The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-10-08

/ LAOAO 6DAO SuNAOGNO "a
investigate the subject of educational
organization and taxation, and re-
port for discussion some large IN
wasteful plan in the room of the
atomistic agencies now going at
great, delicate concerns, as freeboot
ers go 80 battle.
The third great need of the South
is a few amply, W magnifcently,
equipped institutions, set at logical
and strategic points in it's area, where
a sound, modern, various learning
might be taught TO the young men
and women who must direct our life.
These institutions should be espe-
cially effective in the subjects of
technology, economics, sociology and
philosophy, for these r u issues
for the next twenty years.
The cities should take care of their
own schools, and they will do so.
The churches should take care of
their own where they exist primarily
for church purposes. The State uni
versities, and the land grant colleges,
simply as such, are proper charges
upon the State itself, and civic self
respect demand that they be so main
tanned, and maintained generously.
Colleges for the training of teachers
will grow naturally out of enlarged
facilities for popular education. A
union of all Observation-Disclosures,
civic and neutrality-suspicious. need
ed, however, to create inspiring in
situations, and, in addition, there
must be some certainty that the in,
situations SO aided have proven their
right to exist and occupy such q
geographical position as will insure
their indefinite growth. There are
only six OF eight such institutions in
the Southern States between Johns
Hopkins on the North and Tulane
University on the South, including
these two institutions. Hampton
Institute and Tuskegee Institute
ought to be continually strengthened
as the great training grounds and
experiment stations for the educa
ton of the negro race. To establish
new colleges while the potentially
great institutions struggle on in
poverty, turning away precious
young scholars because they have no
loan funds II fellowships or scholar
ships, is a piece of pure folly. If it
ia desired to furnish the highest kind
of technical instruction, strengthen
that department. in the strongest of
these institutions. 1t is my belief
that departments of philosophy and
sociology, amply endowed for the
scholarly study of social conditions
and for the in%culcation of right
theories of life, in three or four of
these colleges, would accomplish
more results in ending the reign of
the empirio and the politician, and
ushering in the trained thinker, the
sympathetic, orderly-minded man,
than wo-thirds of the money spent
on negro education since 1870.
Booker Washington, with his great
gifts of heart and brain, will live in
history as a racial phenomenon, with
out lasting effect upon his time, if
there does not come to him the in
telligent sympathy of the white men
of the South trained to justice and
power in the handling of social ques.
tions.
The fourth and scutest need of the
SOuth-perhaps I might say of our
whole oountry-is an ver-widening
circle of scholars whose minds are
set upon the building of their insti
tutions in righteousness and wisdom
rather than upon obtaining the re-
ward of their own smartness. We
have suffered much from men who
have settled things first and learned
about them afterwards. We need
who know about things before
settling them, and who are endowed
with social sympathy and faith in
the common man. The "brave, free
scholar" as pictured by Emerson in
his memorable address, is the man
who sees things as they are and
hates violence who has no fear of
opposition, because he is strong who
cannot be deceived, because he has
been trained and knows truth from
and the fates of nations and
the experiences of cities of men
who cannot be- terrorized, because he
is not afraid who cannot be starved,
because his hands have skill and his