But the lap of luxury in which these citizens were being nursed was doomed to become thread-bare as, indeed, it did do, and always will do, when the world’s advance is checked by the want of assistance and co-operation of all classes of laborers. The railroad and insurance presidents became bankrupts and their companies went into the hands of receivers by the score. Large numbers of young men who imagined they had entirely too much education to be wasted on the farm and flocked to the cities in incredible numbers became in time, either absconders and fugitives from justice, or plain tramps and hobos, a demonstrative force to prove the saying, that the only really solvent people, the only independent people, are the tillers of the soil.
At the South which had been reduced to the most degraded type of poverty there were no such opportunities for the accumulation of wealth as existed at the North and in the West. The few railroads that before the war intersected this section had been torn up by the necessities of war and needed rebuilding, but there was no money to be had anywhere with which to do the work. All the strongest blood and brain had been either slain in battle or rendered incapacitated for the tasks which the new order of conditions had forced upon the country. Aside from the loss of millions and millions of dollars as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves the South was forced also to bear the burden of an exorbitant tax on all crops produced, especially the cotton tax.
The agitation set up by many of the acts of Reconstruction, impeachment proceedings against President Johnson and the foment and strife engendered by the rule of the military authorities opposed by the Ku Klux Klan, all served, to keep for years longer than necessary, the bleeding and prostrate South securely on its back, a helpless beggar at the mercy, in many instances of an army of unscrupulous and grafting office-seekers. Under such conditions it was impossible to obtain credit anywhere for the most necessary things of life and as there was almost nothing of any value produced, the greatest hardships and suffering, if not actual misery, was endured by the people of the South.
Scores of persons gave up in despair and died. Cow peas, corn bread and molasses of such quality as only a few years before would have been considered unfit food for the slaves formed the sole diet, for the first few years after the war, of delicate and cultured women. Little children often went to bed crying from hunger. An element of the Negro population, rendered conspicuously brutal and vicious by service in the army, stole and threatened even blacker crimes, just as the game of war has affected the morality of all races of men throughout the history of recorded warfare.
CHAPTER III.
Pioneer Educator Arrives.
Into the midst of these terrible times which made weak the souls and hearts of the strongest of men, came Miss Martha Schofield, the first of the pioneers to push into the distracted South to labor, to suffer, and if need be, to die for the millions of ignorant, irresponsible Negroes. Their education, along industrial lines, she made her life-work—crowning it on the 77th day of her birth, February 1, 1916, by passing from earth to heaven. But she left to show that she did something on earth a school and campus comprising an area of two entire blocks in the beautiful City of Aiken, S. C., on which she had erected eight buildings.
The school farm, adequate for all farm demonstration work, consists of about 400 acres. The funds by which all this valuable property was acquired was raised by Miss Schofield herself, through the fluent use of her trenchant pen, which she knew how to wield as few women have ever learned to do. Everything contracted for in the interest of the school was paid for in cash as Miss Schofield, in all her fifty years of administration, never contracted the outlay of money without first having provided the means with which to meet claims. She enjoyed the good-will and friendship of men and women of wealth and influence throughout the country, especially of the old Abolitionists, who supported her institution generously as long as they lived and possessed the means with which to do so.
The Schofield School at Aiken has sent out into the world many young men and women who have gone back among their own people accomplished teachers, ministers, physicians, farmers and artisans, leading the colored race of the South to the highest appreciation of what Martha Schofield’s motto for life was—“Thoroughness,” thoroughness not only in books and the industrial arts, but in thought and action as well. No doubt the success which attended the efforts of the graduates of this School is due, in the main, to the strict regard for efficiency with which this great woman inspired every student coming under her influence.
When we contemplate the wide-spread influence which the life and work of Martha Schofield has exerted on the education of the people of the South, the white as well as the colored, words become inadequate to pay proper tribute to her; to justly express the appreciation felt by those having knowledge of her achievements.
There is not a colored school in the entire South that has not acknowledged the wisdom of this Divinely endowed leader and instructor by establishing an industrial department. Recognizing the imperative importance of this sort of instruction almost all the schools and colleges for whites emphasize it by giving it first place in their curriculums. Clemson, for white men and Rock Hill Normal and Industrial Institute for young white women were established long after Miss Schofield brought home to the people of the South the crying necessity of preparing our boys and girls of all races for the actual duties met with in every day home life. The vision which she herself had of a thorough preparation for the humbler tasks lighted the intellectual skies of the whole South after years of success by her in the education of the weaker race. This fact is made more prominent by the action of many of the States in incorporating industrial courses in the common schools.