As we were going to his boarding place, and after I had spent some time in advising him to turn over a new leaf and to try and elevate himself, we passed one of our best hotels. My ward at once stopped, began snuffing as if he “smelt a mice.” I looked at him, watched his countenance as it lighted up and his eyes sparkled; I inquired what was the matter. With a radiant smile he replied, “I smell good wittles; what place is that?”
“It is the Revere House,” I said.
“Wonder if I could get a place to wait on table there?” he asked.
I thought it a sorry comment on my efforts to instil into him some self-respect. This young man had learned the shoemaking trade, and at a McKay machine, I understood that he could earn from three dollars and a half to five dollars per day.
A dozen years ago, two colored young men commenced the manufacture of one of the necessary commodities of the day. After running the establishment some six or eight months successfully, they sold out to white men, who now employ more than one hundred hands. Both of the colored men are at their legitimate callings; one is a waiter in a private house, the other is a porter on a sleeping car.
The failure of these young men to carry on a manufacturing business was mainly owing to a want of training, in a business point of view. No man is fit for a profession or a trade, unless he has learned it.
Extravagance in dress is a great and growing evil with our people. I am acquainted with a lady in Boston who wears a silk dress costing one hundred and thirty dollars. She lives in two rooms, and her husband is a hair-dresser.
Since the close of the war, a large number of freedmen settled in Massachusetts, where they became servants, the most of them. These people surpass in dress, the wealthiest merchants of the city.
A young man, now a servant in a private house, sports a sixty-dollar overcoat while he works for twenty dollars per month.
A woman who cooks for five dollars per week, in Arlington Street, swings along every Sunday in a hundred-dollar silk dress, and a thirty-dollar hat. She cannot read or write.