But the idea of running school farms simply for the first-named end, the giving of employment to students, was long ago abandoned. Student labor is too costly, simply as service. It must be made thoroughly educational in order to be justified. Fortunately, the style of farming which is most truly educational is also most nearly remunerative. Good tools, good live stock, and good tillage are the indispensable factors in this sort of object lesson.
2. Wood-working, of which the principal branch is carpentry—turning and carving occupying a minor place. This has an advantage over agriculture, and also over the other trades, in the greater ease with which it may be made a matter of class instruction. Much can be accomplished in teaching the use and care of tools without entering at all upon processes of manufacture. Thus, classes numbering as high as twenty or twenty-five were taught during the past year at Atlanta University. Classes are also under instruction at Talladega College, Tougaloo University, and Lewis Institute (Macon). Repairs and additions to the various buildings of the several institutions furnish opportunity for practical application of the instruction given at the benches of the class-room; and in the course of time some lines of manufacture may also be found practicable, varying in kind with the locality. Along with wood-working, instruction in glazing would seem to be feasible, and even in that most useful art, soldering.
3. Blacksmithing.—There are many good blacksmiths among the older colored men; and there is no reason, except lack of opportunity for learning, why there should not be more among the rising generation. In school shops it is possible to teach this trade successfully to classes. One teacher can instruct from six to ten pupils at as many forges, but the expense is greater than in teaching the use of wood-working tools. There is an inevitable consumption of coal and of metal—a serious loss unless some market can be found for simple articles of handiwork. Instruction in this branch is quite limited, though something is being done at Tougaloo, and more at the Santee Indian school.
Wheelwrighting is fast becoming an obsolete art in the North. The great factories have pushed the hand-made wagon out of the market. In the South, however, there is still much need of capable wheelwrights for the extensive repairs necessitated by the horrible roads—or rather lack of roads.
4. Tinning.—This is also limited in its possibilities. A market is necessary for the disposal of products. Even a few pupils under a competent instructor can turn off an inconvenient amount of tin-ware, if storage proves to be its fate rather than sale; and schools are always at a disadvantage in the market. A fair beginning has been made in this branch at Tougaloo University.
5. Printing.—If I were to name yet another branch of handiwork which it is possible to carry on as an educational accessory, it would be "the art preservative." The experience of A. M. A. institutions in sundry attempts hitherto is not at all of an encouraging sort; but this is very likely because they were not managed as educational agencies, under careful and skillful supervision. A start under the new method is being made at Fisk University, with many points in favor of its success.
The reader is perhaps surprised that I have not named shoe-making as one of the practicable branches, since it has so often been incorporated into the industrial organization of various reformatory institutions; but it no longer seems a feasible undertaking for an industrial school of the modern type. The shoe-maker's occupation is gone, except as he becomes a part of the mechanism of a great factory, not making shoes, but confining himself to the simplest elements of a shoe, cutting uppers or scraping soles. Moreover, there is such competition and such depression in the shoe business as make this trade too unprofitable for prosecution in connection with school work.
6. Drawing.—So far, I have been considering only manual training for boys. But there is one branch of a true industrial training which knows no sex. It is suitable and, when rightly considered, essential for boys and girls alike. While visiting the St. Louis Manual Training School two years ago, I said to Prof. Woodward, "What can we of the missionary schools, with our financial limitations, do best in this line of manual training?" He answered, "There is one thing that you can do in any school: it costs little, needs no special appliances or plant, and is the fundamental part of any industrial training, drawing." And he was right so far as the utility of the study is concerned. Drawing, not as a matter of picture-making, but as a means of systematic training for eye and hand, a training to accuracy and method, and as a vital help toward foremanship in any trade, ought everywhere to be held as a necessary element of industrial education. Some beginning in industrial drawing has been made in all our institutions. But, in a work like ours, the lack of special preparation on the part of most teachers, their insufficient appreciation of and faith in the study, and the lack of close direct supervision, are serious hindrances to complete success.
The range of industrial work for girls is less wide than that for boys, and lies chiefly in the zone of home making and keeping.
1. Sewing is the first subject of instruction. The generation of women who came out of slavery knew nothing, and still know nothing, of needle-work. And so in all our schools, even the day schools, classes in plain sewing have long found a place; though of late the work has been taken up more systematically, all the girls of certain grades being held to the sewing classes as strictly as to reading or writing. After plain sewing comes the cutting and making of garments, the various forms of seductive "fancy work" being almost wholly ignored.