XIII. A Plain Question for Southern Consideration.
One of the great questions which must command the consideration of southern people, in the immediate future, is better care of the servants, and more attention to their moral and industrial training. I am dealing with the servant class of our people, which at present is more than ninety-nine per cent. of the race. The employer can not help having a deep interest in this class, if he would protect his own family. Ninety-five per cent. of the nurses and chamber-maids of the South are colored. These servants are thrown in hourly contact with the children of the families they serve. The nurses do much to shape the lives of the children they carry in their arms. Earliest impressions are most enduring. Somebody has said: "Give me the first seven years of a child's life and you may have the man." The influences of the nurse will be felt throughout the life of the child. If those influences are virtuous, exercised by an intelligent, honest christian nurse, great good will result. But if the nurse have the opposite qualities—if she be indolent, sloven, ignorant, vicious and deceptive—the child will surely imbibe some of these disorders which will show themselves some where in the life of the child, or his offspring. Moral contagions are more deadly and easily communicated than any diseases of the body. What fond mother would commit her infant to the arms of a leper? And yet it were better to do that, than expose it to influences which corrupt the mind and taint the whole constitution. It is a fact that southern white women have been accustomed, for many generations, to surrender the care and training of their children to "black mamas," who inspired manhood and gave the first great lessons of God and truth to hundreds of the present hoary haired statesmen of the Sunny South. This custom is still a delight in the South, and white mothers trust their children to the care of Negro nurses with the same implicit faith that Thetis committed her young Achilles to the charge of Phoenix and Chiron. I wish that these nurses sufficiently appreciated this confidence and would feel a deep pride in their work and responsibility. It must be borne in mind that the relations of thirty years ago do not exist, and the results of the ante-bellum nursery government and the system of to-day, cannot be the same.
Here is a work for Southern women of the white race. Leave out of the question the love for mankind, which should prompt them to elevate the whole race of man, they must meet this matter of the elevation of domestics on selfish grounds if no other. They must in self protection strive to make the house servant class intelligent and virtuous. Honesty must become a part of the mentality, and not a form or a cloak worn while under the surveillance of the law, or the eye of virtue. Who says that the colored servant is not as honest as any other servant? I do not. I am not making comparisons at all. I am speaking of things as I want them to be. If they are so already, then I "rejoice with exceeding great joy." The importation of white family servants and nurses will not solve the problem. It is a question which cannot be handled except in the light of christian education. The importation of white servants means the introduction of disorder in domestic government, and it will produce a revolution in the social system of the South. It will bring communism in the kitchen, socialism in the dining-room, nihilism in the chamber, and the hand of anarchy to rock the cradles of the South. Let the South nurse the Negro with right and kindness, while the Negro nurses the infants of the South, and we shall have domestic labor of the most desirable class.
There should be attached to every well ordered southern home rooms for the servants. These rooms should be comfortable in all their appointments. In the villages and small towns as well as in the cities this is needful. Women of all grades must be modest. Modesty is her shield. When she loses that, she is exposed to the licentious missiles of vulgar men. It disarms a girl of her womanly reservedness to be thrown early in morning and late at night, alone, into the streets going to and from her work. She finally gets a boldness which is out of place in any home.
The South can not be too earnest nor too lavish in the cause of education. It can well afford to give two dollars to the cause where one goes now. It is right, and self preservation demands it. While the schools are being increased and put upon a higher plain, the work must be carried on in the families. Let industrial training become the watchword of every man interested in the true growth of our country. I know of a family (of Huntsville) which has done much in the training of domestic servants. The good lady of the house took great pains in explaining (not scolding) and teaching (not driving) to her servants things which her superior education enabled her to understand, or which she had been taught. She, in this manner, educated two or three servants, who, when the time came for separation (and it was always peaceful), were able to earn larger wages than their more unfortunate fellow servants.
I hope that all who love the happiness of home and are concerned about the good of society, will give this matter thoughtful investigation, and earnestly endeavor to benefit this important class of our employes.