The Negro Problem | Page 5

to make the forces of nature--air, steam, water, horse-power and
electricity--work for him. If it has any value it is in lifting labor up out of toil and
drudgery into the plane of the dignified and the beautiful. The Negro in the South works
and works hard; but too often his ignorance and lack of skill causes him to do his work in
the most costly and shiftless manner, and this keeps him near the bottom of the ladder in
the economic world.
I have not emphasized particularly in these pages the great need of training the Negro in
agriculture, but I believe that this branch of industrial education does need very great
emphasis. In this connection I want to quote some words which Mr. Edgar Gardner
Murphy, of Montgomery, Alabama, has recently written upon this subject:
"We must incorporate into our public school system a larger recognition of the practical
and industrial elements in educational training. Ours is an agricultural population. The
school must be brought more closely to the soil. The teaching of history, for example, is
all very well, but nobody can really know anything of history unless he has been taught to
see things grow--has so seen things not only with the outward eye, but with the eyes of
his intelligence and conscience. The actual things of the present are more important,
however, than the institutions of the past. Even to young children can be shown the
simpler conditions and processes of growth--how corn is put into the ground--how cotton
and potatoes should be planted--how to choose the soil best adapted to a particular plant,
how to improve that soil, how to care for the plant while it grows, how to get the most
value out of it, how to use the elements of waste for the fertilization of other crops; how,
through the alternation of crops, the land may be made to increase the annual value of its
products--these things, upon their elementary side are absolutely vital to the worth and
success of hundreds of thousands of these people of the Negro race, and yet our whole
educational system has practically ignored them.
* * * * *
"Such work will mean not only an education in agriculture, but an education through
agriculture and education, through natural symbols and practical forms, which will
educate as deeply, as broadly and as truly as any other system which the world has
known. Such changes will bring far larger results than the mere improvement of our
Negroes. They will give us an agricultural class, a class of tenants or small land owners,

trained not away from the soil, but in relation to the soil and in intelligent dependence
upon its resources."
I close, then, as I began, by saying that as a slave the Negro was worked, and that as a
freeman he must learn to work. There is still doubt in many quarters as to the ability of
the Negro unguided, unsupported, to hew his own path and put into visible, tangible,
indisputable form, products and signs of civilization. This doubt cannot be much affected
by abstract arguments, no matter how delicately and convincingly woven together.
Patiently, quietly, doggedly, persistently, through summer and winter, sunshine and
shadow, by self-sacrifice, by foresight, by honesty and industry, we must re-enforce
argument with results. One farm bought, one house built, one home sweetly and
intelligently kept, one man who is the largest tax payer or has the largest bank account,
one school or church maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden
profitably cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well preached, one
office well filled, one life cleanly lived--these will tell more in our favor than all the
abstract eloquence that can be summoned to plead our cause. Our pathway must be up
through the soil, up through swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the
rocks, up through commerce, education and religion!
[Footnote A: In the original, this was 'drudggery'.]

The Talented Tenth By PROF. W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS
A strong plea for the higher education of the Negro, which those who are interested in the
future of the freedmen cannot afford to ignore. Prof. DuBois produces ample evidence to
prove conclusively the truth of his statement that "to attempt to establish any sort of a
system of common and industrial school training, without first providing for the higher
training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the winds."
[Illustration: W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS.]
The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem
of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the
problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass