The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1906-05-31
EDUCATION OF NEGRO 4
BENEFIT TO WHITE MAN

There is nothing that can be done bet
ter for the white man. who is to live
side by side with the colored man, than
to train that colored man up to be a
good citizen, The good man, who is
white man by his presence is a bene-
fit to every colored man in the coHmu-
nifty and the safety of the white man
is in having the colored man grow to
he good and decent man.
From the standpoint of the white
man, the safest and best thing that can
happen is to have the colored people
around him become thrifty, industrious,
homemakers and homekeepers, for you
never yet had any formidable quanti-
ty Of criminals from a people or local
ity where the average type was the
home maker and the home keeper. So
from the standpoint of the white man
nothing better can be done than to give
to the colored man tht real education,
that real training which he gets here
at Hampton and in similar institutions.
From the standpoint of the colored
man, the only real way to help him is
to help him help himself. In the long
run, in this world, no human being can
be carried. What this institution does
is to train young men and women to
walk by themselves. The eolored man
who helps his race most is he who helps
teach the members of his race how to
conduct themselves with self-respect-
Woodworking, intelligent, law-abiding
citizens. 1t Is the honest virtues that
count in the long run. No race, no ma
tionality, ever raises itself by the ex-
hibition of genius in a few men; what
counts is characteristic character of
the average man and the average Wom-
an. If we can develop in the average
eolored citizen those qualities Of char
acter, of courage, of truthfulness, of
sense of obligation, of willingness to
work, of desire to behave decently to-
ward those roundabout you, you have
taken the longest and the most effective
step towards securing for the people Of
your own race their own self-respect
and the respect of others, which will
follow inevitably in the training of that
Iself-respect.
you have sent out from Hampton
institute in all something like six thou
sand graduates, and, if l have remem-
bered rightly, there are but two of
whom you have record as criminals,
and that fact is an all-suff1cient answer
to the blind people who say that no
good will come from educating the ne
gro. So far is that from the truth that
| it may be said that the real hope for
the negro, as well as for the white man,
| is in education, if only we understand
the meaning Of education in it's proper
sense.
1T soften said that the true place
for the negro is in industrial work. 1t
is. That is the true place for the aver
age negro and it is the true place for
the average man, and we will not get
our civilization upon a proper basis I'M
til we root out of the mind of the aver
age man and the average girl, of what
ever color, the belief that to become a
poor clerk is better thing than being
a tlrst-class hand worker, a first-class
mechanic or first-class agricultural
| laborer. The wrong twist that has
been given to our education In the past
has been largely responsible for the
very unhealthy development of the city
at the expense Of the country. Never
in the past has any nation been per-
manently great when the city popula-
ton has been enormous in size as COM
pared with the country population. The
people of the farms conserve certain
qualities which those who dwell in the
large cities tend to lose. If there is one
thing l would like especially to impress
upon you it is to advise you to take up
the work on the farms with the inten-
ton of owning them; take up agricul-
tural work.
In doing that you will be doing only
what the best, the most intelligent and
most advanced white people are more
and more growing to do. The growth
of agricultural colleges and their de-
velopment has been one of the signifi-
cant features of education for the white
race in most all of the states of this
| Union, because more and more have
| people grown to realize that the child
of the farmer must be developed scien-
| tifically, his abilities be given that full
play which they can only receive
through the aid of education and sci
ence. So that on the one hand, the
profession itself shall become more and
more attractive to men of brains and in
| telligence, and so that on the other
| hand it shall be recognized, and more,
as being the one profession, the failure
| to develop which in this country would
mean that the development Of all the
rest of the rest of the professions would
count for but little. Our whole civiliza-
ton is going to tend more and more
toward recognizing the capital part
played by the manual worker, the vi
| tai part played by the man who ac-
| tually works with his hands whether
in the workshop or on the farm More
| and more things are going to shape
| themselves so that he shall have the
| fullest recognition. It Is the work of
| the man that works with his hands
that counts in the end for the most,
provided that hand work is directed
by an intelligent brain, and instead OF
striving, which we have so often done
in the past, to divide the work of the
brain from the work of the hands, more
| and more our effort must be to help
the worker as a hand worker, and to
develop his brain to guide his handi-
work so that the most intelligent of