For the teaching of the trades we need special buildings. Progress has been made in this direction. Atlanta University has erected "The Knowles Industrial Building," a memorial of the late Mr. L. J. Knowles, of Worcester, Mass., whose widow not long before her death appropriated $6,000 for this object. It is a brick building 100 by 44 feet, with two stories and a basement, and, for its use, is one of the finest in the South. At Macon, a two-story building has been constructed—the upper story for the Lewis Library and the lower for a carpenter shop. At Talladega has been also built a two-story structure, the upper story to be used for carpentry and the lower for blacksmithing. The citizens of Memphis two years ago gave Professor Steele $1,000 to put a girl's industrial department into the Le Moyne school, and now they have pledged him $600 more to secure a workshop for the boys. Fort Berthold in Dakota and Fisk and Straight Universities at the South greatly need industrial buildings, and there are other schools of which the same might be said with equal emphasis.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of industrial training. Latest in development in connection with our schools, it may yet prove first in value. Labor is heaven-ordained. It is the chief instrumentality through which a people are elevated. Grace saves the soul and transforms character instantly. It makes the savage and sinner kind and good instantly; but it will not instantly make him a good farmer, a skilled mechanic, a trained scholar. Up from the lowest to the highest, man must toil patiently and laboriously. Nature will tolerate neither jumps nor deceptions. It is no kindness to put a man where he is out of place, and still less is it a kindness to make him believe that he has a right to be there. He who climbs up into position or who is foisted into it by any other instrumentality than by the toil necessary to fit him for the position, the same is a thief and a robber. The police forces of Nature will speedily put him under arrest. The judicial forces of Nature will soon cast him into a prison, out of which he shall not come until beginning at the bottom, by diligent labor, he is willing to pay the last farthing at every step in the process of his advancement. The implements and the products of industry are the gauges of civilization. Between the roughly-hewn stone hatchet and the finely-polished steel axe lies all the history of the world's progress. The college, the library, the fine residence and the factory of modern civilization are at one end of the line, the other end of which starts from the dug-out and the hut. Man, in the highest estate, forget or ignore it as he may, has that in him which connects him with the lowest, and labor, the hard labor of his ancestors, extending through the ages as well as his own, has been the means of bringing him where he is. If the Indian and the negro are to be elevated, they must rise by the same steps as have others. They must work their way up. But they who are above them, remembering the pit out of which they themselves have been dug, must give them a chance to rise, and help them as they try to rise. That they have the capacity for elevation along every line of human development has been abundantly proved over and over again. The industrial exhibit of the colored people at the recent Centennial Exposition in New Orleans, was in every way gratifying to their friends. Though these people are only 20 years out of the house of their 250 years' bondage, antedated by millenniums of barbarism, they sent articles showing their progress in the industries that more than filled the entire gallery assigned them in one end of the immense Government building.
MOUNTAIN WORK.
This work has gone forward the past year with marked success. In Kentucky, Rev. J. T. Ford, having taken the pastoral charge of the church at Williamsburg, Rev. A. A. Myers was at liberty to give himself to more extended missionary work; and, as might be expected, he has gone into it with a will. He has organized three new churches; one at Jellico, with 11 members; one at Pleasant View, with 13 members, and one at Rockhold, with 15 members. Under his superintendency the Jellico church has erected a good, commodious house, but it needs a bell. The congregations number from 250 to 300, and the pastor, Rev. E. W. Bullock, reports the interest as increasing.
Pleasant View Church has also put up a house of worship, now complete except seats. At Rockland, stone is on the ground. Mr. Myers using his own team to haul it, himself being teamster, and the lumber is all ready to begin work. A chapel is soon to be erected at South Williamsburg, where there are hundreds around the mills who cannot be induced to attend church up town. Eleven Sunday-schools, with an enrollment of 1,200 and an average of 750, have been maintained. These schools extend from Jellico on the State line to the northern part of Whitley County along the railroad. Besides these, several students from the Academy have conducted Sunday-schools at their homes, reporting an enrollment of 160.
Day schools have been kept at Woodbine, Rockhold, Dowlais and Jellico with marked success.
The Williamsburg Academy has had an enrollment of 203. The reputation and influence of this school are extending far and wide. The teachers, imbued with the missionary spirit, have been a power in the church and in the community as well as in the school. The question whether our schools could be kept up if colored students were admitted, has been squarely met and answered, and right at our central station, Williamsburg, we have had colored pupils during the past two terms. When they were first admitted, there was a stampede of the white scholars, reducing the number of pupils from 120 to 40, but as they had a chance to think the matter over, and they saw the school going right along as if nothing had happened, and that it was going to keep right along, they began to come back again, with still others to join them, so that the school closed with a larger enrollment than the previous year. The excitement caused a discussion that found its way into the newspapers of the State, and gave the school such an advertisement as could not have been secured by years of ordinary work. We shall have no more trouble with the color question in Whitley County. It has been settled, and settled right.
In Tennessee, the Independent Church at Sherwood, and its pastor, Rev. A. B. Smith, have entered our fellowship by joining the Central South Association. On the Cumberland plateau, Pastor B. Dodge has secured the organization of a church with 16 members, which is associated with his church at Pomona. An organ and hymn-books were furnished by the Pilgrim Church, Cambridgeport, Mass. The people have subscribed $300, chiefly in lumber, toward a much-needed chapel for church and day school. At both these points day schools have been maintained. At Grand View, the first year of the Academy has proved a success, and now a church has been organized in association with it, both to be under the care of Rev. C. B. Riggs.