d enduring character. It
seems to me that the following words from one of our broadest minded men
apply with special force to the Negro:

If I had some magic gift to bestow it would be to make our country
youth see one truth, namely, that science as applied to the farm,
the garden and the forest has as splendid a dignity as astronomy;
that it may work just as many marvels and claim just as high an
order of talent."

CHAPTER VII. AGRICULTURAL TRAINING.

There remain to be considered some of the agencies at work to better the
lot of the farmer. In this I shall not attempt to give a list of
institutions and outline of courses but to indicate various lines of
work which seem promising.

In discussing the training of the Negro farmer credit must first be
given to the white planters under whom he has learned so much of what he
knows. Under the changing conditions of agriculture this training, or
the training received on the average farm is not sufficient and must be
supplemented by special training if the desired results are to be
obtained.

It probably lay in the situation that the Negro should get the idea that
education meant freedom from labor. It is none the less unfortunate for
him. To counteract this idea has been a difficult matter and the
influence of the average school has not been of any special help. The
country school taught by a teacher, usually incompetent from any
standpoint, whose interest has been chiefly in the larger salary made
possible by his "higher education" has not been an unmixed blessing. The
children have learned to read and write and have preserved their notion
that if only they could get enough education they might be absolved from
manual labor. Even today Hampton and Tuskegee and similar schools have
to contend with the opposition of parents who think their children
should not be compelled to work, for they are sent to school to enable
them to avoid labor. Quite likely it could not be expected that the
country school should hold up a higher ideal, for here we have to do
with the beginnings of a system of instruction which had to make use of
such material as it could find for teachers. The same excuse does not
suffice to explain the attitude taken by the bulk of schools maintained
by the northern whites for the Negroes. Their inability to comprehend
the needs of the case can only be ascribed to the conception of a Negro
as a white man with a black skin and