Читать книгу Working With the Hands. Being a Sequel to "Up from Slavery," Covering the Author's Experiences in Industrial Training at Tuskegee онлайн

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In recent years I have received most urgent appeals from both Hayti and Santo Domingo for advice and assistance in the direction of educating industrial and scientific leaders. The best friends of Hayti and Santo Domingo now realise that tremendous mistakes have been made. They see that if the people had been taught in the beginning of their freedom that all forms of idleness were disgraceful and that all forms of labour, whether with the head or with the hand, were honourable, the country to-day would not be in such stress of poverty. They would have fewer revolutions, because the people would have industries to occupy their time, their thoughts, and their energies. I ought to add that, in such deficiencies as these, Hayti is perhaps not worse off than some South American republics which have made the same mistakes.

The situation in these countries which have overlooked the value of industrial training remind me of a story told by the late Henry W. Grady about a country funeral in Georgia. The grave was dug in the midst of a pine forest, but the pine coffin that held the body was brought from Cincinnati. Hickory and other hard woods grew in abundance nearby, but the wagon on which the coffin was drawn came from South Bend, Indiana, and the mule that drew the wagon came from Missouri. Valuable minerals were close to the cemetery, but the shovels and picks used in digging the grave came from Pittsburg, and their handles from Baltimore. The shoes in which the dead man was buried came from Lynn, Massachusetts, his coat and trousers from New York, his shirt from Lowell, Massachusetts, and his collar and tie from Philadelphia. The only things supplied by the county, with its wealth of natural resources, was the corpse and the hole in the ground, and Mr. Grady added that the county probably would have imported both of these if it could have done so.