The necessity for the race's learning the difference between being
worked and working. He would not confine the Negro to industrial life,
but believes that the very best service which any one can render to what
is called the "higher education" is to teach the present generation to
work and save. This will create the wealth from which alone can come
leisure and the opportunity for higher education.
One of the most fundamental and far-reaching deeds that has been
accomplished during the last quarter of a century has been that by which
the Negro has been helped to find himself and to learn the secrets of
civilization--to learn that there are a few simple, cardinal principles
upon which a race must start its upward course, unless it would fail, and
its last estate be worse than its first.
It has been necessary for the Negro to learn the difference between being
worked and working--to learn that being worked meant degradation, while
working means civilization; that all forms of labor are honorable, and all
forms of idleness disgraceful. It has been necessary for him to learn that
all races that have got upon their feet have done so largely by laying an
economic foundation, and, in general, by beginning in a proper cultivation
and ownership of the soil.
Forty years ago my race emerged from slavery into freedom. If, in too many
cases, the Negro race began development at the wrong end, it was largely
because neither white nor black properly understood the case. Nor is it
any wonder that this was so, for never before in the history of the world
had just such a problem been presented as that of the two races at the
coming of freedom in this country.
For two hundred and fifty years, I believe the way for the redemption of
the Negro was being prepared through industrial development. Through all
those years the Southern white man did business with the Negro in a way
that no one else has done business with him. In most cases if a Southern
white man wanted a house built he consulted a Negro mechanic about the
plan and about the actual building of the structure. If he wanted a suit
of clothes made he went to a Negro tailor, and for shoes he went to a
shoemaker of the same race. In a certain way every slave plantation in the
South was an industrial school. On these plantations young colored men and
women were constantly being trained not only as farmers but as carpenters,
blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses,
sewing women and housekeepers.
I do not mean in any way to apologize for the curse of slavery, which was
a curse to both races, but in what I say about industrial training in
slavery I am simply stating facts. This training was crude, and was given
for selfish purposes. It did not answer the highest ends, because there
was an absence of mental training in connection with the training of the
hand. To a large degree, though, this business contact with the Southern
white man, and the industrial training on the plantations, left the Negro
at the close of the war in possession of nearly all the common and skilled
labor in the South. The industries that gave the South its power,
prominence and wealth prior to the Civil War were mainly the raising of
cotton, sugar cane, rice and tobacco. Before the way could be prepared for
the proper growing and marketing of these crops forests had to be cleared,
houses to be built, public roads and railroads constructed. In all these
works the Negro did most of the heavy work. In the planting, cultivating
and marketing of the crops not only was the Negro the chief dependence,
but in the manufacture of tobacco he became a skilled and proficient
workman, and in this, up to the present time, in the South, holds the lead
in the large tobacco manufactories.
In most of the industries, though, what happened? For nearly twenty years
after the war, except in a few instances, the value of the industrial
training given by the plantations was overlooked. Negro men and women were
educated in literature, in mathematics and in the sciences, with little
thought of what had been taking place during the preceding two hundred and
fifty years, except, perhaps, as something to be escaped, to be got as
far away from as possible. As a generation began to pass, those who had
been trained as mechanics in slavery began to disappear by death, and
gradually it began to be realized that there were few to take their
places. There were young men educated in foreign tongues, but few in
carpentry or in mechanical or architectural drawing. Many were trained in
Latin, but few as engineers and blacksmiths. Too many were taken from the
farm and educated, but educated in everything but farming. For this reason
they had no interest in farming and did not return to it. And yet
eighty-five per cent. of the Negro population of the Southern states lives
and for a considerable time will continue to live in the country
districts. The charge is often brought against the members of my race--and
too often justly, I confess--that they are found leaving the country
districts and flocking into the great cities where temptations are more
frequent and harder to resist, and where the Negro people too often become
demoralized. Think, though, how frequently it is the case that from the
first day that a pupil begins to go to school his books teach him much
about the cities of the world and city life, and almost nothing about the
country. How natural it is, then, that when he has the ordering of his
life he wants to live it in the city.
Only a short time before his death the late Mr. C.P. Huntington, to whose
memory a magnificent library has just been given by his widow to the
Hampton Institute for Negroes, in Virginia, said in a public address some
words which seem to me so wise that I want to quote them here:
"Our schools teach everybody a little of almost everything, but, in my
opinion, they teach very few children just what they ought to know in
order to make their way successfully in life. They do not put into their
hands the tools they are best fitted to use, and hence so many failures.
Many a mother and sister have worked and slaved, living upon scanty food,
in order to give a son and brother a "liberal education," and in doing
this have built up a barrier between the boy and the work he was fitted to
do. Let me say to you that all honest work is honorable work. If the labor
is manual, and seems common, you will have all the more chance to be
thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and brings better pay,
and to work out in your minds better and higher duties and
responsibilities for yourselves, and for thinking of ways by which you can
help others as well as yourselves, and bring them up to your own higher
level."
Some years ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our training
at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was almost
impossible to find in the whole country an educated colored man who could
teach the making of clothing. We could find numbers of them who could
teach astronomy, theology, Latin or grammar, but almost none who could
instruct in the making of clothing, something that has to be used by every
one of us every day in the year. How often have I been discouraged as I
have gone through the South, and into the homes of the people of my race,
and have found women who could converse intelligently upon abstruse
subjects, and yet could not tell how to improve the condition of the
poorly cooked and still more poorly served bread and meat which they and
their families were eating three times a day. It is discouraging to find a
girl who can tell you the geographical location of any country on the
globe and who does not know where to place the dishes upon a common dinner
table. It is discouraging to find a woman who knows much about theoretical
chemistry, and who cannot properly wash and iron a shirt.
In what I say here I would not by any means have it understood that I
would limit or circumscribe the mental development of the Negro-student.
No race can be lifted until its mind is awakened and strengthened. By the
side of industrial training should always go mental and moral training,
but the pushing of mere abstract knowledge into the head means little. We
want more than the mere performance of mental gymnastics. Our knowledge
must be harnessed to the things of real life. I would encourage the Negro
to secure all the mental strength, all the mental culture--whether gleaned
from science, mathematics, history, language or literature that his
circumstances will allow, but I believe most earnestly that for years to
come the education of the people of my race should be so directed that the
greatest proportion of the mental strength of the masses will be brought
to bear upon the every-day practical things of life, upon something that
is needed to be done, and something which they will be permitted to do in
the community in which they reside. And just the same with the
professional class which the race needs and must have, I would say give
the men and women of that class, too, the training which will best fit
them to perform in the most successful manner the service which the race
demands.
I would not confine the race to industrial life, not even to agriculture,
for example, although I believe that by far the greater part of the Negro
race is best off in the country districts and must and should continue to
live there, but I would teach the race that in industry the foundation
must be laid--that the very best service which any one can render to what
is called the higher education is to teach the present generation to
provide a material or industrial foundation. On such a foundation as this
will grow habits of thrift, a love of work, economy, ownership of
property, bank accounts. Out of it in the future will grow practical
education, professional education, positions of public responsibility. Out
of it will grow moral and religious strength. Out of it will grow wealth
from which alone can come leisure and the opportunity for the enjoyment of
literature and the fine arts.
In the words of the late beloved Frederick Douglass: "Every blow of the
sledge hammer wielded by a sable arm is a powerful blow in support of our
cause. Every colored mechanic is by virtue of circumstances an elevator of
his race. Every house built by a black man is a strong tower against the
allied hosts of prejudice. It is impossible for us to attach too much
importance to this aspect of the subject. Without industrial development
there can be no wealth; without wealth there can be no leisure; without
leisure no opportunity for thoughtful reflection and the cultivation of
the higher arts."
I would set no limits to the attainments of the Negro in arts, in letters
or statesmanship, but I believe the surest way to reach those ends is by
laying the foundation in the little things of life that lie immediately
about one's door. I plead for industrial education and development for the
Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I want to free him. I
want to see him enter the all-powerful business and commercial world.
It was such combined mental, moral and industrial education which the late
General Armstrong set out to give at the Hampton Institute when he
established that school thirty years ago. The Hampton Institute has
continued along the lines laid down by its great founder, and now each
year an increasing number of similar schools are being established in the
South, for the people of both races.
Early in the history of the Tuskegee Institute we began to combine
industrial training with mental and moral culture. Our first efforts were
in the direction of agriculture, and we began teaching this with no
appliances except one hoe and a blind mule. From this small beginning we
have grown until now the Institute owns two thousand acres of land, eight
hundred of which are cultivated each year by the young men of the school.
We began teaching wheelwrighting and blacksmithing in a small way to the
men, and laundry work, cooking and sewing and housekeeping to the young
women. The fourteen hundred and over young men and women who attended the
school during the last school year received instruction--in addition to
academic and religious training--in thirty-three trades and industries,
including carpentry, blacksmithing, printing, wheelwrighting
harnessmaking, painting, machinery, founding, shoemaking, brickmasonry and
brickmaking, plastering, sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical
and architectural drawing, electrical and steam engineering, canning,
sewing, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, laundering, housekeeping,
mattress making, basketry, nursing, agriculture, dairying and stock
raising, horticulture.
Not only do the students receive instruction in these trades, but they do
actual work, by means of which more than half of them pay some part or all
of their expenses while remaining at the school. Of the sixty buildings
belonging to the school all but four were almost wholly erected by the
students as a part of their industrial education. Even the bricks which go
into the walls are made by students in the school's brick yard, in which,
last year, they manufactured two million bricks.
When we first began this work at Tuskegee, and the idea got spread among
the people of my race that the students who came to the Tuskegee school
were to be taught industries in connection with their academic studies,
were, in other words, to be taught to work, I received a great many verbal
messages and letters from parents informing me that they wanted their
children taught books, but not how to work. This protest went on for three
or four years, but I am glad to be able to say now that our people have
very generally been educated to a point where they see their own needs and
conditions so clearly that it has been several years since we have had a
single protest from parents against the teaching of industries, and there
is now a positive enthusiasm for it. In fact, public sentiment among the
students at Tuskegee is now so strong for industrial training that it
would hardly permit a student to remain on the grounds who was unwilling
to labor.
It seems to me that too often mere book education leaves the Negro young
man or woman in a weak position. For example, I have seen a Negro girl
taught by her mother to help her in doing laundry work at home. Later,
when this same girl was graduated from the public schools or a high school
and returned home she finds herself educated out of sympathy with laundry
work, and yet not able to find anything to do which seems in keeping with
the cost and character of her education. Under these circumstances we
cannot be surprised if she does not fulfill the expectations made for her.
What should have been done for her, it seems to me, was to give her along
with her academic education thorough training in the latest and best
methods of laundry work, so that she could have put so much skill and
intelligence into it that the work would have been lifted out from the
plane of drudgery[A]. The home which she would then have been able to
found by the results of her work would have enabled her to help her
children to take a still more responsible position in life.
Almost from the first Tuskegee has kept in mind--and this I think should
be the policy of all industrial schools--fitting students for occupations
which would be open to them in their home communities. Some years ago we
noted the fact that there was beginning to be a demand in the South for
men to operate dairies in a skillful, modern manner. We opened a dairy
department in connection with the school, where a number of young men
could have instruction in the latest and most scientific methods of dairy
work. At present we have calls--mainly from Southern white men--for twice
as many dairymen as we are able to supply. What is equally satisfactory,
the reports which come to us indicate that our young men are giving the
highest satisfaction and are fast changing and improving the dairy product
in the communities into which they go. I use the dairy here as an example.
What I have said of this is equally true of many of the other industries
which we teach. Aside from the economic value of this work I cannot but
believe, and my observation confirms me in my belief, that as we continue
to place Negro men and women of intelligence, religion, modesty,
conscience and skill in every community in the South, who will prove by
actual results their value to the community, I cannot but believe, I say,
that this will constitute a solution to many of the present political and
social difficulties.
Many seem to think that industrial education is meant to make the Negro
work as he worked in the days of slavery. This is far from my conception
of industrial education. If this training is worth anything to the Negro,
it consists in teaching him how not to work, but how to make the forces of
nature--air, steam, water, horse-power and electricity--work for him. If
it has any value it is in lifting labor up out of toil and drudgery into
the plane of the dignified and the beautiful. The Negro in the South works
and works hard; but too often his ignorance and lack of skill causes him
to do his work in the most costly and shiftless manner, and this keeps him
near the bottom of the ladder in the economic world.
I have not emphasized particularly in these pages the great need of
training the Negro in agriculture, but I believe that this branch of
industrial education does need very great emphasis. In this connection I
want to quote some words which Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Montgomery,
Alabama, has recently written upon this subject:
"We must incorporate into our public school system a larger recognition of
the practical and industrial elements in educational training. Ours is an
agricultural population. The school must be brought more closely to the
soil. The teaching of history, for example, is all very well, but nobody
can really know anything of history unless he has been taught to see
things grow--has so seen things not only with the outward eye, but with
the eyes of his intelligence and conscience. The actual things of the
present are more important, however, than the institutions of the past.
Even to young children can be shown the simpler conditions and processes
of growth--how corn is put into the ground--how cotton and potatoes
should be planted--how to choose the soil best adapted to a particular
plant, how to improve that soil, how to care for the plant while it grows,
how to get the most value out of it, how to use the elements of waste for
the fertilization of other crops; how, through the alternation of crops,
the land may be made to increase the annual value of its products--these
things, upon their elementary side are absolutely vital to the worth and
success of hundreds of thousands of these people of the Negro race, and
yet our whole educational system has practically ignored them.
* * * * *
"Such work will mean not only an education in agriculture, but an
education through agriculture and education, through natural symbols and
practical forms, which will educate as deeply, as broadly and as truly as
any other system which the world has known. Such changes will bring far
larger results than the mere improvement of our Negroes. They will give
us an agricultural class, a class of tenants or small land owners, trained
not away from the soil, but in relation to the soil and in intelligent
dependence upon its resources."
I close, then, as I began, by saying that as a slave the Negro was worked,
and that as a freeman he must learn to work. There is still doubt in many
quarters as to the ability of the Negro unguided, unsupported, to hew his
own path and put into visible, tangible, indisputable form, products and
signs of civilization. This doubt cannot be much affected by abstract
arguments, no matter how delicately and convincingly woven together.
Patiently, quietly, doggedly, persistently, through summer and winter,
sunshine and shadow, by self-sacrifice, by foresight, by honesty and
industry, we must re-enforce argument with results. One farm bought, one
house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the
largest tax payer or has the largest bank account, one school or church
maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden profitably
cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well
preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived--these will tell
more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to
plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through
swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through
commerce, education and religion!
[Footnote A: In the original, this was 'drudggery'.]
_The Talented Tenth_