The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-04-28

I l swift forward movement in our time that puts all preceding social advancement to l shame, is the training of the mass of the l people. So commonplace Is this fact that many man misses it's profound mean | ing Sometimes men miss its meaning | because they use words that con1use | them. "Educationa Is one such confus- Ing word. To educate the people means one thing to one man and another to an 1 other. To most persons 1t smells Of books 1 only. l have several times had the de- l pressing misfortune to be caught at | real educational meeting (and dare say you have, tool and have been reminded by what l heard of blind little men | scrambling in a fog for a path that was not there. Then I have looked outdoors and seen the roses blooming and thought of the children that cannot bloom. Let Us not use words then, about which men deliver dissertations. Let us call II plain 'training;' for training Is the thing that has made the world a new world, that has vindicated democracy, that has opened the door for opportunities as fast as we can seize them-opportunities not only industrial and diplomatic, but intel lectual and moral also
 Workshop and Schools.
 'I lately took 6 journey from Boston to St. Louis. Across that row of states l one may see everywhere workshops that are schools and schools that are work shops-the people all doing some econom- ic service and training the young. The earnestness of academic life, the hum of industry, the cleanness of agriculture from the lecture rooms of Harvard col lege to the power room at the world fair, where an engine turns l0,Oo horse power as smoothly as a top sleeps on a polished pate-these are our eountrymen (and these are their ways) who have al- 1 Jt.t toI- fI1t Of the world; for they are it's masters.
 Let us see what right training is and how 1t works.
 First. does training pay the individ- ual? To reduce the question to it's sim- plest terms. let us first consider the com mon, untralned laborer in the south, the man at the very bottom. I asked the heads of several good schools for negro men and women to tell me the earning power of particular persons before they were trained and after. Here is the an- swer of Booker T. Washington:
 Before training a colored lad can earn in Alabama from 50 to 80 cents a day; after training at any useful kind of work. from s2.50 to s4.00 day
 'These instances among others are sent to me by MT. Atkins:
 John Smiths untrained earning ca- pacity was s15 a month. Trained at this school as builder, he now earns $50 month
 J. B. Christian earned sS a month As a teacher he now earns S35.
 ' Lizzie Crittenden earned 8 a month As nurse, she now earns s25'
 Eliza Hand earned $6 a month. As a | dressmaker she now earns $35
 "Dr. Frssell. principal of Hampton in- 1 stitute, gives these cases:
 " T.. R. Henderson, as a brickayer, 1 earns $ day. He works side by side with white men and has no trouble wNth them.
 " Charles Harvey earns from $275 to S350 day as a carpenter
 "A recital of such cases might be made for a whole evening from any part of the south.
 Now in the face of such facts, any able-minded negro who does not train himself Is fool; for there is a greater economic difference between an income of 70 cents and $2O per day than there Is between $3O00 a year and sS0,OoO
 Now if negro be a fool not to train himself. what shall be said of white man? He, too, Is a fool, with a punitive adjective for emphasis. l have asked the same question of many schools for whites. l will quote but one answer
 Graduates of Auburn.
 'President Charles c. Thach of the Alabama Polytechnic institute at Auburn has written me as follows:
 could write you what seems to me a romance to the process of trans muting the brains of country boys into live commercial assets We have grad uated from Auburn, since 1872, when the college was founded. about seven hun dred and fifty young men. Most of these have been poor boys in the strctest sense of the word, and today they are earning an average of over eight hundred dol lars a year. Some are getting salaries of two thousand. three thousand, and one | exceptional fellow ten thousand. Now the average wages of these boys had they not attended this institution and remain ed on the farm would have been about a hundred and fifty dollars a year, which is the full estimate of the earning capac- ity of a plain Alabama farm laborer Their present average earning. of elght hundred dollars. includes of course the salaries of young men who have lust left college, but who in few years will rise to something better. The average will. therefore. soon be higher.
 Now, capitalize this eight hundred dollars yearly income at per cent. and we have the sum of sixteen thousand l dollars, which expresses the cash value of the young mans educated brain This enormous increase In his standard of life and in productive capacity Is gained at this institution at an average cost of two hundred dollars a year, or eight hundred dollars for the four years
 " T cite you few concrete examples:
 c. N. Mitcham took with us his B. s. and M. & degrees in 1897 and 1898 and in five years after leaving college, without any outside influence had work ed into a position In which he directed ten other civil engineers. and which paid a salary of S2400
 Built Famous Bridge.
 w. D. Taylor, 1881, a young man raised on a farm in Montgomery county in the Black Belt. took our course in ,ivit engineering, has become a leader of na- tional reputation in his profession, con structing a noted bridge for the Chicago and Alton railway across the Missouri river, and now earns a salary of about four thousand dollars professor of rail- way engineering in the University of Winconsin.
 J. M Reid of the same class and the same course, was the son of a sec tion boss on an Alabama railway He. too, is celebrated engineer, having been employed by a Portuguese company, Africa. In addition to his salary he was paid by the company a bonus of ten thousand dollars for certain changes he suggested which effected immense saving l i'm ha nf