[191] The passage with the context quoted by Dr. Booker Washington, “Working with the Hands,” 238.
[192] Issue of October 15, 1904.
[193] Encyclopedia Americana, Article “Negro Education.”
[194] But the most drastic provisions to keep the greedy whites from preying upon the negroes as they did upon the Indians most be adopted, such as permitting the negro State to tax without limit whites owning property or doing business therein. This will prevent the result anticipated by Booker Washington.
[195] The best thing upon the joint education of hand and brain known to me is “Pagan vs. Christian Civilization,” by S. H. Comings (Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago). The title does not indicate, as it ought to do, the special purpose of the book to show that to give the scholar expertness with his hands at the first and thus develop his self-supporting ability is far better than to cram his memory. What the author says in maintenance of his proposition, that our industrial schools should be operated upon a plan that will make the scholar pay as he goes, out of his own work, for his subsistence and expense of education during the entire course, deserves respectful and thoughtful consideration. In its brevity, and at the same time variety and fulness, coming as it does at the beginning of a new era, it reminds me of Sullivan’s tract which some years ago started the American agitation for direct legislation, with store of examples and exposition almost sufficient for its entire needs.
The above had been written when Booker Washington’s “Working with the Hands” came along. The well-chosen title informs accurately as to the subject of the book. Its scope covers working with the hands from its beginning in childhood to the close of life. As illustration of his principles Dr. Washington circumstantially tells of the beneficent industrial and moral training given at Tuskegee, in all its many departments, to children, youth, and adults, in everything which it is important that a negro of either sex should know how to do. Besides its wisdom, its attention-commanding and interest-exciting style deserves high commendation. Any reader longing for the day of real education to dawn who opens the book will go to the end, without skipping, in a delightful gallop. It is my conviction that it will be of far more advantage to the white industrial and technological schools than to those for which it is specially intended by the author.
[196] Book cited, 119.
[197] See Collier’s Weekly for November 26, 1904.
[198] The English translation of the first volume of Von Holst’s “Constitutional and Political History of the United States” has just been published. The titles of the ninth and tenth chapters, to wit, “The Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States,” and “Development of the Economic Contrast between the Free and Slave States,” are very apt and striking, and the contents of the chapters are profoundly original and instructive. Having ample space, the author has, among other merits, well handled the following incidents and consequences of slavery:
1. Implacable hostility of slave and non-slave labor.