failed even to carry his home county. And efforts to restrict the amount appropriated to Negro schools to the part of the school taxes paid by Negroes have failed.
Since 1870 the South has spent on Negro education around $230,000,000 and is now appropriating for that purpose near $10,000,000, annually. It is doubtful if the Negro contributes in taxes even half the amount spent on his public schools. In 1912, according to the Educational Report of that State, North Carolina spent $436,480.08 for Negro teachers and Negro school buildings, of which the Negro contributed in taxes for schools $190,378.81, or a little more than two-fifths. Texas spends not far from $2,000,000 a year on Negro schools, and Georgia about $850,000. The District of Columbia, indeed, spends more per capita on Negro pupils than on whites. However, this is a notable exception.
There are also more than six hundred private and denominational schools of secondary and college grade in the United States for the higher education of the Negro. The property of these is valued at about $28,500,000.[151:5] From 1865 to 1917 about $65,000,000 has been contributed to Negro education in the South through various religious and philanthropic organizations.
But notwithstanding the fact that the illiteracy of the Negro race had been reduced by 1910 to about thirty-three per cent, there is a widespread feeling of disappointment in Negro education. Not that it has made the Negro more criminal as has sometimes been said, however, this is not yet well determined, but rather that it has failed to make him a greater producer, or to aid him to adjust himself to economic conditions. Instead of firing him with the desire to do more and better work, too often he quits it altogether.
As a teacher or a preacher the Negro has a wide field for his race needs him and the State and the Church pay him. But as a doctor, lawyer, or other professional, poverty and pauperism (the condition of the greater part of the Negro race) militate against them. In addition, the Negro has not yet sufficient confidence in the professional skill of those of his own race as to cause him to employ them exclusively.
There is a growing conviction in the South that the first aim of Negro education should be to fit the Negro for the opportunities of his social and industrial environment. Also that it should endeavor to strengthen his will power, in order that he may overcome his constitutional inertia; and that it should give him a knowledge of sanitary living, thus preventing disease.
In the South Carolina Public School Report for 1915, the State Superintendent of Schools has this to say:
“The Negro is here and is here to stay. He cannot remain ignorant without injury to himself, his white neighbors and to the Commonwealth. His training should fit him for the work that is open to him. . . . While industrial education is needed for both races it is especially desirable for the Negro.
“The money now expended for Negro education is largely wasted. Can we afford longer to allow this large element in our population to follow their present practices and remain in their present condition?”
Such schools as Hampton Institute and Tuskegee have fairly well demonstrated that industrial education is at least a good thing for the Negro. In these and other such schools thousands have been given an inspiration for a higher plane of living. Indeed, it is claimed that very seldom is any graduate of these two schools convicted of crime:[153:6] The influence of Tuskegee on the Negro in a material way may be appreciated by the statement that in 1881 when the school was opened in