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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When any people, regardless of race or geographical location, have not been trained to habits of industry, have not been given skill of hand in youth, and taught to love labour, a direct result is the breeding of a worthless idle class, which spends a great deal of its time in trying to live by its wits. If a community has been educated exclusively on books and has not been trained in habits of applied industry, an unwholesome tendency to dodge honest productive labour is likely to develop. As in the case of Hayti, the people acquire a fatal fondness for wasting valuable hours in discussing politics and conspiring to overthrow the government. I have noted, too, that when the people of a community have not been taught to work intelligently with their hands, or have not learned habits of thrift and industry, they are likely to be fretting continually for fear that no one will be left to earn a living for them.

There are few more dismal and discouraging sights than the men of a community absorbed in idle gossip and political discussion. I have seen more than a dozen white men in one small town take their seats under a tree or on the shady side of the street as early as eight o'clock in the morning and talk politics until noon. Then they would go home for dinner, and return at one o'clock to spend the remainder of the day threshing out the same threadbare topics. Their greatest exertion during the whole long day would be in moving from the sunny side of the street or tree to the shady side and back again. A curious trait of such parasites is that they are always wondering why "times are hard," and why there is so little money in circulation in their communities.