The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-05-09

be secured by teaching the use of
labor-saving machinery and putting
brains into every stage of the work.
Besides the valuable training that
such an institution would give-train-
ing that would in time result in max
ing green many waste places in the
South-such an institution would in
time be in measure self sustaining.
Here at the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute in Alabama, in
connection with training three hun
dred girls in literary branches, sew
ing, cooking, laundrying, millinery
ing, general household science, fruit
canning, etc, we are gradually NOV
ing into the fields of industry men
toned in the foregoing. Next year
we are planning to give large num-
Der of girls training in dairying, and
the work will be pushed all along the
line just as fast as we can secure
funds with which to start and pay
the expenses of these departments.
If we had the means we could have
five.f hundred girls receiving such
training at Tuskegee. AS it is we are
compelled now to refuse admission
to at least three hundred girls every
year.
Looking at the commercial value
OF such training it can be safely said
that the products of such training
find ready market not only in the
North but in the South.
There will be those who will argue
that such course of training has too
much of the utilitarian idea in view,
and does not lay enough stress on
moral and mental development.
Right here is where the average man
blunders. You cannot give hungry
man much moral training.
To secure the highest moral and re-
ligious training among the poor
white and colored women in the South
we have got to get them to the point
where there stomachs can be regu-
larly filled with good, we'll cooked
food. Investigate the physical condi-
tion of those who compose the mobs.
the lynching bees, in the South.
and see how many get plenty of we'll
cooked food three times day. A man
can't read his Bible to much advant-
age or write good poetry when he is
hungry.
Then one is likely to overlook the
amount of mental discipline that can
be secured from such training as |
have described, we'll systematized,
One who deals with nature in the in
dustrial world is forced to think. to
plan for the future, to investigate, to
compare. Is there not as much men
tai discipline in having a student
think out and put on paper plan
for modern dairy building, as in
having her merely commit to memory
poetry that some one else thought
out years ago2 l repeat that we must
face conditions as they exist about us.
During the next fifty years the prob
lem that the South will be contin-
ually facing is that of "bread and
butter" With this settled, the next
generation of colored and poor white
girls can afford to give more time to
the aesthetics. When one builds a
house, he does not begin by putting
fine paper and pictures on the walls
or carpets on the floor. The founda-
tion and framework first, and year by
year by patient industry the trinkets
and ornaments come, but the man
who begins by getting the trinkets
and ornaments first will never get the
house.
In giving the training that l have
attempted to outline, l do not mean
to give the impression that literary or
academic education should be cast
aside or neglected. Far from it. The
more brain training that can be
mixed in, the better. An ignorant
woman is an ignorant woman, no
matter where placed, with all the dis
advantages of ignorance.
Production and commerce are two
of the great destroyers of race preiu-
dice. In proportion as the black
woman is able to produce something
that the white or other races want, in
the same proportion does prejudice
disappear. Butter is going to be
purchased from the individual who
can produce the best butter and at
the lowest price, and the purchaser
cares not whether it was by black,
white, yellow or brown woman. The
best butter is what is wanted. The
American dollar has not an ounce of
prejudice in it.