Iowa state bystander. [volume] (Des Moines, Iowa) 1894-1916, 1895-05-31
PUT RRArNs INTO IT.
Common Occupations Require Brains
knowledge Must be Used.
7'enas Fireman.

Booker T. Washington, the great
industrial education agitator recently
made an address in Nashville. A re-
port of the lecture contains among
other things this excerpt: AS a race
there are things we must learn to do
one is to put brains in the common oc-
cupationS of life, and the other is to
dignity common labor. Ii we do not
we cannot hold our own as 4 race.
Ninety per cent of any race on the
globe earns it's living by the common
occupations of life and the Negro can
be no exception to the rule.
Prof. Washington illustrated the i'm
portance of this by citing the fact that
while twenty years ago every large and
paying barbershop over the country
was in the hands of black men: today
in all the large cities you cannot find
a single large or frst-class barbershop
operated by colored men. The black
men had had the monopoly OF that in
dustry but had gone on from day to
day in the same old monotonous way
without improving anything about the
industry. AS a result the white man
had taken it up, put brains into it.,
watched all the fine points, improved
and progressed until his shop today
was not known as u barberShop, but a
tonsorial parlor, and he was no longer
called barber but, a tOnsorial artist.
Just so with the old Negro man with
his bucket of whitewash and his long
pole and brush had given way to the
white man, who had applied his knowl-
edge of chemistry to mixing materials,
his knowledge of physics to the blend
ING of colors. and his knowledge of
geometry totiguring and decorating the
ceiling But the white man was not
called a whitewasher; he was termed a
house decorator. He had put brains
into his work, he had given dignity to
it, and the old cOlOred man with the
long pole and bucket was thing of the
past, The old Negro woman and her
wash tub were fast being supplaned by
the white man with his steam laundry,
washing over hundred shirts an hour
The many colored men who had for
merly earned a living by cutting the
grass in the front yards and keeping
the flower beds in trim were no COM
petitors for the white man, who bring
ing his knowledge of surveying and
terracing and plotting land. and his
knowledge of botany and his blending
of colors into active play, had digni-
fed and promoted the work. He was
not called a grass-cutter or yard clean
er, but a florist or a landscape gardner.
The old black '.mammy" could never
again enter in the sick room, where
She was known as peerless nurse.
She had given place to the tidy little
white woman, with her neat white cap
and apron, her knowledge of physiology,
bandaging, principles of diseases and
the administration of medicine, who
had dignifed, beautificd and glorified,
the art of nursing and had turned it
into profession. Just so, too, the
black cook was going out OF the
superior knowledge and art of cook
cry possessed by white ''chiefs," who
were educated men and commanded
large salaries.
s'Now." said the speaker, what are
awe going to do? Are we going to put
iiprains INTO these common occupations?
o,se we gong to apply the knowledge
eihsS * got at school? Are we going to
ls 3 : .sA up with the world, or are we go