The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1886-02-18
The Negro Problem.

Two significant facts appear to me
to offer suggestions worth considera.
ton on this subject
The first is the universal increasing
demand in every Southern State fol
skilled labor. Machinists are wanted,
carpenters, joiners, shoemakers, weav-
ers, plumbers. mill-hands,-every kind
of craftsmen, in short, who can eff.
GENTLY aid in the countless new in
dusfries which are struggling into ex-
lstence in the South. So great and
pressing is the need for them that
most strenuous efforts are being made
to induce European emigrants to come
to this new-old field, instead of to the
Northern ports,-to enter by New
Orleans, and remain few months be-
fore going West, if West they will 60.
The second fact was the negro ex-
hibit at the New Orleans exhibition.
1t was significant and pathetic, because
i showed what the free coiorcd men
wished to do, but never had been
taught TO do. Their schools aud col
Ieges made creditabie displays OF their
intellectual progress. But the work of
their hands was almost Invariably the
work of willing bat unframed hands.
There were attempts at every kind of
handicraft, from shoes and rolling-pins
TO steam engine cleverly made by a
negro. who assuredly did not UNDER
stand mechanics. as he could neither
read nor write. Shoes, machines,
tubs, even pictures, were, as rule,
proudly labeled as the work of a man
OF woman who never had been taught
to make them. The whole exhibit was
pitiable as a display of wasted clever
ness. In suggestive contrast were the
work from the Hampton Industrial
School, and some really admirable
specimens of saddlery and engraved
glass made by colored men in Phila-
delphia who had learned how"
General S. G. Armstrong. vino has
had seventeen years OF experience in
teaching the Industrial School for ne
groes at Hampton, writes: There is
now large class of negro mechanics
in the South, carpenters, DiacIsmiths,
and brichiayers. The proof Of the
capacity OF the negro f"r skilled labor
is, l think, aElp', i luHy believe in
it. tie great iiiicuity is their lack of
opportu ;.ty TO learn. lacy have less
W 4cdI IL nov lu.tH luO OdSS
of slavery, WI. - ..,,...e way, was
great induStrI... ..uooI. l have seen
so much evidence here of the negro's
desire to learn trades, and have had
such satisfactory experience of the race
as mechanics, that L consider its sue
cess question of opportunity only"
There are several colleges and uni
versities in the South tor the freedmen
which profess to rank with those for
the whites, but | know of no other in
dustrial school than that at Hampton.
No practical visitor to the South can
help questioning whether the great
mass of negroes and mulattoes do not,
in this crisis of their history, need
training in handicrafts rather than in
Latin aud metaphysics; and whether,
too, granting that the negro and
mulatto have the mechanical ability to
receive this training. it will not be
more to the interest of the Southern
white man to keep the new industries,
now opening with such plendid promise,
under his own control, with his famil-
lar freed workmen, than to surrender
them to foreign capitalists and foreign
borers?-Re6ecca Harding DaUis IN
NOCens6er atlantic.