JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND, AND THEIR GIFTS TO THE COLORED PEOPLE.
One of the best charities our country has ever had bestowed upon it is the million-dollar gift of Mr. Slater, and the million and a half gift of Mr. Hand, for the education of the colored people in the Southern States. Other millions of dollars are yet needed to train these millions of the colored race to self-help and good citizenship.
Mr. John Fox Slater was born in Slatersville, R.I., March 4, 1815. He was the son of John Slater, who helped his brother Samuel to found the first cotton manufacturing industry in the United States.
Samuel Slater came from England; and setting up some machinery from memory, after arriving in this country, as nobody was permitted to carry plans out of England, he started the first cotton-mill in December, 1790. A few years later his brother John came from England, and together they started a mill at Slatersville, R.I.
They built mills also at Oxford, now Webster, Mass., and in time became men of wealth. Mr. Samuel Slater opened a Sunday-school for his workmen, one of the first institutions of that kind in this country.
His son John early developed rare business qualities, and at the age of seventeen was placed in charge of one of his father's mills at Jewett City, near Norwich, Conn. He had received a good academical education, had excellent judgment, would not speculate, and was noted for integrity and honor. He became not only the head of his own extensive business, but prominent in many outside enterprises.
His manners were refined, he was self-poised and somewhat reserved, and very unostentatious, thereby showing his true manhood. He read on many subjects,—finance, politics, and religion, and was a good conversationalist.
As he grew richer he felt the responsibility of his wealth. He gave generously to the country during the Civil War; he contributed largely to the establishment of the Norwich Free Academy and to the Congregational Church in Norwich with which he was connected, and to other worthy objects.
He determined to do good with his money while he lived. After the war, having given largely for the relief of the freedmen, he decided to give to a board of trustees $1,000,000, for the purpose of "uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern States and their posterity by conferring on them the blessings of Christian education."
When asked the precise meaning of the phrase "Christian education," he replied, "that in the sense which he intended, the common school teaching of Massachusetts and Connecticut was Christian education. That it is leavened with a predominant and salutary Christian influence."
He said in his letter to the trustees, "It has pleased God to grant me prosperity in my business, and to put it into my power to apply to charitable uses a sum of money so considerable as to require the counsel of wise men for the administration of it." In committing the money to their hands he "humbly hoped that the administration of it might be so guided by divine wisdom as to be, in its turn, an encouragement to philanthropic enterprise on the part of others, and an enduring means of good to our beloved country and to our fellow-men."
Mr. Slater's gift awakened widespread interest and appreciation. The Congress of the United States voted him thanks, and caused a gold medal to be struck in his honor.
Mr. Slater lived to see his work well begun, intrusted to such men as ex-President Hayes at the head of the trust, Phillips Brooks, Governor Colquitt of Georgia, his son William A. Slater, and others. He died May 7, 1884, at Norwich, at the age of sixty-nine.
The general agent of the trust for several years was the late Dr. A. G. Haygood of Georgia, who resigned when he was made a bishop in the Methodist Church. Since 1891 Dr. J. L. M. Curry of Washington, D.C., chairman of the Educational Committee, and author of "The Southern States of the American Union" and other works, has been the able agent of the Slater as well as Peabody Funds. Dr. Curry, member of both National and Confederate Congresses, and minister to Spain for three years, has been devoted to education all his life, and gives untiring industry and deep interest to his work.
The Slater Fund is used in normal schools to fit students for teaching and for industrial education, and much of it is paid in salaries to teachers.
Dr. Curry, in his Report for 1892-1893, gives a list of the schools aided in that year, all of which he visited during the year. To Bishop College, Marshall, Tex., with 248 colored students, $1,000 was given for normal work and manual training; to Central Tennessee College, Nashville, with 493 students, $2,000, to pay the teachers in the mechanical shop, carpentry, sewing, cooking, etc.; to Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., 415 students, $2,500, mostly to the mechanical department, etc.; to Spelman Female Institute, Atlanta, with 744 pupils, $5,000; the institute has nine buildings, with property valued at $200,000.
To Claflin University, Orangeburg, S.C., with 635 students, both men and women, $3,096, chiefly to the industrial department,—iron-working, harness-making, masonry, painting, etc.; to Hampton Normal Institute, Hampton, Va., the noble institution to which General S. C. Armstrong gave his life, $5,000, for training girls in housework, to the machine-shop, for teachers in natural history, mathematics, etc. There are nearly 800 pupils in the school.
To the Leonard Medical School, Shaw University, Raleigh, N.C., $1,000. The medical faculty are all white men. To the university itself, with 462 pupils, $2,500; to the Meharry Medical College, Nashville, 117 men and four women, $1,500; to the State Normal School, Montgomery, Ala., with 900 students, $2,500; to the Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., with 400 men and 320 women, $2,100, given largely to the departments of agriculture, leather and tin, brick-making, saw-mill work, plastering, dressmaking, etc. "This institution is an achievement of Mr. Booker T. Washington, a graduate of Hampton Normal Institute," says the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1891-1892. "Opened in 1881 with one teacher and thirty pupils, it attained such success that in 1892 there were 44 officers and teachers and over 600 students. It also owns property estimated at $150,000, upon which there is no encumbrance. General S. C. Armstrong said of it, 'I think it is the noblest and grandest work of any colored man in the land.'"
To Straight University, New Orleans, La., with 600 pupils, the Slater Fund gave $2,000. The late Thomas Lafon, a colored man, left at death $5,800 to this excellent institution; to Talladega College, Talladega, Ala., with 519 students, $2,500; to Tougaloo University, Tougaloo, Miss., with 392 students, $3,000. This institute, under the charge of the American Missionary Association, began twenty-five years ago with one small building surrounded by negro cabins. Now there are ten buildings in the midst of five hundred acres. Most of these institutions for colored people have small libraries, which would be greatly helped by the gift of good books.
In nine years, from 1883 to 1892, nearly $400,000 was given from the Slater Fund to push forward the education of the colored people. Most of them were poor and left in ignorance through slavery; but they have made rapid progress, and have shown themselves worthy of aid. The American Missionary, June, 1883, tells of a law-student at Shaw University who helped to support his widowed mother, taught a school of 80 scholars four miles in the country, walking both ways, studying law and reciting at night nearly a mile away from his home. When admitted to the bar, he sustained the best examination in a class of 30, all the others white.
The Howard Quarterly, January, 1893, cites the case of a young woman who prepared for college at Howard University. She led the entire entrance class at the Chicago University, and received a very substantial reward in a scholarship that will pay all expenses of the four years' course.
Mr. La Port, the superintendent of construction of the George R. Smith College, Sedalia, Mo., was born a slave; he ran away at twelve, worked fourteen years to obtain money enough to secure his freedom, is now worth $75,000, and supports his aged mother and the widow of the man from whom he purchased his freedom.
The highest honor at Boston University in 1892 was awarded to a colored man, Thomas Nelson Baker, born a slave in Virginia in 1860. The class orator at Harvard College in 1890 was a colored man, Clement Garnett Morgan.