The Negro Problem | Page 2

could be prepared for the
proper growing and marketing of these crops forests had to be cleared, houses to be built,
public roads and railroads constructed. In all these works the Negro did most of the heavy
work. In the planting, cultivating and marketing of the crops not only was the Negro the
chief dependence, but in the manufacture of tobacco he became a skilled and proficient
workman, and in this, up to the present time, in the South, holds the lead in the large
tobacco manufactories.
In most of the industries, though, what happened? For nearly twenty years after the war,
except in a few instances, the value of the industrial training given by the plantations was
overlooked. Negro men and women were educated in literature, in mathematics and in
the sciences, with little thought of what had been taking place during the preceding two

hundred and fifty years, except, perhaps, as something to be escaped, to be got as far
away from as possible. As a generation began to pass, those who had been trained as
mechanics in slavery began to disappear by death, and gradually it began to be realized
that there were few to take their places. There were young men educated in foreign
tongues, but few in carpentry or in mechanical or architectural drawing. Many were
trained in Latin, but few as engineers and blacksmiths. Too many were taken from the
farm and educated, but educated in everything but farming. For this reason they had no
interest in farming and did not return to it. And yet eighty-five per cent. of the Negro
population of the Southern states lives and for a considerable time will continue to live in
the country districts. The charge is often brought against the members of my race--and
too often justly, I confess--that they are found leaving the country districts and flocking
into the great cities where temptations are more frequent and harder to resist, and where
the Negro people too often become demoralized. Think, though, how frequently it is the
case that from the first day that a pupil begins to go to school his books teach him much
about the cities of the world and city life, and almost nothing about the country. How
natural it is, then, that when he has the ordering of his life he wants to live it in the city.
Only a short time before his death the late Mr. C.P. Huntington, to whose memory a
magnificent library has just been given by his widow to the Hampton Institute for
Negroes, in Virginia, said in a public address some words which seem to me so wise that
I want to quote them here:
"Our schools teach everybody a little of almost everything, but, in my opinion, they teach
very few children just what they ought to know in order to make their way successfully in
life. They do not put into their hands the tools they are best fitted to use, and hence so
many failures. Many a mother and sister have worked and slaved, living upon scanty food,
in order to give a son and brother a "liberal education," and in doing this have built up a
barrier between the boy and the work he was fitted to do. Let me say to you that all
honest work is honorable work. If the labor is manual, and seems common, you will have
all the more chance to be thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and brings
better pay, and to work out in your minds better and higher duties and responsibilities for
yourselves, and for thinking of ways by which you can help others as well as yourselves,
and bring them up to your own higher level."
Some years ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our training at the Tuskegee
Institute, I was amazed to find that it was almost impossible to find in the whole country
an educated colored man who could teach the making of clothing. We could find
numbers of them who could teach astronomy, theology, Latin or grammar, but almost
none who could instruct in the making of clothing, something that has to be used by
every one of us every day in the year. How often have I been discouraged as I have gone
through the South, and into the homes of the people of my race, and have found women
who could converse intelligently upon abstruse subjects, and yet could not tell how to
improve the condition of the poorly cooked and still more poorly served bread and meat
which they and their families were eating three times a day. It is discouraging to find a
girl who can tell you the geographical location of any country on the