Working With the Hands / Being a Sequel to "Up from Slavery," Covering the Author's Experiences in Industrial Training at Tuskegee

by Booker T. Washington

Because these things were true we promised to try to teach our students to lift labour out of drudgery and to place it on a plane where it would become attractive, and where it would be something to be sought rather than something to be dreaded and if possible avoided.

More than this, we wanted to teach men and women to put brains into the labour of the hand, and to show that it was possible for one with the best mental training to work with the hands without feeling that he was degraded. While we were considering our plans at Tuskegee, many persons argued with me, as they had done with General Armstrong years before, at Hampton, that all the Negro youth needed as education was mental and religious training, and that all else would follow of itself.

Partly in answer to this argument, we pointed to our people in the republic of Hayti, who were freed many years before emancipation came to our race in the Southern States. A large number of the leading citizens of Hayti during the long period of years had been given a most thorough mental training not only in Hayti but in France, and the Catholic Church had surrounded the population from birth with religious influences. Many Haytians had distinguished themselves in the study of philosophy and the languages, and yet the sad fact remained that Hayti did not prosper.

I wish to be entirely fair to the Haytians. Hayti exports annually from sixty to eighty million pounds of coffee and several hundred million pounds of precious woods. A French statistician says that "among the sixty countries of the globe which carry on regular commerce with France, Hayti figures in the seventeenth place. In amount of special duties received at the French Custom House upon the products imported from those sixty countries, Hayti comes in the fourth rank." It seems well to observe, then, that here is the foundation for the upbuilding of a rich and powerful country, with great natural resources. It seems all the more inexcusable that industrial conditions should be as unsatisfactory as they are.

The thoughtful and progressive men in the republics of Hayti and Santo Domingo now recognise the fact that while there has always been a demand for professional men and women of the highest type of scholarship, at the same time many of these scholars should have had such scientific and industrial education as would have brought them into direct contact with the development of the material resources of the country. They now see that their country would have been advanced far beyond its present condition, materially and morally, if a large proportion of the brightest youths had been given skilled handicrafts and had been taught the mechanical arts and practical methods of agriculture. Some of them should have been educated as civil, mining, and sanitary engineers, and others as architects and builders; and most important of all, agriculture should have been scientifically developed. If such a foundation had been laid it is probable that Hayti would now possess good public roads, streets, bridges, and railroads, and that its agricultural and mining resources would have made the country rich, prosperous, and contented.

It is a deplorable fact that one of the richest islands in natural resources in the world is compelled to import a large proportion of its food and clothing. It is actually true that many of the people of Hayti, some of them graduates of the best universities of France, content themselves with wearing clothes imported from Europe. It is also true that great quantities of canned meats and vegetables are brought from the United States, commodities which could easily be produced at their very doors. The Haytians claim, however, that most of the imported food is for the use of foreigners, as they, themselves, eat very little meat that is not freshly cooked. The people live almost wholly upon the primitive products of undisturbed nature, and the greater part of the harvesters and other workers are women.

I have been told, upon reliable authority, that the majority of the educated persons in the island take up the professions, and that because there is almost no industrial development of the country, the lawyer, naturally, finds himself without clients, and he, in common with others of the educated classes, spends much of his time in writing poetry, in discussing subjects in abstract science, or embroiling his country in revolutions.

In recent years I have received most urgent appeals from both Hayti and Santo Domingo for advice and assistance in the direction of educating industrial and scientific leaders. The best friends of Hayti and Santo Domingo now realise that tremendous mistakes have been made. They see that if the people had been taught in the beginning of their freedom that all forms of idleness were disgraceful and that all forms of labour, whether with the head or with the hand, were honourable, the country to-day would not be in such stress of poverty. They would have fewer revolutions, because the people would have industries to occupy their time, their thoughts, and their energies. I ought to add that, in such deficiencies as these, Hayti is perhaps not worse off than some South American republics which have made the same mistakes.

The situation in these countries which have overlooked the value of industrial training remind me of a story told by the late Henry W. Grady about a country funeral in Georgia. The grave was dug in the midst of a pine forest, but the pine coffin that held the body was brought from Cincinnati. Hickory and other hard woods grew in abundance nearby, but the wagon on which the coffin was drawn came from South Bend, Indiana, and the mule that drew the wagon came from Missouri. Valuable minerals were close to the cemetery, but the shovels and picks used in digging the grave came from Pittsburg, and their handles from Baltimore. The shoes in which the dead man was buried came from Lynn, Massachusetts, his coat and trousers from New York, his shirt from Lowell, Massachusetts, and his collar and tie from Philadelphia. The only things supplied by the county, with its wealth of natural resources, was the corpse and the hole in the ground, and Mr. Grady added that the county probably would have imported both of these if it could have done so.