When I began with the man he was working about three days in the week. The old fellow grew interested and began to work a little longer, until the last time I rode by that house the old man was working nearly every day in the week, while they were living in a two-room house and everything had changed. The hardest task I had was to get him to put up a chimney for the second room, finally he put up one and although it was a pretty rickety, crooked affair, yet it answered the purpose and he felt proud of it. When I left this time he informed me that by the time I came back he would try to have both of those rooms whitewashed. I am not through with that family yet. I am going to work on that woman until through her I will get the old man to work five and six days out of the week.
It should always be borne in mind that, for any person of any race, literary education alone increases his want; and, if you increase these wants without at the same time training the individual in a manner to enable him to supply these increased wants, you have not always strengthened his moral and religious basis.
The same principle might be illustrated in connection with South Africa. In that country there are six millions of Negroes. Notwithstanding this fact, South Africa suffers to-day perhaps as never before for lack of labor. The natives have never been educated by contact with the white man in the same way as has been true of the American Negro. They have never been educated in the day school nor in the Sunday-school nor in the church, nor in the industrial school or college; hence their ambitions have never been awakened, their wants have not been increased, and they work perhaps two days out of the week and are in idleness during the remaining portion of the time. This view of the case I had confirmed in a conversation with a gentleman who had large interests in South Africa.
How different in the Southern part of the United States where we have eight millions of black people! Ask any man who has had practical experience in using the masses of these people as laborers and he will tell you that in proportion to their progress in the civilization of the world, it is difficult to find any set of men who will labor in a more satisfactory way. True, these people have not by any means reached perfection in this regard, but they have advanced on the whole much beyond the condition of the South Africans. The trained American Negro has learned to want the highest and best in our civilization, and as we go on giving him more education, increasing his industrial efficiency and his love of labor, he will soon get to the point where he will work six days out of each week.
But as to the results of industrial training. Following the example of the modern pedagogue, let me begin with that which I know most about, the Tuskeegee Institute. This institution employs one of its officers who spends a large part of his time in keeping in close contact with our graduates and former students. He visits them in their homes and in their places of employment and not only sees for himself what they are doing, but gets the testimony of their neighbors and employers, and I can state positively that not ten per cent. of the men and women who have graduated from the Tuskeegee Institute or who have been there long enough to understand the spirit and methods of that institution can be found to-day in idleness in any part of the country. They are at work because they have learned the dignity and beauty and civilizing influence and, I might add, Christianizing power of labor; they have learned the degradation and demoralizing influence of idleness; they have learned to love labor for its own sake and are miserable unless they are at work. I consider labor one of the greatest boons which our Creator has conferred upon human beings.
Further, after making careful investigation, I am prepared to say that there is not a single man or woman who holds a diploma from the Tuskeegee Institute who can be found within the walls of any penitentiary in the United States.
I have learned that not more than a score of the graduates of the fifteen oldest and largest colleges and industrial schools in the entire South have been sent to prison since these institutions were established. Those who are guilty of crime for the most part are individuals who are without education, without a trade, who own no land, who are not taxpayers, who have no bank account, and who have made no progress in industrial and economic development.
The following extracts from a letter written by a Southern white man to the Daily Advertiser, of Montgomery, Alabama, contains most valuable testimony. The letter refers to convicts in Alabama, most of whom are colored:
"I was conversing not long ago with the warden of one of our mining prisons, containing about 500 convicts. The warden is a practical man, who has been in charge of prisoners for more than fifteen years, and has no theories of any kind to support. I remarked to him that I wanted some information as to the effect of manual training in preventing criminality, and asked him to state what per cent. of the prisoners under his charge had received any manual training, besides acquaintance with the crudest agricultural labor. He replied: 'Perhaps about one per cent.' He added: 'No, much less than that. We have here at present only one mechanic; that is, there is one man who claims to be a house painter.'