The systematic instruction of the colored race in the village industries is inseparably connected with the administration of the John F. Slater fund. It was not particularly Mr. Slater who caused the fund to be used to foster trade teaching, but his trustees; for the "general object" of his deed of gift, "to be exclusively pursued," was the uplifting of the lately emancipated population of the Southern States and their posterity by conferring upon them the blessings of a Christian educationeducation in which the instruction of the mind in the common branches of secular learning shall be associated with training in just notions of duty toward God and man in the light of the Holy Scripture. Though the methods of accomplishing this was left to the discretion of the trustees, Mr. Slater strongly indicated that in his opinion the training of teachers was the method to be adopted. In a private conversation with Dr. Haygood, however, he put industrial training as the sixth (and last) object to be taken into consideration in the use of the interest of the fund known by his name. It should be remarked, however, that the trustees may have been influenced in the concentration of the fund upon industrial training by the fact that the Peabody fund had for some years been steadily concentrating its resources on the training of teachers, and the States were making provision to supply their colored schools with properly qualified persons. Be this as it may, the trustees of the fund early determined to confine its aid to such schools as were best fitted to prepare young colored men and women to become useful to their race, and that institutions which gave instruction in trades and other manual occupations that would enable colored youths to make a living and to become useful citizens be carefully sought out and preferred. This policy was continued ten years. At the date of 1883 the highest example of industrial or trade teaching of the negro was Hampton Normal and Industrial School. Only a few of the higher grade schools for colored youth had attempted to teach trades. Many of the most experienced persons in the field were not convinced that it was wise to attempt it; others advocated it. The rudimentary character of this instruction may be inferred from the first reports to the agent of the fund, Dr. Haygood. Clark University reports, "Without the aid of the Slater fund ($2,000) we could have done little in the industrial department, as it required $1,100 to equip it, and our printing department would have failed entirely." Tuskegee Normal School reports, "For the impetus given to the industrial department the school is chiefly indebted to the John F. Slater fund." Claflin University remarks, "As soon as we received notice of the appropriation of $2,000 from the Slater fund arrangements were made to erect a suitable carpenter shop." And so on, to a large extent, with a score of institutions aided by the fund. Yet these institutions had been carefully sought out as the best for being aided in this matter of trade instruction. It is beyond a doubt that the efficient cause of the impetus for industrial education of the negro was given by the management of the Slater fund and the enthusiasm of their late agent, now Bishop Haygood. On the retirement of Dr. Haygood the plan of the distribution of the Slater fund was somewhat changed. The trustees created a board of education, of which Dr. Curry, the agent of the Peabody fund, was made chairman. The new plan of operation advocated neither the teaching of trades nor the support of institutions not on a "permanent basis." Instead of the teaching of this or that trade the teaching of the "underlying principles of all trades" and the employment of persons expert in imparting such instruction was to be kept in view; and the schools are already beginning to follow the hint thus given. The act of Congress of August 30, 1890, for the benefit of schools established for the advancement of education in agriculture and the mechanic arts, very likely has had, or will have, the effect to foster this idea of preventing the petrifaction of the negro into a village mechanic or farm laborer while directing his thoughts and impulses toward industrial rather than political spheres of activity. As the State and the Peabody fund may be looked to to promote the training of teachers, the Slater fund and the $10,000 or $12,000 annually given to the States thickly populated with negroes, for their industrial education, may be looked to to supply men capable of conducting an industrial business. It has been through the avenues of trade that an inferior people rise to a higher condition. Trade brings wealth, wealth leisure, and leisure the opportunity, if not the desire, for culture. As taught in the schools for the colored race about the year 1893, the industrial instruction had the following forms, to wit: The manual training or education by work idea; trade teaching of the mechanic trades; agriculture; printing; and, for girls, housework, including sewing and nurse training. At Tougaloo University, in accordance with the general plan of the Slater fund, a change was recently made in the form of the industrial work, especial attention being given to manual training with a view to the general culture of mind and hand. This change consisted in the establishment of a two-years course of woodwork of an hour to an hour and a half a day for the seventh and eighth grades, covering the processes and principles of working in wood and with woodworking tools. The exercises are graded, running from the simple to the more difficult, the aim being to adapt them to the mental capacity of the student as well as to his dexterity, and to make them a helpful part of his school work. Each student has a blue print of his work before him. A course in woodwork adapted to the fifth and sixth grades, and a course in ironwork for the ninth grade, is to follow it, while for the tenth and eleventh grades a course of mechanical drawing is to be provided. Straight University also has felt the Slater impetus toward a more concentrated method of manual instruction, and has likewise established a two-years course in woodwork for the seventh and eighth grades, with the same features of the course at Tougaloo University. In fact, the course as explained by Tougaloo and worked out in the following programme may be considered as the Slater course of manual training: Seventh grade (limited to square work).-Planing to a true surface; laying out work (including measuring with the rule and marking with knife and gauge); sawing to the line; boring; gluing; driving nails and screws; sandpapering; making box joint, dado, mortise, tenon, and groove. Eighth grade (especially bended or curved work).-Making miter joint (square, octagon, and hexagon); regular and irregular bevels (using steel square); scarf joint, dovetail; laying out curved work; planing and chiseling curved surfaces; sawing curved lines; bending by sawing and steaming; making round forms. At Fisk University, after the manual training course of two years has been completed the "principles" inculcated are applied during a third year in building and cabinetmaking, while during both the second and third years the nature and use of paints, varnishes, stains, and polishes are taught. In addition to the aid from the Slater fund aid was also received from the Daniel Hand fund in establishing this "new line" of work. It will be seen that the remunerative or practical feature has not been disregarded at this university. At several institutions supported in part by the proceeds from the sale of public lands belonging to the United States and at the comparatively well endowed Atlanta University quite ambitious efforts are being made to inaugurate a system of practical technological instruction much above the average for colored schools. Indeed, at Central Tennessee College there is a course of study in mechanical engineering of four years, though no one has availed himself of it. But the form of manual training that has been in vogue in the independent or isolated schools for the negro in the past has been of quite another form. The institutions giving this instruction drew their aid from the revenues provided by generous persons interested in the welfare of the negro, and as their attendance increased quite frequently their classes in carpentry and in bricklaying, and in agriculture were utilized in building new and in enlarging or repairing old structures, or in working the fields for garden produce. Sometimes the blacksmithing and wheel wrighting of the neighborhood was done; but in general it may be said that the work of the trade classes had a double object in view-instruction of the pupils, and the enlargement or repair of the institution or the cultivation of its grounds. Not that the object of the institution was at all mercenary, but because that was about the only way in which any remuneration could be gotten by the institution out of the labor of its students; if not in this way, then failure. This species of manual instruction is of varied nature: Carpentry, bricklaying and brickmaking, blacksmithing, painting, and printing for men; cooking, dressmaking, and in general housewifery for women. It is doubtful if a better illustration of this object, and methods of the institution giving this character of instruction, can be found than the following aunouncement: INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENTS. The industrial work is carried on in connection with a four years' course of academic work designed to give a thorough English education. With these objects are kept in view, viz: (1) To teach the dignity of labor. (2) To teach the students how to work, giving them a trade when thought best. (3) To enable students to pay a portion of their expenses in labor. At present the most developed of the industries are: Agriculture. This department controls two farms of 680 and 800 acres, respectively. The funds at command will not allow much outlay in new experimental farming. The special effort, therefore, is to give the students lessons in common, practical farming. The farms not only furnish an object lesson and valuable employment to students, but supply largely the demands of the school. Brickmaking.-On the farm have been found extensive beds of clay suitable for making bricks. From these beds the school has been able to make bricks enough to build five substantial buildings for school uses, and to sell many to neighbors. The bricks are made and laid by students, thus reducing the cash outlay for buildings to the minimum. Carpentry. The students are taught to do all kinds of work, such as building cottages, fences, repairing buildings, making and repairing furniture, etc. Of the many buildings on the grounds, most of the work has been done by boys of this department. Painting.-Painting of buggies and graining are emphasized. House painting is regularly done. Many buggies and carts for the town and country are brought in and painted. Printing. In this office are printed the catalogues, "Southern Letter," "Student," and much job work for the school and the surrounding country. Blacksmithing and wheelwrighting.-These departments do all the work for the school and farm, and much for the town and country. Tinsmithing, shoemaking, and harness making.-Harness work for the neighborhood, as well as for the school farm, is done. The students' shoes are repaired and all the roofing of the institution is done. Sawmill.-One of the most useful of the industrial occupations is that in connection with the sawmill. A large part of the farm is covered with pine forest. Wages. The rate of wages is according to the age of the student and the real value of his work. The arrangements are such that students lose nothing in their classes by working out a part of their expenses. At the end of each month a bill is given to every student showing what he may owe the school or what the school may owe him. A very favorable statement of the condition of trade teaching is given by Howard University. There the industrial department occupies an entire building, 40 by 75 feet, of two stories and basement, and the students in the preparatory and normal departments practice in the methods of certain trades at specified hours. The work in each department is done under the personal direction of a skilled workman, and with the advantage of first-class tools. Before leaving the subject of trade teaching in the isolated schools for the colored race it is necessary that certain remarks of Dr. Haygood, in his last report (1891) to the trustees of the Slater fund, should be reproduced. They are as follows: "If there had been no Slater fund, much by this time would have been done in industrial education in these schools; but every informed person knows that the help and encouragement of this great benevolence has furnished the inspiration and driving force of this vital movement. But for the friendship won to some of these schools through the industries fostered by the Slater money they would, by this time, have ceased to be. 冬 For every dollar given by the Slater fund not only another dollar has come to help it but more than a dollar.”1 The large farms usually attached to the institutions for the colored race, the industrial habitudes of that race, and the terms of the act of August 30, 1890, have invited or compelled attention to agricultural operations. The difficulties attending the introduction of this study in schools for the whites were greater than in the case of the schools for the colored; indeed the training given by the agricultural courses of the schools for colored persons has been much more adapted to making laborers than scientific agriculturists. For colored girls the usual manual training given to white girls is quite appropriate. Cooking and dressmaking are particularly well adapted as studies to those who very frequently make their living as servants or seamstresses. Quite an effort is being made to introduce nurse training and in several institutions courses have been established, as at Central Tennessee College where arrangements have been made for a course consisting of two parts, one, nonprofessional, of two years, and one, professional, running through a third year. THE TEACHING FORCE, The biographies of the teachers in the institutions for the education of the colored race would be a detailed history of the struggle for the instruction of that race. It has never happened in the history of education that so many difficulties had to be overcome as in the case of carrying the war for education into Africa, and it was natural, perhaps necessary, that enthusiasm should ripen into devotion, and even fortify itself in fanaticism. But the personal trials and victories of the past and present can not be recounted here; they must be looked for in Dr. Barnard's report on education in the District of Columbia, in General Armstrong's Twenty Years of Work at Hampton, and in other works of a similar nature. After the lapse of a quarter of a century, it is natural to suppose that much of the teaching done in schools for the colored race should be by persons from among themselves. The figures from 76 institutions justify such an expectation, for they show that of the 1,010 teachers in them one-third (373) are colored men and women. Still confining attention to the institutions for the education of the colored race, it appears that, though the white men teachers (225) are equal in number to the colored men teachers (221), the white women teachers (412) are very nearly as many as both white and colored men teachers, while for every colored woman teacher there are 3 white women teachers. Comparison with the relative proportion of each sex in the public schools can not be made, as the statistics are not obtainable, but it may be stated as a fact that in cities the colored schools are almost always taught by women, and in the open country by men. 1Amount and distribution of the ɛums disbursed from the Slater fund from 1883 to 1892, inclusive. 1883. 1884. 1885. 1886. 1887. 1888. 1889. 1890. 1891. 1892. $2,100 $2, 450 $5,000 $3,800 $4,400 $4, 600 $3, 600 $3,600 $4,900 $4,700 Alabama Florida Georgia Kentucky Mississippi. North Carolina. 2,000 500 6, 814 5, 100 6, 200 6,850 700 4,400 3,600 700 700 5,300 6,500 6,500 Texas 600 600 600 900 1,360 2,000 3,000 3, 650 1,500 600 Special. 550 450 450 Total 16, 250 17, 107 36, 764 30,000 40,000 45,000 44, 310 42, 210 49, 650 45, 217 The education of these teachers has been accomplished in the various normal schools, academies, colleges, and universities spoken of some pages back. The country schools are incapable of giving an education that will at all qualify the pupil for the position of a teacher of even a colored school, and unless there be a high school in the city having a quasi system of schools for their colored population the urban public school is also incapable of accomplishing the same fact. The strenuous efforts now being made to improve the character of the white teaching corps by uniform examinations will probably result in securing a higher grade of teachers for the schools for the rural districts, in which the negro population is mostly situated, and better supervision will result in more thorough teaching and more businesslike management. There are three great funds, aggregating $4,000,000, the interest of which may be used in promoting the education of persons to fill positions as public-school teachers in the Southern States. Two of these funds are specifically for the colored race and the other is for the people of the whole South. In addition to these, there is the fund arising from the sale of lands given by Congress in 1862, which generally reaches the normal schools for colored pupils in the form of a State appropriation, and finally there is the quota, fixed by Federal law, drawn from the $25,000 annually appropriated to each State by the act of Congress of August 30, 1890, which has so far gone to help the resources of the State normal schools for colored children which are thus compelled to add an industrial feature to their establishment. But most important of all, since it is extensible and therefore may be made commensurate with the necessities of the situation, is an appropriation from the State treasury, a resource which has been very effectively used in the North and West, and is by no means unknown in the South. PROFESSIONAL TRAINING. The dignity and the presumptive emoluments of the professions of law and medicine and the sacredness and the social influence of the minister's calling have naturally excited a desire in many colored persons to engage in a course of study leading to one of the so-called learned professions. The difficulty experienced in America by the schools for instruction in the learned professions is intensified in the case of those for the colored citizen, for very few of their students are scholastically prepared to follow the study they have chosen. This subject, however, is so well worn in the case of the schools for the whites that it would be intolerable to have its intricacies unfolded in connection with a few schools for training the men who are to deal with the life, the property, and the morals of an inferior race that has been forced rather than self-evolved to a plane of theoretic highest civil standing. In the late slaveholding States there are five schools for the medical education of persons of color. At one of these-that at Washington--some white persons attend, while at the Northern schools for the Caucasian race a number of colored persons are enrolled. Three institutions are very prominent in the training of physicians for the colored people. These are the Meharry medical department of Central Tennessee College, Howard University medical department, and the Leonard medical department of Shaw University. The Meharry medical department was organized in 1876-1879, through the generosity of the Messrs. Meharry, of Indiana. At that time there was no institution south of the Ohio and the Potomac accessible to the colored race. The Leonard Medical School was established in 1881-82 upon a site given by the State of North Carolina. Both of these Southern institutions have received very substantial aid from the John F. Slater fund. The medical department of Howard University was the first medical school for colored students. It is supported partly by the funds of the university and partly by tuition fees, which are increased by the attendance of white persons who are attracted by the low annual charge for tuition and the excellent instruction and facilities for instruction provided. At Fisk University "it is |