15, 1843. His father was Rev. John R. V. Morgan. His
mother's maiden name was Mary Ann Harmon. At his mother's
death, which occurred when he was fourteen years old, he was
adopted into the family of James T. Robinson of
Philadelphia. Becoming dissatisfied at some fancied slight,
he left without authority, determined to provide for
himself, and be his own man. He soon found that the job was
not so easily done, as thought about, nevertheless he was
determined to win out, so he kept at it, and being of a
jovial disposition he soon made friends, and had the happy
faculty of keeping them. He started in the business of
selling home-made pies and cakes along the wharves. After a
short time he gave up this business for that of cabin boy on
a passenger boat plying between Philadelphia and Bristol,
Pa., making Bristol his home. At the breaking out of the
Civil War he was very anxious to enlist as a soldier, but
they informed him at Trenton, that it was a white man's war
and they were not taking colored men, as their ankles set so
near the middle of their feet, that when they said forward
march, they would be as likely to go backward as forward, so
he hired as a cook in an officers' mess and went to the
front with Company C First Regiment N. J. V. six months'
men. He was not down there long before he lost all his
desire to become a soldier, when the opportunity came for
him to enlist. While in Alexandria, Va., he started in to
learn the barber trade, and on his return home worked as a
journeyman at his trade until he set up in business for
himself.
In 1876 he organized a mission at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and
being young and enthusiastic, he requested at the next
conference to be sent to the mission to build it up. Bishop
Payne demurred, but after his persistence in the matter, he
consented, saying, "Well I will let you make your own
appointment this time, but will be expecting to hear from
you before the year is out, asking for a change." So after
ordaining him an Elder in Sullivan Street Church, May 12,
1878, he was stationed at Poughkeepsie. There he had some
misunderstanding with the people, which caused them to
promise to "cut his bread and butter short," which promise
he says was the only one that they made, that they
faithfully carried out. One day they fed his family on wind
pudding, air sauce and balloon trimmings, and right here
Bishop D. A. Payne became a prophet, because he heard from
him, and his time was short, as in a few days after he
received an appointment to Albany, N. Y., and was returned
the following year on account of effective service done. At
the following conference he was elected as delegate to the
General Conference at St. Louis with Rev. W. F. Dickerson,
John F. Thomas and C. T. Shaffer. On his return from the
conference he was transferred to N. J. Conference and
stationed at Princeton, N. J., and with the exception of
four years spent in the N. E. Conference, one in the N. Y.
Conference, he has remained in the N. J. Conference. Rev.
Morgan is the recognized historian of the conference, and
was its secretary for a number of years, and was the
Vice-President of the first Board of Church Extension. The
Reverend is known in his conference under the cognomen of
"The Only Morgan"--his description of things and events
gaining for him this title. He was made Presiding Elder by
Bishop H. M. Turner, and he thus describes his return from
the Presiding Eldership to one of the weakest appointments
in another conference: "Milton, or some one, says that the
devil was nine days falling from heaven to hell; I made the
trip in less than twenty minutes." Bishop H. M. Turner's
second wife and the subject of this sketch were converted in
and became members of the same church at Bristol, Pa. He was
considered an exceptionally good superintendent of the
Sabbath school before he was a member of the church. It was
during the time that he was a local preacher at this church
that he learned the lesson of his life. "I had a fair
smattering of an education and, being in business, I was
always consulted in the affairs of the church."
It becomes more and more evident every day of our existence, as
individuals, and as a race, that a grave mistake has been made by
those who have heretofore, or may be now, making claim to leadership
of making higher education the main and only route to the full
development of the race. The higher education is in the order of
specials. It is true that we need the artistic structure, but we need
first a foundation upon which to rest it. We seem to have started with
the idea that the structure has already been laid, which is true as
concerns the other man. But we have not laid one foot ourselves, but
are endeavoring to build upon another's, and as often as we build and
finish the structure, the other man, by virtue of owning the
foundation and that upon which it rests, claims and takes all (under
the fixed rule that the people who own the land will rule it), and the
last state is worse than the first, unless this happens at a time of
life when the experience will become a lesson, well learned, and time
allotted for a new start along the proper lines. It is, therefore,
very evident that the essential thing in the line of individual and
race development, is business. Business, we discover, when properly
defined, leads in its various ramifications to all roads to success.
Business defined.--"The state of being anxious; anxiety; care. The act
of engaging industriously in certain occupations. The act of forming
mercantile or financial bargains, more generally an abundance of such
acts done by separate individuals."
Crabb thus distinguishes between business, occupation, employment,
engagement, and avocation: "Business occupies all of a person's
thoughts, as well as his time and powers; occupation and employment
occupy only his time and strength; the first is most regular--it is
the object of his choice; the second is causal--it depends on the will
of another. Engagement is a partial employment; avocation a particular
engagement; an engagement prevents us from doing anything else; an
avocation calls off or prevents us from doing what we wish. A person
who is busy has much to attend to, and attends to it closely; a person
who is occupied has a full share of business without any pressure; he
is opposed to one who is idle; a person who is employed has the
present moment filled up; he is not in a state of inaction; the
person who is engaged is not at liberty to be otherwise employed--his
time is not his own--he is opposed to one at leisure."
Business, trade, profession, and art are thus discriminated: "The
words are synonymous in the sense of a calling, for the purpose of a
livelihood; business is general; business, trade and profession are
particular; all trade is business, but all business is not trade.
Buying and selling of merchandise is inseparable from trade; but the
exercise of one's knowledge and experience, for the purpose of gain,
constitutes a business; when particular skill is required, it is a
profession; and when there is a particular exercise of art, it is an
art; every shopkeeper and retail dealer carries on a trade; brokers,
manufacturers, bankers, and others, carry on a business; clergymen,
medical or military men follow a profession; musicians and painters
follow an art."
The distinction between business, office, and duty: "Business is what
one prescribes to one's self; office is prescribed by another; duty is
prescribed or enjoined by a fixed rule of propriety; mercantile
concerns are the business which a man takes upon himself; the
management of parish concerns is an office imposed upon him, often
much against his inclination; the maintenance of his family is a duty
which his conscience enjoins upon him to perform. Business and duty
are public or private; office is mostly of a public nature; a minister
of state, by virtue of office, has always public business to perform;
but men in general have only private business to transact; a minister
of religion has always public duties to perform in his ministerial
capacity; every other man has personal or relative duties which he is
called upon to discharge according to his station."--Crabb: Eng.
Synon.
There has been a vast number of theories advanced as regards the
solving of the Negro problem. But the idea of business seems to have
only a minor place, which, to our mind, should be one of the leading
factors. It seems that the race has been educated away from itself. It
is not an uncommon thing to see young men who have splendid
educational abilities, versed in the languages, with check aprons on,
scrubbing marble steps, and doing other menial labor. Their plea is,
when questioned along this line, "I cannot get anything else to do."
To what advantage then, has the hard earned money of their parents and
friends been expended to educate them? Their fathers did as well as,
if not better, than they without it, and cannot this man, with the
advantage of education, "turn up something"? There is something
radically wrong with the plan of education. The old man could plod
over the farm in his antiquated way, and earn money enough to keep
things going, and educate his son, but when that son's education has
been completed, he has not the ability, or business tact, with modern
improvements, to build upon the foundation laid by his less cultured
father. Let this cultured boy get down to business. For him, here is
the route laid down.
Secretary of Agriculture, Hon. Mr. Wilson, in discussing the
productive possibilities of the South and the problem of Negro labor,
makes the following observations: "The pressing question is, what is
the laborer down South who has been growing cotton, and is not getting
enough for his product, to do in the future to enable him to live
comfortably, not to speak of the improvement of his condition,
education, and all that?"
The cotton crop leaves very little that is valuable for domestic
animals after the picking is done, thus differing from the corn crop
of the Northwestern states. There is a by-product, the cotton seed,
that is exceedingly valuable, and much good work is being done by
scientists at experiment stations to show how valuable cotton seed is
for feeding purposes.
The nitrogen element in cotton-seed is greater than that of any of the
grains; it is richer in nitrogenous matter than peas or beans; richer
than gluten, meat or oil cake. The Northern feeder and the European
feeder have been using this by-product of the cottonfields with great
advantage, while the loss of its fertilizing qualities to the South
has been very great.
The South has more marked advantages over the North with regard to
production. It has heat and moisture, the two great factors of
production, and if the cotton grower is to diversify his crops, he
must use those natural advantages. The dairy cow and mutton sheep
would succeed admirably in the South, but something for them to eat
must be provided first. The winters in the South are mild, grasses,
grains, legumen can be sown in the fall and grow abundantly in the
winter, upon which the dairy cow and mutton sheep may thrive and
prosper. From one-fifth to one-fourth of all the fat of the milk on
the farms of the United States is lost because people do not
thoroughly understand when to churn cream. The churning process is an
art, having much science underlying it. But the cotton grower of the
South only needs to learn the way, while the man who teaches him can
understand the science. Much yet remains to be discovered in the art
of breeding animals, but enough is known to indicate to the instructor
of the colored cotton grower of the South, who is to be diverted into
work of this kind, to enable him to breed his herd intelligently. The
South can prepare the spring lamb much earlier than the North can. The
Southern land owner understands horse raising. There is always a
greater demand for saddle horses than is supplied. The world wants
carriage and draft horses, and good roadsters. Early spring
chickens--the broilers--can be produced down there because of the
milder winters, and milder springs than we have, and the Northern
market can be supplied. Should the market be over supplied we can send
this product abroad in the refrigerating compartments of steamships.
The colored man is learning the trades at Tuskegee; he is mining coal,
and working the manufacture of iron at Birmingham. We quote this
gentleman, who is without doubt authority on this special line, and
therefore worthy of serious and careful consideration, to support the
point we make, that this problem must be worked out along lines,
especially along business lines.
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES.
Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines are absolutely ours. The
Philippines are said to be as large as the New England States,
including New York and New Jersey; Hawaii about the size of New
England; Porto Rico the size of Connecticut. Hawaii, with a population
of 109,000; Porto Rico, 900,000; Philippines, 8,000,000, and very few
whites; a climate in which the Anglo Saxon, it is said, cannot stay
for any great length of time. And it is rich in all those thing which
are desirable by the white man. These acquisitions must be developed
by American genius and capital, and as the white American cannot stay
there the year round to develop the same, what better agent to do this
work than the Afro-American who has been schooled in American ideas
and customs and usages. Is not this an opportunity given by Providence
to commence business building? The race should cease pleading to be
"The Wards of the Nation;" cease waiting for something to turn up, or
have somebody to do something for them, but should unite their forces
and turn up something for themselves. The people who own the country,
if intelligent and thrifty, will rule and run it. What Coleman has
done in North Carolina in a business way, could be done in a majority
of the states to a greater or less extent. Small factories could be
arranged for, where our people could be employed in producing the
commodities of life. Some time ago it was said that a large tract of
land had been arranged for, backed by a number of Tammany Hall
capitalists; factories were to be built to give employment to the
settlers, deeds for lots were to be given at a nominal cost. The
project was opposed by some of our so-called leaders, because it was
backed by Tammany; but it is the very thing needed, no matter who
backs it up; it is the business men who run the country; it is they
who put the millions to work and keep the mighty dollar in
circulation; we must enter the business world and by pluck, tact and
thrift, live while we are living, and die when we cannot do otherwise.
The man who thanks Almighty God when the news of disaster comes from
land or sea that no loss comes to him is not so wise in the sight of
God, or man, as he who can thank God that the interest on accrued
stock had advanced an hundred fold before the crash came.
TOPIC XXVI.
THE NEGRO AS A FARMER
BY PROF. GEORGE W. CARVER.
[Illustration: Prof. Geo. W. Carver, M. Ag.]
PROF. GEORGE W. CARVER, M. AG.
A few years ago there was graduated at the Iowa Agricultural
College a young colored man of unusual promise. His name was
G. W. Carver, and his specialty the care and production of
plants. Not long after graduation he was engaged by Booker
T. Washington as a teacher and assistant in his famous
industrial school, and to-day the young man is Mr.
Washington's most trusted adviser, while his reputation has
gone abroad as a scientist and an original investigator of
no mean order.
Born during the period of the Civil War, he was separated
from his parents when but six weeks old, they having been
sold to some distant slaveholders. The infant was puny and
ailing, and his master regarded him as worthless. A family
named Carver took the babe and his brother, a little older.
It was with them the child had a home for nine years. About
that time the little black boy developed a remarkable love
for plants, and so much knowledge of their structure and
life, that he was given the name of "the plant doctor." Mr.
and Mrs. Carver were proud of the boy's talents and made
much of him, and it was their evident satisfaction in him
that aroused the jealousy of their own children, who at last
drove the two colored boys away from home. Northward they
turned their faces, to the land where white and black have
equal chances in life, as they fondly believed. The little
"plant doctor," who had picked up the elements of an
education, wanted, above all else, to enter some good
school. The boys were driven from pillar to post, but, being
devotedly attached to each other they held together, until
in Kansas they thought best to separate.
During these years, young Carver had tried many kinds of
work. At length he found himself at Winterset, Iowa. It was
there the wife of a physician encouraged him to go to
Indianola where she thought he could enter college and earn
his way by doing laundry work. He went there, but didn't get
the work, and it was while there that a young lady, a well
known Iowa artist, became interested in him. Under the
pretext of securing his help in correcting some drawings,
she went to the mean quarters he occupied and found him
starving to death. There was no work for him, no money. For
weeks, he had subsisted upon corn bread and tallow. She then
arranged for him to go to the Iowa Agricultural College,
where she had influential friends and where she believed he
would have a chance.
But, even at the Agricultural College of Iowa the color line
was sharply drawn by the students. Persecution and
ill-treatment were resorted to. But young Carver said, "I
will bear it. I must get an education. Here I can get work
and I will suffer anything rather than give up the one
chance of my life to obtain a schooling." His old and
intimate knowledge of plants stood him in hand, and he was
given charge of the greenhouses. True, he was shunned by
many, his place at table was with the servants, but he had
warm friends and he was, by force of character, winning the
good will of all. One day an Indianola lady, who had come to
know him before he left that place, went to visit him at his
college. Dressed in her best, she accompanied him, though
against his protestation, to dinner, taking a seat at the
servants' table.
The next time this lady visited the college the colored
student sat at the table with the faculty. In the military
drill he had taken the highest honors. When he was graduated
it was with distinction. He wrote the class poem. He had
succeeded in winning and holding friends.
Some time ago he spent several weeks in Washington, D. C.,
and there the most kindly attention was extended to him by
Secretary Wilson, who never fails to recognize merit
wherever he may find it.
The name of G. W. Carver is now enrolled on the fellowship
list of more than one scientific Institution.
The above subject is by no means an easy one to discuss, as reliable
data are fragmentary and widely scattered; yet I am sure that I have
been able to collect some interesting and valuable facts and figures
bearing upon this important question. There is no doubt that the Negro
as a tenant farmer is a failure; this we are forced to admit, but we
do so with a justly proud feeling that it is not an inherent race
characteristic, but the result of conditions over which we had little
or no control. Failure is inevitably and indelibly stamped in the
foreheads of any class of average tenant farmers, regardless of race
or color.
In American agriculture the Negro has always held, and is yet holding,
an important place; in fact, far more, as a rule, than has been
accredited to him. Lest our judgment be too harsh in this particular,
I have thought it wise to briefly scan the beginning and development
of agriculture in the United States. In 1492 the first settlers found
the Indians carrying on agriculture in a crude and limited way, by the
women; their farm machinery consisting of their fingers, a pointed
stick for planting, and the bones of animals and the shell of the clam
for a hoe; with nothing more than a squatter's right as a voucher for
the ownership of their farms. Prof. McMaster's History of the People
of the United States, George K. Holmes, assistant statistician of the
United States Department of Agriculture, in his "Progress of
Agriculture in the United States," and other high authorities, tell us
that the white man came, poor in the materials of wealth, a stranger
in a strange land with a strange climate. His tools were but little,
if any, improvement on those of the Indians, and agriculture as we
know it to-day was an idealistic dream. The plow was an exceedingly
crude thing and but little used, the hoe forming the principal
implement of industry. After a piece of land had been continuously
"cropped" until worn out, it was abandoned, or the cows turned upon it
for a while. It is further said that the poor whites, who had formerly
been indentured servants, were the most lazy, the most idle, the most
shiftless and the most worthless of men. Their huts were scarcely
better than Negro cabins, the chimneys were of logs, the chinks being
filled with clay. The walls had no plaster, the windows had no glass,
and the furniture was such as they themselves made.
The grain was threshed by driving horses over it in the open field.
When they ground it they used a rude pestle and mortar, or placed it
in the hollow of one stone and beat it with another. Beef or pork,
generally salted, salt fish, dried apples, bread made of rye or Indian
meal, milk, and a very limited variety of vegetables, constituted the
food throughout the year. When night came on his light was derived
from a few candles of home manufacture. The farmer and his family wore
homespun. If linen was wanted, the flax was sown and weeded, pulled
and retted, then broken and swingled, for all of which processes
nearly a year was required before the flax was ready for the spinners,
bleaching on the grass, and making and wearing. If woolens were
wanted, sheep were sheared and the wool was dyed and spun and woven at
home.
It was almost invariably true of all the settlers that the use and
value of manures was little regarded. The barn was sometimes removed
to get it out of the way of heaps of manure, because the owner would
not go to the expense of removing the accumulations and putting them
upon his fields. Such were the dreary conditions of the farmer's life
in colonial days, living all the time very closely upon the margin of
subsistence. Those conditions continued for some time after the
Republic had been established, and were not measurably ameliorated
until the present century had well advanced, until an improved
intelligence--the dissemination of information, and the work of the
inventor, had begun to take effect.
From the above we see how strikingly similar were the life, methods of
agriculture, and the results obtained from the sturdy New Englander,
who represented the best blood, bone and sinew of the old world, with
its almost prehistoric civilization, to that of the American Negro,
whose intellectual star is just beginning to rise above the horizon.
Over two centuries and a half ago the Negro found his way as a slave
to America, in a little Dutch trading vessel, cheap labor being the
chief motive which prompted such a gigantic scheme. The experiment
flourished and grew, and at about the close of the eighteenth century
six million slaves had been brought to this country. The major part of
all the cotton, corn, cane, potatoes, tobacco, and other agricultural
products, were planted, cultivated, harvested and prepared for, and,
not infrequently, marketed by, the slaves. In fact, they were the
agricultural backbone of the South. Since cotton forms the largest,
and has been the most important agricultural product in the South, I
think a hundred and nine years of its production will prove
interesting and valuable: In 1791, 8,889 bales were produced, and the
second cotton mill built at Providence, Rhode Island! the first one
being built at Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1787. From this time on the
acreage planted, the output and the number of cotton mills and
spindles increased. The estimated area planted in cotton alone in
1852, 6,300,000 acres, and the census report of 1860 showed 1,262
cotton mills and 5,235,727 spindles in the United States, with an
output of 4,861,292 bales. Despite the depressing effect of the four
years of civil strife, it took only five years to almost completely
regain the highest point reached in previous years. In 1889 and 1890
we find in the United States 19,569,000 acres planted, giving an
output of 7,311,322 bales, with 905 cotton mills operating 14,088,103
spindles. In 1898-99 the acreage increases to nearly 25,000,000, with
an output of 11,189,205 bales, representing a money value of
$305,467,041. Such is the history, production and growth of the cotton
industry in the United States, and were we to trace the other staple
products we would find them none the less interesting, since they were
produced largely by Negroes as slaves before the war, and as freedmen
after the war. This applies especially to Southern products.