One of the great questions which must command the consideration of
southern people, in the immediate future, is better care of the
servants, and more attention to their moral and industrial training.
I am dealing with the servant class of our people, which at present
is more than ninety-nine per cent. of the race. The employer can not
help having a deep interest in this class, if he would protect his own
family. Ninety-five per cent. of the nurses and chamber-maids of the
South are colored. These servants are thrown in hourly contact with the
children of the families they serve. The nurses do much to shape the
lives of the children they carry in their arms. Earliest impressions
are most enduring. Somebody has said: "Give me the first seven years of
a child's life and you may have the man." The influences of the nurse
will be felt throughout the life of the child. If those influences are
virtuous, exercised by an intelligent, honest christian nurse, great
good will result. But if the nurse have the opposite qualities--if she
be indolent, sloven, ignorant, vicious and deceptive--the child will
surely imbibe some of these disorders which will show themselves some
where in the life of the child, or his offspring. Moral contagions are
more deadly and easily communicated than any diseases of the body. What
fond mother would commit her infant to the arms of a leper? And yet it
were better to do that, than expose it to influences which corrupt the
mind and taint the whole constitution. It is a fact that southern white
women have been accustomed, for many generations, to surrender the care
and training of their children to "black mamas," who inspired manhood
and gave the first great lessons of God and truth to hundreds of the
present hoary haired statesmen of the Sunny South. This custom is still
a delight in the South, and white mothers trust their children to the
care of Negro nurses with the same implicit faith that Thetis committed
her young Achilles to the charge of Phoenix and Chiron. I wish that
these nurses sufficiently appreciated this confidence and would feel a
deep pride in their work and responsibility. It must be borne in mind
that the relations of thirty years ago do not exist, and the results of
the ante-bellum nursery government and the system of to-day, cannot be
the same.
Here is a work for Southern women of the white race. Leave out of the
question the love for mankind, which should prompt them to elevate
the whole race of man, they must meet this matter of the elevation of
domestics on selfish grounds if no other. They must in self protection
strive to make the house servant class intelligent and virtuous.
Honesty must become a part of the mentality, and not a form or a cloak
worn while under the surveillance of the law, or the eye of virtue. Who
says that the colored servant is not as honest as any other servant?
I do not. I am not making comparisons at all. I am speaking of things
as I want them to be. If they are so already, then I "rejoice with
exceeding great joy." The importation of white family servants and
nurses will not solve the problem. It is a question which cannot be
handled except in the light of christian education. The importation
of white servants means the introduction of disorder in domestic
government, and it will produce a revolution in the social system of
the South. It will bring communism in the kitchen, socialism in the
dining-room, nihilism in the chamber, and the hand of anarchy to rock
the cradles of the South. Let the South nurse the Negro with right and
kindness, while the Negro nurses the infants of the South, and we shall
have domestic labor of the most desirable class.
There should be attached to every well ordered southern home rooms
for the servants. These rooms should be comfortable in all their
appointments. In the villages and small towns as well as in the cities
this is needful. Women of all grades must be modest. Modesty is her
shield. When she loses that, she is exposed to the licentious missiles
of vulgar men. It disarms a girl of her womanly reservedness to be
thrown early in morning and late at night, alone, into the streets
going to and from her work. She finally gets a boldness which is out of
place in any home.
The South can not be too earnest nor too lavish in the cause of
education. It can well afford to give two dollars to the cause where
one goes now. It is right, and self preservation demands it. While
the schools are being increased and put upon a higher plain, the work
must be carried on in the families. Let industrial training become the
watchword of every man interested in the true growth of our country. I
know of a family (of Huntsville) which has done much in the training
of domestic servants. The good lady of the house took great pains in
explaining (not scolding) and teaching (not driving) to her servants
things which her superior education enabled her to understand, or
which she had been taught. She, in this manner, educated two or three
servants, who, when the time came for separation (and it was always
peaceful), were able to earn larger wages than their more unfortunate
fellow servants.
I hope that all who love the happiness of home and are concerned about
the good of society, will give this matter thoughtful investigation,
and earnestly endeavor to benefit this important class of our employes.