Page:The Afro-American Press.djvu/224

216 The National Baptist said of The Echo,—"It is evidently well edited for an amateur paper, and we are glad to see that it contains nothing trashy and sensational."

The Echo warmly endorsed the Industrial School project of Mrs. F. M. Coppin. In recognition of The Echo's services in behalf of this institution, Mrs. Coppin addressed a letter to the editors, thanking them for the interest taken in the enterprise. It reads as follows: "I am very much obliged to you for your excellent editorial on Industrial Education, in your last issue. It is impossible to calculate how much good is done by a newspaper, in enlightening the minds of the people upon great subjects, and, surely, an education in the use of tools is of first importance in a civilized country. Virgil says: 'I sing arms and the hero.' Carlyle says: 'Tools and the man are a far wider kind of epic.

"Young men, like yourselves, Messrs. Editors, are just the ones to speak upon this subject. The man that the shoe pinches is the one to hollow. The mechanical toe of ours is very decidedly cramped and pinched by lack of opportunities for growth and improvement."

With a view to enlarging the influence and scope of The Echo, the editors constituted themselves a stock company in 1888, with Dr. L. J. Coppin and William F. Simpson editors, and Abel P. Caldwell business manager. This led to an increase in the size of the paper, and also in the circulation, and to-day, under the management of an able corps of editors, it enjoys a rapidly increasing subscription list.

At a meeting of the Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia, in May, 1880, at Macon, Ga., it was decided that the Convention should establish a newspaper, and it