TEACH THE CHILD SOMETHING ABOUT REAL COUNTRY LIFE
The Negro ministers, except those sent to the large cities, go among an agricultural people, a people who lead an outdoor life. They are poor, without homes or ownership in farms, without proper knowledge of agriculture. They are able to pay their minister so small and uncertain a salary that he can not live on it honestly and pay his bills promptly.
During the three or four years that the minister has spent in the theological class room, scarcely a single subject that concerns the every-day life of his future people has been discussed. He is taught more about the soil of the valley of the Nile, or of the valley of the river Jordan, than about the soil of the State in which the people of his church are to live and to work.
What I urge is that the Negro minister should be taught something about the outdoor life of the people whom he is to lead. More than that, it would help the problem immensely if in some more practical and direct manner this minister could be taught to get the larger portion of his own living from the soil—to love outdoor work, and to make his garden, his farm, and his farm-house object-lessons for his people.
The Negro minister who earns a large part of his living on the farm is independent, and can reprove and rebuke the people when they do wrong. This is not true of him who is wholly dependent upon his congregation for his bread. What is equally important, an interest in agricultural production and a love for work tend to keep a minister from that idleness which may prove a source of temptation.
At least once a week, when I am in the South, I make it a practice to spend an hour or more among the people of Tuskegee and vicinity—among the merchants and farmers, white and black. In these talks with the real people I can get at the actual needs and conditions of those for whom our institution is at work.
When talking to a farmer, I feel that I am talking with a real man and not an artificial one—one who can keep me in close touch with the real things. From a simple, honest cultivator of the soil, I am sure of getting first-hand, original information. I have secured more useful illustrations for addresses in a half-hour's talk with some white or coloured farmer than from hours of reading books.