THE JOHN F. SLATER FUND
Begins to do its blessed work. This fund is dedicated to the work of “Uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern States and their posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Christian education,” and it seeks to accomplish this result by “the training of teachers among the people requiring to be taught.” This fund works through existing institutions; it does not found new schools; there are already more good and deserving schools than it can help. Many times the sum this fund affords could be wisely used.
There is not space in this article to discuss the question, but my opinion may be stated: It is necessary that the United States government should aid the States to make their public schools more efficient. Whatever may be true of other sections, the Southern States, owing to the facts of their history and to conditions now existing, are not able to do the work that is upon them.
As to the sentiment in these States on the subject of negro education, it may be said in brief: The outcry of small village papers does not always even reflect the sentiment of the people, and there are certain facts that indicate that the work of educating the negroes will go on with less and less hindrance. Three such facts I mention in closing this article: (1) The duty and necessity of educating the negro has been recognized by every representative church in the South. (2) This necessity is recognized in the educational system of every Southern State. (3) No man who believes he has any political or educational “future,” any longer opposes, under his proper name, the education of his negro fellow citizens.
Dress changes, but we are not to suppose on that account that the make of the body changes also. Politeness or rudeness, knowledge or ignorance, more or less of a certain degree of guilelessness and simplicity, a serious or playful humor; these are but the outer crust of a man, and may all change; but the heart changes not, and the whole of man is in the heart. One age is ignorant, but the fashion of being learned may come; we are all moved by self-interest, but the fashion of being disinterested will never come. Amidst the countless myriads of creatures born in the space of a hundred years, nature may perhaps produce two or three dozen of rational beings whom she must scatter over the world, and you can readily imagine that they are never found any where in such large numbers as to set the fashion of virtue and uprightness.—Fontenelle.