equal footing with their
white fellow countrymen in the sacred right to 'Life, Liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness.' I am for no fancied or artificial elevation, but only ask fair
play. How shall this be obtained? I answer, first, not by establishing for our
use high schools and colleges. Such institutions are, in my judgment,
beyond our immediate occasions and are not adapted to our present most
pressing wants. High schools and colleges are excellent institutions, and
will in due season be greatly subservient to our progress; but they are the
result, as well as they are the demand of a point of progress, which we as a
people have not yet attained. Accustomed as we have been, to the rougher