But he finds many things to encourage a hopeful outlook for the future. The people of the South are roused to see that the children must be educated. The native Southern stock of white people is good. The colored people show by the advancement made that they "are in nowise a discouraging material for the schoolmaster." Southern young women, daughters of the best families, are becoming school teachers. He sees in these facts omens of good.
But he feels that the problem is too great for the South to solve alone. The North must help, and now more than ever is the time. He says:
I have no words to waste on any man or party holding off in this emergency, on the pitiful plea that the Southern people should be left to do this work alone. It was one thing for the old States of the North to gradually develop their systems of popular instruction, through a century in which they, with all their imperfections, led the world in the general intelligence of their people. It was a much easier problem for the new West, out of munificent public endowments of land and a constant stream of private beneficence from the East, with a flood of the most vigorous young people setting in from the whole world, to establish, in one generation, the splendid arrangements for schooling the masses of which they are so justly proud. But, surely, the man who demands of the Southern people, in their present condition, the effort necessary to establish a good country district school of six months in the year, with suitable free elementary graded schools in the towns, and normal instruction for teachers, in addition to the support of the secondary, higher, professional and industrial education, in a way to overcome the terrible illiteracy of the country in a reasonable time, and aid in the development of intelligent industry and the solution of the most embarrassing of race problems, must either have a very inadequate notion of the work to be done, or a desire to visit the offenses of the fathers on the children.
He points out four ways in which the North can help: (1.) National aid to elementary education. (2.) Generous donations like those of Peabody, Slater and others. (3.) Encouragement by our best Northern educators, and (4.) establishment of industrial schools. Speaking of donations in money, he marks a very important condition to be observed. We wish to give it special emphasis, because it touches a vital point and one that the supporters of the A. M. A. need to bear in mind; it is this: "It is better to strengthen a good institution already on the ground than experiment on new enterprises. Especially should our benevolent Northern people refuse to encourage the persistent effort of a large portion of the Southern colored clergy and a corresponding class among the white people to build up a church system of elementary schooling. Already thousands of dollars are virtually thrown away in the South by kindly people who give carelessly or yield to opportunity. Our philanthropic people owe it to themselves and the country not only to give, but to exercise the greatest discretion in their giving. An endowment to any school that has really succeeded and can show the right to exist, is always in order."
There are many peripatetic representatives, white and black, of schools for colored people going round among our churches, pleading for money to sustain enterprises that are simply personal ventures, and some of them actual frauds. They tell a pitiful story. Individual gifts and church contributions are given them, and when the time comes for the annual contributions to sustain the long-planted and successfully-operating schools of the A. M. A., either nothing or but little is given, on the ground that a contribution has already been made to help a colored school somewhere. This is a very serious matter. The money thus paid, in the majority of instances, is worse than wasted, and legitimate and well-attested work is made to suffer in consequence.
We regard this paper as a valuable contribution to the discussion of the great question that now presses, and for many years to come will press, the duty of the North to help the South, as the latter section of our beloved country emerging from the war-shattered old tries to adjust itself to the peace-unfolding new.
Away back in 1837, Richard Humphreys, a Philadelphia Friend, left a bequest to establish a school for the purpose of "instructing the descendantsof the African race in school learning, in the various branches of the mechanics, arts and trades, and in agriculture, in order to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers." The Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth was founded by that bequest, and has been for years offering the advantages of "school learning." The managers feel that the time has come when the full idea of the founder should be carried out. An industrial department is to be added "for teaching the boys the trades of carpenter, bricklayer, plumber, etc., giving instruction in the use of tools to those who are to become teachers, and also giving instruction to the girls in useful employments, including cooking, sewing and other household duties."
This is a step in the right direction, though the managers have been a little slow in moving. It was frequently said that the old abolitionists were ahead of their times. We have an evidence of it here. Forty-eight years after the good man has passed away those in trust of his bequest awake to the power of his ideas. Educators in other parts of the country have already felt this necessity and tried to meet it. Industrial education is now provided for in nearly all the important colored schools of the South; and judging from the industrial exhibit of the schools at the New Orleans Exposition, considerable progress has been made. The friends of the colored people rejoice in the opening up of every new channel through which the colored youth can have a better chance to rise and get on in the world.