GREAT PROGRESS OF NEGRO.
The predicament of Millard was rendered all the more distressing by the
engagement of most of his friends in the conspiracy against the life of
“Uncle” Alex Bettis. They were not in ignorance, however, of the chase
for Leslie Duncan and the desire to get into it themselves probably
hastened the brief consultation which resulted in the release of Bettis
on his promise to see to it that the classes of study in his school
included agriculture and not social and political economy. Besides
Brother Bettis’ prayer was a masterful plea for the forgiveness of the
sins of those bent on taking his life. It was pathetic. Some of the
mob shed tears, real heart-felt tears, that flow from the heart in our
moments of contemplation of the generousness of God and beauty of his
handiwork as naturally as rain from a mountain summer cloud.
Those who felt the Omnipotent power of God in the kindness and prayers
of this simple old colored man counselled with the more marble-hearted
and vicious of their number, and all at last agreed that while the old
man’s magnetic influence and his powerful, mysterious control over
himself in a period of the greatest suspense might prove a monster
with which they would have to deal later on, none could have the heart
wicked enough to put him to death.
So Mr. Bettis demonstrated a strategic ability that should prove
to be the admiration of white men, learned and skilled in the art
of strategy, as well as proved conclusively in his own case, the
efficacy and power of prayer. Until the day of his death he always
maintained that it was not the delay which the preparation of the
dinner occasioned giving him time to influence the men against taking
his life; nor, indeed the kindness displayed in the act of feeding and
nourishing his enemies, but wholly and absolutely the power of God in
answer to prayer!
This demonstration in his own case of the saving efficacy of prayer was
worth more to him than all the volumes of theology ever written could
have been in reaching the ears and hearts of his benighted followers,
who had to be made to see and feel with their own sense of sight and
touch the evidence of the tangible things which an educated mind finds,
without literal interpretation, in everything, even in rocks and stones
and running brooks.
He preached not to the heads of his hearers, but to their hearts; not
about Emerson, Spencer, Napoleon, or Shakespeare, but about Jesus
Christ, His death, His resurrection and His power to resurrect even
them, as He was resurrected if only they would believe on Him and live
such lives as He had lived.
Is it not remarkable that a man with the power to carry such a
message to those who stood in such great need if it should have been
singled out for destruction by those whose interest he was serving in
disseminating the unadulterated doctrine of the lowly Nazarene? Yet
history of sacred and profane origin all record that the men and women
who really benefit their kind do so at the risk of martyring themselves.
The power of prayer which the Rev. Alexander Bettis used so
dramatically in rescuing himself from an ignominous death was used
effectively in the establishment and later the development of a great
school in which through the adoption of the methods pursued at the
Schofield school at Aiken, the condition of thousands of children and
hundreds of homes have been reformed, even transformed, revolutionized
and made new. This school in honor of its founder and executive head
until the day of his death is known as the Bettis Academy and is
located on a farm of several hundred acres near Trenton, S. C. The
interest taken in it at its earliest inception by Miss Schofield,
together with the great work done by Mr. Bettis at his own expense
without any compensation whatever, made the institution possible and a
force from the start in the education of the Negroes from many of the
counties of South Carolina and Georgia.
The great personality of the founder attracted to the school like a
loadstone, large numbers of Negroes, and Miss Schofield, who enjoyed
Mr. Bettis’ confidence in full, seeing the opportunity which the school
afforded her to accomplish the maximum of results, most heartily
cooperated in the conduct of it. She not only wrote and lectured for
her school but for Bettis Academy as well.
In fact, every line written and every word spoken in the interest of,
or inimical to, the interest of all related enterprise affect each
other for good or evil, in the same proportion. This makes the attempts
to injure one race of human beings by another race without injury to
itself impossible, and is the foundation rock upon which the Negro
race can stand with perfect confidence, that absolute justice will
eventually be done it.
To the intelligent supervision of the organization of the Bettis
Academy much credit is due Martha Schofield. She was the store-house
from which ideas of the most experienced and practical sort emanated
for perfecting all departments, especially the industrial department.
The school in a few years, paid her back many times by the wide
interest its patrons took in the Farmers’ Conference, a local
organization for every colored school in the country, original with the
Schofield Normal and Industrial Institute, having for its object the
encouragement of the farmers to buy land, to raise more food supplies,
to stop mortgaging their property and to extend the term of the country
school. At the general meetings of these Conferences which were held in
February of each year in the chapel of the Schofield school, Bettis’
followers were largely in attendance. This gave Miss Schofield the
opportunity she so much desired of meeting face to face the fathers and
mothers of those whom she regarded as the foundation-stone for the new
structure of civilization which freedom and her educational work was
building.
Among the wide range of subjects discussed, no question was given so
much importance as better living conditions. These discussions, in
which hundreds present participated, discouraged the habit of living
in cabins. With what practical knowledge the attendants gained at the
general meeting, augmented by the instruction given the students of the
schools, every Negro family in a wide area was greatly benefited. Miss
Schofield, out of the funds of her school employed an organizer whose
duty it was to organize a conference in every community, without cost
to the members. The benefits to be derived from the work were apparent
in a short time in many ways. One room cabins soon evolved into homes
of at least two rooms and even three, four and five; tenants as fast as
they could became owners of homes; many mortgages were burned and few
were given, and increases in production of crops were very noticeable.
Terms of schools were lengthened from two months to four, five and even
six months, as a result of the work of the conferences. But better than
all was the extraordinary improvement apparent in the manners, morals,
habits and dress of all who came to the general meetings. At these
meetings Miss Schofield, who was host to the large gathering, made
up of delegates from each conference, presided, and each session was
conducted in a parliamentary manner, thus educating the delegates in
the matter of conducting the meetings of the various local conferences
to the best advantage.
Thus it will be seen that Miss Schofield’s activities embraced a wide
range of influence and as her contemplations, of course, extended
beyond the reach of actual performance it is to be regretted that time
enough from the drudgery of work in her school was never found for her
to write and publish a manual of important information for the guidance
and direction of missionaries in welfare work. It is an extravagant
waste of any system of social responsibility to permit the departure of
its members before first obtaining for all time the entire treasury of
their store house of wisdom and compiling the information in convenient
form for future use.
Miss Schofield’s organization of the Negro farmers into clubs for the
purpose of mutual helpfulness indicates that she appreciated the fact
that one person can do but little within herself for the benefit of
the people, but by securing their cooperation to the extent of getting
them to practice as a whole and teach in unity the things most needed
to be taught, results of the most far-reaching consequences could be
achieved. She was a labor-unionist with most practical and up-to-date
ideas.
Much of what has been accomplished by the agricultural departments
of some of the States and by the Federal Department of Agricultural
for the Negro of the cotton district is directly traceable to efforts
of Miss Schofield, the pioneer of industrial training for the Negro.
Her system to bring the methods by which the Negro could improve his
condition within reach of all appears to the author as superior in
practicability to any yet advanced. This idea of carrying to the people
systems pregnant with practical uses for the regulation of their work
in all the arts, that of printing, shoe repairing, harness making,
carpentering, school teaching, and business of every kind contemplated
a unity of action by each. She enjoined as she taught the principle
illustrated by the old man with the seven sons and the bundle of sticks
a strict regard for the community of interest underlying all related
industry. This has made it possible for every Negro within reach of
her influence to have gained some knowledge of a better way of getting
along in the world, and combined with the work which is being done and
has been done already by other schools and colleges, accounts for the
remarkable development of the race in the occupation of farming.
According to the report of the thirteenth census of 1910 there were
920,883 colored farmers in the United States. Twenty six and two-tenths
per cent. of these owned their farms, and 73.60 per cent. constituted
renters, while 2 per cent. managed farms. The same report also shows
that while the value of all farm property of white people almost
doubled between the years of 1900 and 1910, the value of all farm
property of colored people more than doubled, to be exact, showed
an increase of 134 per cent. In the classes of property reported,
conspicuously noticeable is the increase in the value of live-stock.
The increase of the live stock of the whites showed 58.60 per cent.,
while that of the Negroes showed an increase of 105.50 per cent. In the
value of farm buildings the percentage of increase was 76.70 for the
whites and 131.80 for the Negroes. The percentage of increase in the
matter of improved farm implements and machinery was 60.80 per cent.
for the whites and 81.70 per cent. for the Negroes.
When it is considered that the Negro has had at his disposal but fifty
years for self-improvement and growth in all the arts, limited in
the pursuit of them by the restrictions placed around him by reason
of his race, his progress in every direction except, perhaps, in the
exercise of the right of suffrage, becomes more than remarkable--it is
phenomenal, especially in the occupation of farming, to which he is
unquestionably better adapted than to any other calling.
In the matter of owners of homes both on the farm and in the city,
the Negroes, those who did and those who did not come under Miss
Schofield’s instructions in this, “the most important matter of their
lives,” as she often told her students, appear from the 1910 census,
to have made an equally creditable showing. In the Southern States the
percentage of the white and Negro population owning their homes, was
white 50.50, Negro, 23.10 per cent. The percentage of Negroes who owned
their homes entirely, without encumbrance, was 18.10 per cent.; that
of the whites 39.50. In 1900 the percentage was, whites 43.50; Negroes
16.80. It will be seen from the official figures of the government that
the percentage of whites owning their homes in the decade between 1900
and 1910 decreased 4 per cent., while the percentage of the Negroes
increased 1.30 per cent.
If the Negroes were not discriminated against in the pursuit of their
occupations in the cities; if they were encouraged to buy homes and
beautify and improve them, instead of being discouraged by the many
obstacles placed in their way, such for instance, as the agitation by
some of the best white people not to rent a home built by Negro labor,
and the probability of another riot such as that in Atlanta in 1906, it
is entirely within his power to eclipse any race of men the Southern
white people could possibly induce to come and make homes among them.
In time they will do it in the morality of their lives, just as they
now are outstripping the members of the race laying claim to the purest
blood that ever flowed in Aryan veins, in the art of farming.
The hope of the race lies in the multiplication of the opportunities
for every member to obtain an education, such an education as Martha
Schofield contemplated for all; and the demand by the law abiding, God
serving element of the white race that the colored people be given
every opportunity for the exercise of their powers that equity and
justice dictate. The Negroes want nothing more, ask nothing more, but
in justice to their own self respect and the rights of man can accept
nothing less.
That they have shown themselves worthy of freedom, which certainly
cost the white people more than the cost of insuring them certain
inalienable rights will entail, is emphatically indicated by comparison
of Negro per capita property with that of the freed Russian serfs in
1861, two years before the emancipation of the Negro. The Russians
situated in the most fertile sections of the Muscovite empire,
numbering over 14 millions, have in the same time it has taken the
Negroes to accumulate 700 million dollars worth of property but 500
million dollars in property. The accumulations of the two peoples freed
at about the same time are $70 per capita for the Negro and $36.00 for
the Russians. In the same Russian province only 30 per cent. of the
serfs can read and write, while in the United States 61 per cent. of
the Negroes can read and write.
Yet in the face of this wonderful development of the race; in
opposition to the aspirations necessary to make achievements of this
kind possible, there is race prejudice, degradation and humiliation.
This is doing more to produce poverty among both races and hold in
check the progress of a great section of the country than all the other
agencies for evil combined.
The remedy for this will perhaps be found in the education of the
whites, stimulation in this direction being assured by both the
compulsory school attendance laws being passed, and the rivalry in
education between the races already set in motion by the Negroes.
Almost two million colored children are enrolled in the normal schools
and colleges. There are 35,000 colored teachers now actively engaged
in the common schools and about four thousand professors in the
colleges and normal and industrial institutions. The value of the
property devoted to education of the Negro is nearly twenty million
dollars. There was expended in 1915 nearly $5,000,000 for the higher
and industrial training of the race while $10,000,000 was spent
on elementary instructions in the common schools. The stimulating
effect which these figures should have and, undoubtedly will have on
the education of the whites will serve to increase very largely the
facilities for their education, which is the remedy most needed, in
the opinion of the leading white people, as well as the author, for
the dissipation of much of the race prejudice responsible for the
passage of a great number of discriminatory laws and for the arbitrary
execution of those having a discriminating effect in their operation,
if not in their wording. This enlightening information, however,
concerning the facilities for the education of the Negro is very much
offset by the announcement that the number not in school in the South
is greater than the number in school.
There are 2,000,000 Negro children of school age in the South not in
school. Let all who would aid in the solution of the Negro problem
find a means of reaching these 2,000,000 blacks by the school, and the
neglected ignorant whites, in self-defense, will be forced into the
school room. Give the black child $10.23 per capita instead of $2.82
now allotted for its education, raise the per capita to that spent for
the education of the white child, and the white people will then double
the money for the education of their children. This would raise the
expenditures for Negro education in the common schools of the South
to about $35,000,000 annually, and this amount is actually needed in
putting the two million out of school in school and stirring the whites
to greater activity in the education of their own race.
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