Slavery taught the Negro, to work but at the same time to despise those
who worked. To them all show of respectability was attached to those
whom circumstances placed above the necessity of toil. It requires
intellectual conception of the object and the end of labor to overcome
this mischievous notion. The Negro mechanics produced under the old
slave regime are rapidly passing away because they did not possess
the power of self-perpetuation. They were not rooted and grounded in
rational principles of the mechanical arts. The hand could not transmit
its cunning because the mind was not trained. They were given the Knack
without the knowledge.