cant field between the tiller of the soil and the small class of educated Negroes who were engaged in politics and the ministry. To this end it was necessary to build up Negro culture in two directions in which it was notably weak. First, common-school education needed to be more widely disseminated so that the mass of Negroes might become acquainted with new ideas and new opportunities. "Our students at Tuskegee," says Dr. Washington, "are instructed constantly in methods of building schoolhouses and prolonging the school term. It is safe to say that outside the larger Southern cities and towns in the rural district, one will find nine-tenths of the school buildings wholly unfit for use, and rarely is the public school session longer than five months-in most cases not more than four. These conditions exist largely because of the poverty of the States. One of the problems of our teachers is to show the people how through private effort they can build schoolhouses and extend the school term.22 Booker Washington spent a great deal of his time and energy in visiting country schools and in writing and talking in behalf of making them more efficient. In reference to a school he visited in South Carolina, he said: "I was recently in a school-room in South Carolina. The teacher had a reputation for being a well-fitted instructor, and I expected much of him. He was teaching the children by the latest methods. The children sang well, they recited their lessons well, but the fact that one third of the plastering was missing made the greatest impression on me. I could not detect the slightest attempt on the part of the teacher or students to see that the plastering was restored. I should have suspended school a day or two until the plastering could be replaced, rather than teach day after day by silent approval a lesson of disorder. If the teacher is careless, the pupils will accept his standards and go through life in an indifferent, slipshod manner. If from the first day they enter school they are surrounded with object lessons of order and cleanliness, more will have been done to educate them in a large and helpful way than if they had centred their interest in books alone. "Order and beauty are sacrificed in many of our schools because one third or one fourth of the window-glass is out. Sometimes I have seen obsolete hats and discarded dresses doing duty in the absence of window-glass or window-panes knocked out in order that the stovepipe might be run through the broken place. The child never outlives the "Working with the Hands, p. 210. impression made by such a sight. The parents will join their children. in helping to patch broken plastering if the teacher will take the lead. When the plastering is mended, a few pictures should be placed on the walls, and in this work the parents' coöperation can be depended upon." 23 One of the most important departments of Tuskegee was that for the training of school teachers. Of the results of this department, Booker Washington said: "There is hardly a single Southern State where our men and women are not found in some of the large schools for training teachers." 24 The other direction in which Negro culture needed strengthening, in order to develop a middle class, was the practical arts and crafts and in business enterprise. To meet this need Dr. Washington offered training at Tuskegee in bricklaying, carpentry, tailoring, broom-making, mattress-making, blacksmithing, plastering, harness-making, saw-milling, plumbing, shoe-making, electrical engineering, architecture, etcetera. This kind of training has enabled hundreds of Tuskegee pupils to carry on some skilled trade in Negro communities. In the matter of developing initiative, enterprise, and coöperation in trade, and in other business lines, little could be done in the way of instruction at Tuskegee, but one of the greatest achievements of Dr. Washington was in encouraging the development of his people in this field. He went about from town to town in all of the Southern states, acquainting himself with the Negro business men, and by public addresses and by magazine articles tried to inspire them to greater achievements. In 1899 he organized the National Negro Business League, at a time when there were in the United States only 20,000 business concerns owned by colored people with a total capital of $10,000,000. In 1923 the number of organizations had grown to 60,000 with a total capital of $60,000,000.25 The spirit of business coöperation and organization spread very rapidly among the Negroes throughout the country. Negro banks, insurance companies, factories, and mercantile establishments of various kinds came to be common in cities having a large Negro population. 23 The result has been the development of a large middle class of Washington, Putting the Most into Life, p. 14. "Working with the Hands, p. 211. 25 Moton, "Business Progress of the Negro," Southern Workman, Nov., 1923, p. 531. Negroes. In 1895 the property owned by Negroes was mostly in farm land and farm houses. Now the value of city property owned by Negroes is fast catching up with the value of their farm property. For example, in 1923 the assessed value of the land owned by Negroes in North Carolina was $48,343,205 and the assessed value of their city property was $30,332,118. The rise of this middle class has meant greater opportunities for the Negro doctor, dentist, lawyer, editor, author, and artist. The great achievement of Booker Washington in increasing the Negro's industrial efficiency has been contemporaneous with the shifting of Negro leadership from the preacher and politician to the educator and the business man. Since 1895 the Negroes of the United States have developed all of the fundamental requisites of industrial efficiency, i. e., group consciousness, organization, and leadership; and models, types, and patterns to stimulate emulation. If the Negro has made substantial progress under the adverse conditions which have existed up to the present time, will he be able to continue to progress under the conditions of the future? In the future will the conditions be more favorable or less favorable for his progress? Up to the present time the opportunities for the Negro have been in one respect very favorable in that the newness of our country has created an extraordinary demand for labor. In another half century it is certain that our country will become filled up, and, instead of receiving a great tide of immigration from other countries, we shall be sending our overflow to South Africa, Canada, South America, and the islands of the seas. We shall be in the position of the older countries of Europe with an annual surplus of inhabitants, elbowing each other for jobs, and ever on the lookout for some new region to redeem. When that time comes, will not the Negro be at a greater disadvantage than he is now? Will there not be a white man applying for every job? And will not the Negro find the door of opportunity more tightly closed than ever before? In the Southern States up to now the Negroes have had a monopoly in the field of unskilled labor, but will not the time come when the pressure of population will force the white men into this field? In the future will not our industrial system demand a higher order of efficiency among all classes on account of the general speeding up of production, the more highly specialized division of labor, and the standardization of methods? May we not anticipate an increasing ten dency for every kind of work to require education and apprenticeship until the field of unskilled labor is practically abolished? In the future will not the more settled conditions of industry and the better organization of production, in the interest of more regularity in the employment of labor, tend to do away with seasonal labor, or jobs offering long or frequent intervals of rest? And, if some scheme of insurance against unemployment, such as that proposed in Wisconsin, should become general, penalizing employers for dismissing employes, will not employers be more careful what kind of labor they select, and will they not be chary of employing men who are apt to be inconstant in their work? The one certain fact in regard to the future is that the conditions of labor for the white man, as well as for the Negro, will require greater efficiency, and, to meet this demand, both races will have to improve their average inherited physical and mental capacity and undergo a more strenuous discipline. Will the Negro keep step with the white man in this kind of progress? Dr. Ludwig Buchner, speaking in general terms, says that backward peoples will never be able to catch up with civilized peoples. "All backward branches of the human family," he asserts, "will by degrees disappear with but few exceptions under pressure of civilized man, and we can even now easily foresee the time when a certain uniformity of culture and material conditions, or a true cosmopolitanism of civilized man, will be diffused over the greater part of the inhabited and habitable part of our planet." 26 In spite of much evidence of industrial progress by the American Negro up to 1914, Professor Mecklin, in his Democracy and Race Friction of that date, predicted: "that the Negro in America will eventually disappear; not in a generation or century, it may take several centuries. The means will be natural. Certain portions of the Southern States will for a while, perhaps, be almost given up to him; but in time he will be crowded out even there. Africa may take a part; the rest will, as the country fills up, as life grows harder and competition fiercer, become diffused and will disappear, a portion, perhaps, not large, by absorption into the stronger race; the residue by perishing under conditions of life unsuited to him.” 27 In answer to this gloomy prophecy we may ask, why may not the Negro, by continuing to increase his efficiency, belie such prophecy as he Man, in the Past, Present and Future, p. 189. 23 "P. 341. |