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Answer. Ignorant, 115; educated, 3; unanswered, 17.

10. Does crime grow less as education increases among the colored people? Answer. Yes, 102; no, 19; unanswered, 15.

11. Is the moral growth of the negro equal to his mental growth? Answer. Yes, 55; no, 46; unanswered, 35.

But it has been said that the negro proves economically valueless in proportion as he is educated. Let us see. All will agree that the negro in Virginia, for example, began life forty years ago in complete poverty, scarcely owning clothing or a day's food. Right here I lay emphasis upon conditions in Virginia for the reason that the Hampton Institute, whose claims we are considering, is located in that State, and is the oldest and most widely known of all our schools. From an economic point of view, what has been accomplished for Virginia alone largely through the example and work of the graduates of Hampton and other large schools in that State? The reports of the State auditor show that the negro to-day owns at least one twenty-sixth of the total real estate in that Commonwealth, exclusive of his holdings in towns and cities, and that in the counties east of the Blue Ridge Mountains he owns one-sixteenth. In Middlesex County he owns one-sixth; in Hanover, one-fourth. In Georgia the official records show that, largely through the influence of educated men and women from Atlanta schools and others, the negroes added last year $1,526,000 to their taxable property, making the total amount upon which they pay taxes in that State alone $16,700,000. From nothing to $16,000,000 in one State in forty years does not seem to prove that education is hurting the race very much. Relative progress has taken place in Alabama and other Southern States. Every man or woman who graduates from the Hampton or Tuskegee institutes, who has become intelligent and skilled in any of the industries of the South, is not only in demand at an increased salary, on the part of my race, but there is equal demand from the white race. One of the largest manufacturing concerns in Birmingham, Ala., keeps a standing order at the Tuskegee Institute to the effect that it will employ every man who graduates from our foundry department. When the South had a wholly ignorant and wholly slave negro population she produced about 4,000,000 bales of cotton; now she has a wholly free and partly educated negro population and the South produces nearly 10,000,000 bales of cotton, besides more food products than were ever grown in its history. In the making of these statements it should not be overlooked that it is not the negro alone who produces cotton, but it is his labor that produces most of it. And while he may pay a small direct tax, his labor makes it mighty convenient for others to pay direct taxes.

Judged purely from an economic or industrial standpoint, the education of the negro is paying, and will pay more largely in the future in proportion as educational opportunities are increased. A careful examination shows that of the men and women trained at the Hampton and Tuskegee schools not 10 per cent can be found in idleness at any season of the year. They have learned the beauty of work, the disgrace of idleness. But my real object, I beg to repeat, is not to enter into a controversy on this or that point of the progress of the race, but to emphasize the fact that, with all the negro is doing to help himself, with all that the southern white people are doing, that the opportunities for education for my race are inadequate almost beyond description, and the same may be said of the poor white people in certain sections of the South.

Years ago some one asked an eminent clergyman in Boston if Christianity is a failure. The reverend doctor replied that it had never been tried. When people are bold enough to suggest that the education of the negro is a failure, I reply

ED 1904 M-37

that it has never been tried. The fact is that 44.5 per cent of the colored people in this country to-day are illiterate. A very large proportion of those classed as educated have the merest smattering of knowledge, which means practically no education. Can the negro child get an education in school four months and out of school eight months? Can the white child of the South, who receives $4.92 per capita for education, or the black child, who receives $2.21, be said to be given an equal chance in the battle of life, or has education been tried on them? The official records in Louisiana, for instance, show that less than one-fourth of the negro children of school age attend any school during the year. This one-fourth was in school for a period of less than five months, and each negro child of school age in the State had spent on him for education last year but $1.89, while each child of school age in the State of New York had spent on him $20.53. In the former slave States 90 per cent of the negro children of school age did not attend school for six months during the year 1900.

I would seek to convince you that wherever the race is given an opportunity for education it takes advantage of that opportunity, and that the change can be seen in the improved material, educational, moral, and religious condition of the masses. Contrast two townships, one in Louisiana, where the race has had little chance, with one in Farmville, Va., says the United States Bulletin of the Department of Labor. In the Louisiana township only 10 per cent attend school, and they attend for but four months in a year, and 71 per cent of the people are illiterate. And as a result of this ignorance and neglect we find only 50 per cent of the people living together as man and wife are legally married. Largely through the leadership of Hampton graduates 56 per cent of the black children in Farmville, Va., attend either public or private school from six to eight months. There is only 39 per cent of illiteracy. Practically all the people living together as man and wife are legally married, and in the whole community only 15 per cent of the births are illegitimate.

But the vital point which I want to emphasize is the disposition of the negro to exercise the self-help in the building up of his own schools in connection with the State public school system. Wherever we send out from Hampton, Tuskegee, or any of our southern colleges a negro leader of proper character, he shows the people in most cases how to extend the school term beyond the few months provided for by the State. Out of their poverty the Southern States are making a tremendous effort to extend and improve the school term each year, but while this improvement is taking place the negro leaders of the character to which I have referred must be depended upon largely to keep alive the spark of education. But when all this has been said, the question as to the elevation of the black man goes deeper than the interests of the Hampton Institute, deeper than the interests of a single race, deeper than the interests of the South. In the last analysis it means that we shall have in this country either a democratic form of government or a mere sham and semblance of the same.

It now seems settled that the great body of our people are to reside for all time in the southern portion of the United States. Since this is true there is no more helpful and patriotic service than to help cement a friendship between the two races that shall be manly, honorable, and permanent. In this work of molding and guiding a public sentiment that shall forever maintain peace and good will between the races on terms commendable to each, it is on the negro who comes out of our universities, colleges, and industrial schools that we must largely depend. Few people realize how, under the most difficult and trying circumstances, during the last forty years, it has been the educated negro who counseled patience, self-control, and thus averted a war of races. Every negro

going out from our institutions properly educated becomes a link in the chain that shall forever bind the two races together in all the essentials of life.

Finally, reduced to its last analysis, there are but two questions that constitute the problem of this country so far as the black and white races are concerned. The answer to the one rests with my people, the other with the white race. For my race one of its dangers is that it may grow impatient and feel that it can get upon its feet by artificial and superficial efforts rather than by the slower but surer process, which means one step at a time through all the constructive grades of industrial, mental, moral, and social development which all races have had to follow which have become independent and strong. I would counsel: We must be sure that we shall make our greatest progress by keeping our feet on the earth, and by remembering that an inch of progress is worth a yard of complaint. For the white race the danger is that in its prosperity and power it may forget the claims of a weaker people, may forget that a strong race, like an individual, should put its hand upon its heart and ask if it were placed in similar circumstances how it would like the world to treat it; that the stronger race may forget that in proportion as it lifts up the poorest and weakest, even by a hair's breadth, it strengthens and ennobles itself.

All the negro asks is that the door which rewards industry, thrift, intelligence, and character be left as wide open for him as for the foreigner who constantly comes to our country. More than this he has no right to request. Less than this a republic has no right to withhold.

Neither must the nation grow impatient and faithless. It must remember that during the last forty years the South has been passing through a tremendous industrial and social crisis. This is true of the white race, equally true of the black race. The change from slavery to freedom could not be accomplished without mistakes on both sides, without each race going to extremes. Time, the great leveler, will exercise a modifying, a sobering influence upon all concerned, and in all proper directions.

With all his faults the negro rarely betrays a trust or manifests a spirit of ingratitude. Whenever he has been called upon to render service in behalf of his State or nation such service has been ungrudgingly given. Further-whether in

ignorance or in intelligence, whether in slavery or in freedom-the negro has always been true to the Stars and Stripes and the best interests of the nation, and no black-skinned citizen has ever lifted his hand to strike down the Chief Magistrate of the nation or raised the red flag of anarchy. For every dollar that is put into our education by the North or South through such agencies as the Hampton Institute the race will more than repay by a life of industry, intelligence, high Christian character, and in helpful friendship between the races; and because of our elevation it shall be said of the South: "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose."

CHAPTER VII.

TEMPERANCE INSTRUCTION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE LIQUOR QUESTION."

CONTENTS: (1) Report on temperance, physiology, and hygiene in the schools of Connecticut.--(2) Report of the New York State central committee on the study of physiology and hygiene.-(3) The battle against alcohol in the United States.-(4) Temperance instruction in Prussia.-(5) Report on temperance instruction in western Massachusetts.

REPORT ON TEMPERANCE, PHYSIOLOGY, AND HYGIENE IN CON

NECTICUT SCHOOLS.

[From the Report of the Connecticut Board of Education, 1902, pp. 191-200.] The law relating to the teaching of physiology and hygiene was modified by the legislature of 1901.

The law prior to 1901 and the law of 1901 are given:

LAW 1893-1901.

SECTION 1. The nature of alcoholic drinks and narcotics, and special instruction as to their effects upon the human system, in connection with the several divisions of the subject of physiology and hygiene, shall be included in the branches of study taught in the common or public schools, and shall be studied and taught as other like required branches, by the use of graded text-books in the hands of pupils

LAW OF 1901.

SECTION 1. The effects of alcohol and narcotics on health, and especially on character, shall be taught in connection with hygiene, as a regular branch of study to all pupils above the third grade in all graded public schools except public high schools.

SEC. 2. Suitable text-books of physiology and hygiene, which explain the effects of alcohol and narcotics on the human system,

The following information relating to temperance instruction has appeared in recent Reports of the Commissioner of Education:

Report of 1898-99: "Antialcoholic instruction in French schools" (Vol. I, chap. 21, pp. 1098-1103).

Report of 1899-1900: “Alcoholic physiology and superintendence," by Prof. W. O. Atwater (Vol. I, chap. 8, pp. 584-602).—“ The rôle of the school teacher in the struggle against alcoholism," by A. Sluys, director of Brussels (Belgium) Normal School (chap. 9, pp. 603-614).-" Temperance physiology," by Mrs. Mary Hunt (chap. 21, pp. 12771280).

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Report of 1901: (1) “Is there too much temperance matter in the school physiologies?" by Mary H. Hunt.-(2) Report of a committee of the Department of Superintendence.— (3) Temperance teaching and recent legislation in Connecticut," by Supt. W. B. Ferguson, of Middletown, Conn.--(4) Temperance instruction in Nebraska.—(5) "The modern subjection of science and education to a propaganda," by Prof. Wm. T. Sedgwick, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.—(6) "The will of the people, not of an ollgarchy," by Mary II. Hunt.-(7) Alcoholic physiology in school.-(8) Enforced temperance among railway employees.-(9) Report of a committee of the New York State Science Teachers' Association (Vol. I, chap. 21, pp. 1027–1050).

Report of 1902: Text of the laws of the several States relating to temperance instruction (Vol. I, chap. 6, pp. 315-338).

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