THE DEFICIENCY OF THE SLAVE MECHANIC.
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.