development of the South, is to put it mildly. It can best be
appreciated when we remember that since the war the Negro has earned
seventy-five billions of dollars, and out of this vast amount he has
saved the pitiful sum of five hundred millions; thus contributing to
the wealth of the South seventy-four billions and a half of dollars.
It is estimated that four-fifths of the labor done in the South is
done by the Negro. The theory advanced by those who claim themselves
to be immunes from that dreaded disease of Negrophobia is, that the
industrial education of the Negro will inevitably inspire a similar
movement for the industrial training of the poor whites, and the
resultant competition means a further complication of the race
problem, which will only be solved by the ultimate separation of the
races. This theory is as unique as it is original, and bids fair to
revolutionize the laws of economics. But to the contrary the laws of
trade and labor are as imperious as all the enactments of necessity.
The South is fast regaining her lost treasures and bids fair to become
not only an agricultural section, but with her wonderful oil and
mineral resources to be the rival of the North. Coupled with her
wonderful resources is the free Negro labor, which is the cheapest in
the world outside of Asia, and will not only be in demand but will
ultimately enter into all industries, driving all before it. It is a
certainty that capital will inevitably seek and secure the cheapest
labor. Besides cheapness, other qualifications have made, and will
continue to make, him indispensable to the South's development and
make him far superior to the foreign element for which a few seem to
clamor.
Coming out of slavery ignorant, irresponsible, no name, no home, no
"mule," there is no better way to measure the influence of Christian
education than by the increased ability to earn, to save and to wisely
invest money. The spirit of home-getting and the eagerness for
education are very hopeful signs. We proudly quote from a lengthy
editorial in a recent issue of the Atlanta Constitution: "The building
up of wealth follows a sharpening of intellect. If the untutored
colored man of the past quarter of a century could amass nearly a half
a billion of dollars, why may not the educated Negro, during the next
quarter of a century, quadruple the amount?"
As a skilled laborer it will take time for the race to make a mark,
because here he will meet with sharper competition. This is the
opportunity of the industrial school. The lack of sufficient numbers
of skilled colored mechanics and because of the existence of
prejudice, the employer shows timidity in attempting to supplant white
labor with Negro labor. This fear will decrease as the supply
increases. We indorse industrial training for the masses, but as
efficient as it is, it is not sufficient. The tendency of these
schools is to make the training of the hand of primary importance and
that of the brain secondary. This might suffice for a while, but in
this age of progress, of invention, when the genius of the age seems
to have directed all its power to the invention of labor-saving
machines, the demand for brainy mechanics is increasing so rapidly
that the industrial school of to-day will wake up to-morrow only to
find itself behind the times.
The Northern section of our country, with its large manufacturing
interests and the constant demand for skilled labor, has encouraged
the combining of labor into trades unions as a means of protection
against the encroachments of capital. Because of the social side of
these organizations the Negro has been debarred, with some exceptions.
The unions will operate against him just as long as the interests of
the unions are not in jeopardy and the supply of skilled colored
mechanics is insufficient. But in the South, where Negro labor is
plenty and agriculture is the chief occupation, the Negro will always
have a practical monopoly, and his opportunities in all the trades in
the North, as well as in the South, will increase in proportion as he
becomes an educated, thrifty, law-abiding land-owner. The time has
come when the Negro can no longer afford to play upon the sympathies
of his friends, but as a man among men he must be pre-eminently fitted
for his place; fitted in intellect, in the knowledge of his craft and
in sobriety.
As a common laborer the Negro in his ignorance has had to battle
against great odds. Too often his employer, who built the courts, run
them and owns them, but who made the Negro shoulder the expense,
feeling that he has the right of way and in his eagerness to get
something for nothing, has forced the Negro through necessity to do
the very thing for which he condemns him. Despite these great odds,
industry and uprightness in any man, be he white or black, makes him a
valuable member of any community.
THIRD PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A LABORER.
BY MISS LENA T. JACKSON.
[Illustration: Lena T. Jackson]
LENA TERRELL JACKSON, M. A.
Lena Terrell Jackson was born December 25, 1865, in
Gallatin, Sumner County, Tenn. Her father died in her early
childhood; hence the responsibility of her support and
education fell upon her mother.
This mother determined to give her daughter the advantage of
a good education. Accordingly at the age of seven years the
daughter was placed in a private school and remained there
until the autumn of 1876, when, having finished the course
of study in the private school, she was entered as a pupil
in the Belle View City School and remained there three
consecutive years.
She completed the course of study in the Nashville City
Schools in June, 1879. In September, 1879, she entered the
Middle Preparatory Class of Fisk University and remained at
Fisk six years, graduating from the Collegiate Department in
1885.
During the six years spent at Fisk she taught school during
the summer months in the rural districts and with the money
thus earned helped to support her mother and maintain
herself in school. She also assisted her mother in her
family work after school hours.
After graduation, in 1885, she was elected as a teacher in
the Nashville Public Schools, having resigned two similar
positions, the one at Birmingham, Ala., and the other at
Chattanooga, Tenn., to accept the Nashville appointment.
In 1894 she was assigned to the Junior Grade in the colored
High School and two years later to the Chair of Latin in the
High School, which position she is still filling.
Following out the principles of economy that are so
thoroughly inculcated in the minds of Fisk students, her
first thought after completing her course of study was
turned towards the acquisition of real estate and the
purchase of a home for her mother, who through so many
struggles and sacrifices had made it possible for her to
obtain a college education.
Her hopes in this direction have been realized to some
extent; and she has secured not only a home, but
considerable other real estate.
The wide scope of this subject, and the limited time given for
research, together with the absence of statistics, make it impossible
at this time to present more than a brief sketch. I propose to
continue my research and investigation and at some later date to
present the subject in a very much enlarged form, giving the condition
of the Negro as a laborer in all the leading cities of the United
States. In the present sketch mention will be made of only a few
cities.
The Southern cities, with their stately residences and business houses
that were constructed in ante-bellum days, bear emphatic testimony to
the skill of the Negro in the mechanic arts. All of the labor of the
South at that time was done almost exclusively by the Negro.
Plantation owners trained their own blacksmiths, wheelwrights,
painters and carpenters. The Negro was seen as a foreman on many
Southern plantations during ante-bellum days. Education has greatly
improved his ability to labor, and to-day in every vocation he is
found as a laborer, competing successfully with other laborers.
Notwithstanding the fact that prejudice and labor organizations are
arrayed against him, the character of his work is such, and his
disposition as a laborer such, that his services will always be in
great demand.
Negro laborers are given employment on large buildings alongside of
white laborers, and generally give entire satisfaction. In the city of
Nashville, Tenn., during the present year, in the construction of the
Polk Flats, two Negro laborers were employed with a number of white
laborers; a strong pressure was brought to bear upon the foreman to
displace the two Negro laborers and fill their places with white men.
The request was promptly denied. This is conclusive proof that had the
character of the Negroes' work not been eminently satisfactory the
reverse would have been the result.
The Negro is found in all the occupations that are characteristic of a
progressive people, namely, barbers, blacksmiths, brick and stone
masons, carpenters, coachmen, domestic servants, firemen, farm
laborers, mail carriers, merchants (grocers), millers, shoemakers and
repairers, waiters, nurses, seamstresses, housewives, washerwomen and
milliners.
_Trades and Industries._--As stone and brick masons the wages range
from $2 to $3 per day. Huntsville, Ala., has a brickyard that is owned
and controlled by Negroes. This firm secures the contract for a large
number of houses in Huntsville and the adjoining towns.
There is a town in the northern part of Virginia in which the entire
brickmaking business is in the hands of a colored man, a freedman, who
bought his own and his family's freedom, purchased his master's
estate, and eventually hired his master to work for him. He owns a
thousand acres or more of land and considerable town property. In his
brickyard he hires about fifteen hands, mostly boys from sixteen to
twenty years of age, and runs five or six months a year, making from
200,000 to 300,000 brick. Probably over one-half the brick houses of
the place are built of brick made in his establishment, and he has
repeatedly driven white competitors out of business.
As firemen the Negro has shown himself courageous and faithful to his
trust. During a great fire in Nashville, Tenn., a few years ago, it
was conceded by all that the progress of a disastrous fire was checked
and much valuable property saved by the heroic efforts of the colored
fire company. Unfortunately, however, the captain of the company and
two of his comrades were sacrificed. In all the large cities colored
fire companies are to be found, and in every case they are making a
good record.
In some sections of Texas and Mississippi Negro plantation owners are
often found.
Just after the close of the war the highest ambition of the Negro was
the ministry. But there has been a remarkable change in that direction
and Negroes are now found in all the professions. The Negro physician
has made an enviable record. One of the leading surgeons in the West
is a colored physician. He is the founder of a large hospital in a
western town, and is also surgeon-in-chief of one of the largest
hospitals in the country. The Negro has also gained some distinction
at the bar. A large number of Negroes are teachers, and an increasing
number of these are young women.
_Clerical Work._--Negroes are given employment as clerks in the
government service at Washington, D. C. There is a large number of
railway-mail clerks, with salaries ranging from one thousand to
fifteen hundred dollars a year. Nashville, Tenn., has three mail
clerks who have held their respective routes for more than ten years.
_Common Laborers._--This class includes porters, janitors, teamsters,
laborers in foundries and factories. The usual wages paid for this
class of work is $1 a day.
The barbering and restaurant businesses, toward which the Negro
naturally turned just after emancipation, for which their training as
home servants seemed especially to fit them, are not so largely
followed now owing to the fact that the best talent of the race have
entered the professions. Yet, however, in some places the Negro
restaurant keeper does a thriving business. In Chicago, Illinois,
there were two fine up to date restaurants which did a good business.
One of these employed white help exclusively.
The Negro blacksmiths and wheelwrights do a good business, sometimes
taking in from $5 to $8 a day.
As shoemakers and repairers, and furniture repairers and silversmiths,
the Negro is successful, and is kept busy. In painting there is a
colored contractor in Nashville who does business on a large scale. He
is proprietor of his own shop, employs a large number of men, and
secures the contract for a large number of fine dwellings. His
patronage is confined mostly to white people.
Nashville has a steam laundry owned and operated entirely by colored
men, and it has a large white patronage. In the rural districts most
of the Negroes devote themselves to farming, either working on the
farms of others or are themselves proprietors of farms.
_Domestic Service._--In this field of labor both men and women are
found. The average wages paid the men is $15 a month and board. The
women receive from $5 to $12 a month, according to age and work. In
addition to their wages they also receive lodging, cast-off clothes,
and are trained in matters of household economy and taste. At present
there is considerable dissatisfaction and discussion over the state of
domestic service. Many Negroes often look upon menial labor as
degrading and only enter it from utter necessity, and then as a
temporary make-shift. This state of affairs is annoying to employers
who find an increasing number of careless and impudent young people
who neglect their work, and in some cases show vicious tendencies.
The low schedule for such work is due to two causes: One is, that from
custom many Southern families hire help for which they cannot afford
to pay much; another reason is that they do not consider the service
rendered worth any more. This may not be the open conscious thought of
the better elements of such laborers, but it is the unconscious
tendency of the present situation, which makes one species of
honorable and necessary labor difficult to buy or sell without loss of
self-respect on one side or the other.
_Day Service._--A large number of single women and housewives work out
regularly in families, or take washing into their homes; and, like
house servants, are paid by the week, or if they work by the day from
30 to 50 cents a day. This absence of mothers from home not only
occasions a neglect of their household duties but also of their
children, especially of girls. Aside from house servants and
washerwomen, many of the women are seamstresses and readily find
employment in white families. Some do a remunerative business in their
own homes. The Negro woman is especially successful as a trained
nurse, and a considerable number of the brightest and most intelligent
among the young women are entering upon that calling.
_Conclusion._--The closing years of the nineteenth century indicate
remarkable advancement on the part of the Negro in all industrial
lines; but the twentieth century will doubtless furnish opportunities
which will enable him to carry these beginnings to their legitimate
fruition.
TOPIC XX.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. WILLIAM E. PARTEE, D. D.
[Illustration: W. E. Partee, D. D.]
WILLIAM E. PARTEE, D. D.
Rev. William E. Partee, D. D., was born at Concord, N. C.,
of Christian parents in the year 1860 and at an early age
placed in the common schools of his native town. He was left
an orphan at the age of ten, but by determination and the
help of friends he gained an education. When but sixteen
years of age he taught a country school. He was graduated
from the collegiate and theological departments of Biddle
University and was licensed to preach in 1883 and ordained
in 1884 by the Presbytery of Catawba and entered upon his
life work by serving as pastor of Westminster Presbyterian
Church at Concord, N. C., for more than three years, among
his early playmates and companions.
In the year 1887 he took charge of a mission church and
school at Gainesville, Fla., serving acceptably in that work
for more than four years and standing faithfully by his
people during that memorable epidemic of yellow fever in
1888. In 1892 he was called to the pastorate of Laura Street
Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Fla., which position he
occupied for nearly seven years. During two years of that
time he was also principal of one of the city graded
schools. In 1896 he was sent as commissioner from the
Presbytery of East Florida to the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church at Saratoga.
In 1898 he resigned from his work in Jacksonville to take
charge of the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond, Va.
Thus he has been engaged for many years in the active work
of the ministry, always doing earnest and faithful work and
held in high esteem by the people of every community in
which he has labored.
He was married in 1886 to Miss Edith I. Smith, of Lynchburg,
Va., who proved a worthy and efficient helper in his work,
and uncomplainingly shared with him the trials and
vicissitudes which fall to the preacher's lot in life for
fourteen years. Then the Master called her to rest from her
labors.
To form a correct estimate of the Negro as a Christian we must take
into account the "depths from which he came."
Back of his forty years of freedom lie more than two hundred years of
bondage, in which he was forced to obey the will of another absolutely
and kept in ignorance. All real manhood was repressed and every
ambition curbed. Though under the control of the Christian Church and
people of the South, and living on the farms and in the homes and
families of their masters, mingling in their lives and their society,
and subject to their moulding influence, yet, as a rule, the moral
principles and qualities necessary to a religious life were not taught
him, neither was he encouraged to cultivate them.
There was no lawful marriage, no true home, but husband and wife were
the property of a master who used or abused either as he chose; their
children grew up under the same conditions and were encouraged or
forced into unchastity, lying, stealing and betraying of one another
under the teaching that there was no moral wrong to them since they
were the property of another who was responsible for their acts. There
could be no growth in morals, and there can be no true religion
without morals. To say the least they came out of bondage with a
dwarfed moral nature, and to this day suffer more or less from the
effects of it. The carnality of slavery has not yet ceased to bear
fruit, as we all know. Ever and anon it shows itself in those horrible
acts which the newspapers report in full.
It takes long and weary years to root out of a race or nation evils
that have become fixed in its nature. But while there is much to be
deplored as to laxity in morals among the masses there has been
constant and steady improvement in this regard. It is no doubt true
that any race, kept in bondage under similar conditions, and for the
same length of time as the Negro was, would come out of it in no
better condition, and would, perhaps, show no better record in forty
years than this race has shown, and especially so if that bondage were
preceded by heathenism.
Dr. Haygood has said, "The hope of the African race in this country is
largely in its pulpit. No people can rise above their religion; no
people's religion can rise above the doctrines preached and lived by
their ministry."
The Negro began almost unaided and alone in this particular. As to
their religion they were very largely left to themselves during
slavery. Their ministers were ignorant and unlettered. Many of them
were pious, but many were ungodly and unscrupulous. So theirs was a
religion largely without the Bible. It consisted of bits of Scripture
here and there, of glowing imaginations, of dreams and of
superstitions; yet it was the best they knew.
Then many years of freedom had passed by before fully equipped
ministers could be provided them. During those years faithful servants
of God, unlettered, did their best to be the true religious leaders of
the people (all honor to them), but they necessarily came short in
many respects and could not carry the people up to the higher plane of
religious life.
With these things before our minds we say that the race has shown a
remarkable growth in the essentials of true Christian manhood. Their
notions may, in some things, be crude; their conceptions of truth may
be realistic; they may be more emotional than ethical; they may show
many imperfections in their religious development; nevertheless is it
true that their religion is their most striking formative
characteristic. So susceptible are they that no other influence has
had so much to do in shaping their better character, and what they are
to become in their future development will be largely determined by
their religion.
While in their church and social life there are some elements of evil
and superstition, some of which are the inheritance of past ages in
the fatherland, while others have been developed in this country by
the conditions of life during the years of slavery, still any
fairminded person who takes the pains to correctly inform himself will
acknowledge that these are being gradually but surely eradicated.
As a Christian he commends himself in his faith and devotion. Though
his religion may sometimes be defective in its practical application
to the principles of right conduct and living, God, heaven, hell and
the judgment day are realities to him. He believes the truths of the
Bible to be real, and thus he is sound in the faith so far as he
understands it, and that is more than can be said of many who are
better informed than he. What a rare thing to find one an infidel!
Where can you find a people more susceptible to religious teaching?
The emotional nature is highly developed, and they are quick to
respond to whatever appeals to their sympathies and affections.
Emotion has its place in religion and is not to be ignored, but to be
properly used and controlled and directed. To move any one we must
first reach the feelings; if these can be aroused they may develop
into a conviction that the subject of them should adopt a given course
of action, and he accordingly does so. I am not sure after all that we
should seek to repress such to any great extent. It may be a point in
his favor, for since he is easily and powerfully impressed by strong
appeals, he is the more readily brought under the influence of the
wise teacher or leader. It is true in some cases that mere physical
excitement is mistaken for being "filled with the spirit," and thus
some swing to the extreme in this direction. It is noticeable,
however, that this is being rapidly outgrown and more self-control is
being practiced. After all it does seem that being easily moved and
swayed may furnish the lever by which the wise and prudent may begin
to lift them to the higher ground of religious life. No doubt in most
cases there is deep down beneath the easily overwrought feelings a
true religious disposition, with much spirituality and divine energy.
Benevolence is rightly regarded as an important matter in Christian
living. In proportion to his means the Negro excels in this. Hundreds
of churches, and many schools and colleges have been built out of
their poverty. To sum up and place on record their gifts for the
extension of Christ's kingdom would perhaps show to the world an
unequalled record of self-sacrifice and devotion to a cause. Show that
a cause is a worthy one and they are ready to give according to their
ability to help that cause. To give help to ministers of the gospel
and other Christian workers is not only regarded as a duty but as an
honor and a pleasure. On the whole they are kind at heart, generous to
the distressed, obliging and considerate. Love to friends and
forgiveness of enemies are marked characteristics.
The statement has been often made that loose notions as to morals are
held. To some extent this may be true. Let us bear in mind that the
large majority are poor and are common laborers, and more than half
the race are illiterate. Compare them with this class of any race in
this or any other country and I dare say they will suffer but little
by the comparison. Some have made much of the fact that in many
places whole families by necessity live in one or two-room cabins.
While this is unfortunate and to be regretted, it is nevertheless true
that you can find even in such conditions in the majority of instances
that purity and virtue are as much respected as among those who live
in roomy homes where every privacy is afforded. They are not any
worse, certainly, and, perhaps, are better in this respect than the
multitudes of other races who live in the cellars and attics of
crowded tenements in our great cities.