Jo Lu Woolcott.
Mary I. Weimer.
SELF-SUPPORT MEANS INDEPENDENCE
The negro needs to be taught to be "self-dependent, self-reliant and self-respecting."
Wherever public schools have been established and supplied with good teachers and text-books, they have rendered efficient service in improving the condition of the people. The lack of text-books has caused many of the rural schools to prove very inefficient, one textbook often having to serve as many as three pupils, Then there are yet large sections of some of the southern states in which there are no public schools for the colored people.
In proportion as the colored people attain a general christian education and become progressive, industrial workers, do they rise to their natural inheritance; an inheritance that brings to them what America now holds of freedom, justice, opportunity and benevolence to the oppressed of other lands, that are coming a million a year, to locate in this land of civil and religious freedom.
Among their essential needs to self-support are a fair industrial opportunity, distribution, education and equal protection of the laws.
Whenever too many unskilled workers, including women and children, crowd into towns and cities, the number that have to live in poverty-stricken hovels is greatly increased. Their general health and good morals are also endangered.