The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-08-19
PHILANTHROPY THAT DOESN'T
HELP.

In an article entitled IAN Unlighted
Lamp" by Rebecca Harding Davis, in
the current number of the Independent,
there is a statement of facts and some
comment to which we wish to call at
tention, because il seems to indicate
that it is beginning to be understood
at the North that much of the money
that has been contributed by philan>
thropic Northern people for the benefit
of negro education in the South has
been practically wasted.
The excerpt from the article In ques
ton is as follows:
when the negroes were freed they
were suddenly thrown, an idle, seeth
| Ing mass, upon the country. Common
| sense would have pointed out to their
new friends in the North that they
should be trained to do the work which
they had formerly done and which
somebody must now do more skilfully
than before, and for wages. A common
school education would have been
enough with the training for this work,
which Is not only that of field laborers,
but of masons, carpenters, blasksmiths,
etc.
"One such school, thanks to the wis
dom of General Armstrong, was estab-
lshed in the country, but only one.
The other friends of the negro endowed
universities for him. They took him
out of the field and set him to studying
Greek and the higher mathema tics, law
and medicine
Now, when he has mastered these
studies, they refuse to allow him to
use them to earn a living. With the
universities for colored men turning out
hundreds of graduates yearly 1t Is inn
possible to find a position for one of
them in Northern city higher than
that of waiter or valet. The North
erner is as brutal in his injustice to the
| educated negro to-day as the slave
holder was to the field hand. He can
not enter into any profession or bust
ness in the North without a struggle
more bitter than death. The unions
shut him out of the trades His only
| chance of success is as a mechanic.
among his old masters in the South"
1t may be that these Northern
philanthropists who helped to educate
negroes for places in the social fabric
to which they would not be admitted
meant well, but II is appar>
ent that they did not know just what
they were doing. 1t may be that they
were wholly selfish in the course they
pursued. They wanted the satisfaction
perhaps of thinking they were helping
to elevate a race lately freed from slav-
cry, but they were so Indifferent to the
real welfare of the negroes that
they did not take the trou-
BILE to inquire whether the means
they were providing were help
full or not 1t is certain that they
never intended to employ the doctors,
teachers and lawyers turned out from
the schools which their money sup
ported. If they ever thought of the
matter at all, it is probable they ex-
pected the white people of the South
would be in need of the services of the
graduates of the colleges in which
Greek. Latin and the higher mathemat-
les are the principal studies. 1t would
have been ever so much better If this
Northern money had been used to es-
| tablsh such schools as that of Booker
Washington-a school where boys are
taught good trades and the girls are
given instruction in such things as fit
them for the duties of house servants.