Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1886-01-28
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 for
skilled labor. Machinists are wanted,
carpenters, joiucrs. shoemakers. weay-
ers, plumbers. mill-hands.-everyk kind
OF craftsmen, in short, who can eff
cicntly aid in the countless new in
dustries which are struggling into ex-
istence 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 q few months be-
fore going West, if West they will 90.
The second fact was the negro ex-
hibit at the New Orleans exhibition.
1t was significant and pathetic, because
it showed what the free colorcd men
wished to do, but never had been
taught 10 do. Their schools and col
leges made creditable displays of their
intellectual progress. But the work of
their hands was almost invariably the
work of willing but unframed hands.
There were attempts at every kind of
handicraft, from shoes and rolling-pins
to steam engine eleyerly made by
negro, who assuredly did not under
stand mechanics, as he could neither
read nor write. Shoes, machines,
tubs, even pictures, were, rs rule,
proudly labeled as the work of man
or 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, who 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, blacksmiths,
and bricklayers. The proof of the
capacity OF the negro for skilled labor
is, think, ample. fully believe in
it. The great difficulty is their lack of
opportunity to learn. They have less
chance to learn now than in the DAYS
OF slavery, which, in crude way, was
a great industrial school. 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 | consider its suc-
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 and 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
laborersp-RebeccG Harding Ddvts IN
NoUenaber atlantic.