Twentieth Century Negro Literature Part 53

Crabb thus distinguishes between business, occupation, employment, engagement, and avocation: "Business occupies all of a person's thoughts, as well as his time and powers; occupation and employment occupy only his time and strength; the first is most regular--it is the object of his choice; the second is causal--it depends on the will of another. Engagement is a partial employment; avocation a particular engagement; an engagement prevents us from doing anything else; an avocation calls off or prevents us from doing what we wish. A person who is busy has much to attend to, and attends to it closely; a person who is occupied has a full share of business without any pressure; he is opposed to one who is idle; a person who is employed has the present moment filled up; he is not in a state of inaction; the person who is engaged is not at liberty to be otherwise employed--his time is not his own--he is opposed to one at leisure."

Business, trade, profession, and art are thus discriminated: "The words are synonymous in the sense of a calling, for the purpose of a livelihood; business is general; business, trade and profession are particular; all trade is business, but all business is not trade.

Buying and selling of merchandise is inseparable from trade; but the exercise of one's knowledge and experience, for the purpose of gain, const.i.tutes a business; when particular skill is required, it is a profession; and when there is a particular exercise of art, it is an art; every shopkeeper and retail dealer carries on a trade; brokers, manufacturers, bankers, and others, carry on a business; clergymen, medical or military men follow a profession; musicians and painters follow an art."

The distinction between business, office, and duty: "Business is what one prescribes to one's self; office is prescribed by another; duty is prescribed or enjoined by a fixed rule of propriety; mercantile concerns are the business which a man takes upon himself; the management of parish concerns is an office imposed upon him, often much against his inclination; the maintenance of his family is a duty which his conscience enjoins upon him to perform. Business and duty are public or private; office is mostly of a public nature; a minister of state, by virtue of office, has always public business to perform; but men in general have only private business to transact; a minister of religion has always public duties to perform in his ministerial capacity; every other man has personal or relative duties which he is called upon to discharge according to his station."--Crabb: Eng.

Synon.

There has been a vast number of theories advanced as regards the solving of the Negro problem. But the idea of business seems to have only a minor place, which, to our mind, should be one of the leading factors. It seems that the race has been educated away from itself. It is not an uncommon thing to see young men who have splendid educational abilities, versed in the languages, with check ap.r.o.ns on, scrubbing marble steps, and doing other menial labor. Their plea is, when questioned along this line, "I cannot get anything else to do."

To what advantage then, has the hard earned money of their parents and friends been expended to educate them? Their fathers did as well as, if not better, than they without it, and cannot this man, with the advantage of education, "turn up something"? There is something radically wrong with the plan of education. The old man could plod over the farm in his antiquated way, and earn money enough to keep things going, and educate his son, but when that son's education has been completed, he has not the ability, or business tact, with modern improvements, to build upon the foundation laid by his less cultured father. Let this cultured boy get down to business. For him, here is the route laid down.

Secretary of Agriculture, Hon. Mr. Wilson, in discussing the productive possibilities of the South and the problem of Negro labor, makes the following observations: "The pressing question is, what is the laborer down South who has been growing cotton, and is not getting enough for his product, to do in the future to enable him to live comfortably, not to speak of the improvement of his condition, education, and all that?"

The cotton crop leaves very little that is valuable for domestic animals after the picking is done, thus differing from the corn crop of the Northwestern states. There is a by-product, the cotton seed, that is exceedingly valuable, and much good work is being done by scientists at experiment stations to show how valuable cotton seed is for feeding purposes.

The nitrogen element in cotton-seed is greater than that of any of the grains; it is richer in nitrogenous matter than peas or beans; richer than gluten, meat or oil cake. The Northern feeder and the European feeder have been using this by-product of the cottonfields with great advantage, while the loss of its fertilizing qualities to the South has been very great.

The South has more marked advantages over the North with regard to production. It has heat and moisture, the two great factors of production, and if the cotton grower is to diversify his crops, he must use those natural advantages. The dairy cow and mutton sheep would succeed admirably in the South, but something for them to eat must be provided first. The winters in the South are mild, gra.s.ses, grains, legumen can be sown in the fall and grow abundantly in the winter, upon which the dairy cow and mutton sheep may thrive and prosper. From one-fifth to one-fourth of all the fat of the milk on the farms of the United States is lost because people do not thoroughly understand when to churn cream. The churning process is an art, having much science underlying it. But the cotton grower of the South only needs to learn the way, while the man who teaches him can understand the science. Much yet remains to be discovered in the art of breeding animals, but enough is known to indicate to the instructor of the colored cotton grower of the South, who is to be diverted into work of this kind, to enable him to breed his herd intelligently. The South can prepare the spring lamb much earlier than the North can. The Southern land owner understands horse raising. There is always a greater demand for saddle horses than is supplied. The world wants carriage and draft horses, and good roadsters. Early spring chickens--the broilers--can be produced down there because of the milder winters, and milder springs than we have, and the Northern market can be supplied. Should the market be over supplied we can send this product abroad in the refrigerating compartments of steams.h.i.+ps.

The colored man is learning the trades at Tuskegee; he is mining coal, and working the manufacture of iron at Birmingham. We quote this gentleman, who is without doubt authority on this special line, and therefore worthy of serious and careful consideration, to support the point we make, that this problem must be worked out along lines, especially along business lines.

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES.

Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines are absolutely ours. The Philippines are said to be as large as the New England States, including New York and New Jersey; Hawaii about the size of New England; Porto Rico the size of Connecticut. Hawaii, with a population of 109,000; Porto Rico, 900,000; Philippines, 8,000,000, and very few whites; a climate in which the Anglo Saxon, it is said, cannot stay for any great length of time. And it is rich in all those thing which are desirable by the white man. These acquisitions must be developed by American genius and capital, and as the white American cannot stay there the year round to develop the same, what better agent to do this work than the Afro-American who has been schooled in American ideas and customs and usages. Is not this an opportunity given by Providence to commence business building? The race should cease pleading to be "The Wards of the Nation;" cease waiting for something to turn up, or have somebody to do something for them, but should unite their forces and turn up something for themselves. The people who own the country, if intelligent and thrifty, will rule and run it. What Coleman has done in North Carolina in a business way, could be done in a majority of the states to a greater or less extent. Small factories could be arranged for, where our people could be employed in producing the commodities of life. Some time ago it was said that a large tract of land had been arranged for, backed by a number of Tammany Hall capitalists; factories were to be built to give employment to the settlers, deeds for lots were to be given at a nominal cost. The project was opposed by some of our so-called leaders, because it was backed by Tammany; but it is the very thing needed, no matter who backs it up; it is the business men who run the country; it is they who put the millions to work and keep the mighty dollar in circulation; we must enter the business world and by pluck, tact and thrift, live while we are living, and die when we cannot do otherwise.

The man who thanks Almighty G.o.d when the news of disaster comes from land or sea that no loss comes to him is not so wise in the sight of G.o.d, or man, as he who can thank G.o.d that the interest on accrued stock had advanced an hundred fold before the crash came.

TOPIC XXVI.

THE NEGRO AS A FARMER

BY PROF. GEORGE W. CARVER.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Prof. Geo. W. Carver, M. Ag.]

PROF. GEORGE W. CARVER, M. AG.

A few years ago there was graduated at the Iowa Agricultural College a young colored man of unusual promise. His name was G. W. Carver, and his specialty the care and production of plants. Not long after graduation he was engaged by Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton as a teacher and a.s.sistant in his famous industrial school, and to-day the young man is Mr.

Was.h.i.+ngton's most trusted adviser, while his reputation has gone abroad as a scientist and an original investigator of no mean order.

Born during the period of the Civil War, he was separated from his parents when but six weeks old, they having been sold to some distant slaveholders. The infant was puny and ailing, and his master regarded him as worthless. A family named Carver took the babe and his brother, a little older.

It was with them the child had a home for nine years. About that time the little black boy developed a remarkable love for plants, and so much knowledge of their structure and life, that he was given the name of "the plant doctor." Mr.

and Mrs. Carver were proud of the boy's talents and made much of him, and it was their evident satisfaction in him that aroused the jealousy of their own children, who at last drove the two colored boys away from home. Northward they turned their faces, to the land where white and black have equal chances in life, as they fondly believed. The little "plant doctor," who had picked up the elements of an education, wanted, above all else, to enter some good school. The boys were driven from pillar to post, but, being devotedly attached to each other they held together, until in Kansas they thought best to separate.

During these years, young Carver had tried many kinds of work. At length he found himself at Winterset, Iowa. It was there the wife of a physician encouraged him to go to Indianola where she thought he could enter college and earn his way by doing laundry work. He went there, but didn't get the work, and it was while there that a young lady, a well known Iowa artist, became interested in him. Under the pretext of securing his help in correcting some drawings, she went to the mean quarters he occupied and found him starving to death. There was no work for him, no money. For weeks, he had subsisted upon corn bread and tallow. She then arranged for him to go to the Iowa Agricultural College, where she had influential friends and where she believed he would have a chance.

But, even at the Agricultural College of Iowa the color line was sharply drawn by the students. Persecution and ill-treatment were resorted to. But young Carver said, "I will bear it. I must get an education. Here I can get work and I will suffer anything rather than give up the one chance of my life to obtain a schooling." His old and intimate knowledge of plants stood him in hand, and he was given charge of the greenhouses. True, he was shunned by many, his place at table was with the servants, but he had warm friends and he was, by force of character, winning the good will of all. One day an Indianola lady, who had come to know him before he left that place, went to visit him at his college. Dressed in her best, she accompanied him, though against his protestation, to dinner, taking a seat at the servants' table.

The next time this lady visited the college the colored student sat at the table with the faculty. In the military drill he had taken the highest honors. When he was graduated it was with distinction. He wrote the cla.s.s poem. He had succeeded in winning and holding friends.

Some time ago he spent several weeks in Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., and there the most kindly attention was extended to him by Secretary Wilson, who never fails to recognize merit wherever he may find it.

The name of G. W. Carver is now enrolled on the fellows.h.i.+p list of more than one scientific Inst.i.tution.

The above subject is by no means an easy one to discuss, as reliable data are fragmentary and widely scattered; yet I am sure that I have been able to collect some interesting and valuable facts and figures bearing upon this important question. There is no doubt that the Negro as a tenant farmer is a failure; this we are forced to admit, but we do so with a justly proud feeling that it is not an inherent race characteristic, but the result of conditions over which we had little or no control. Failure is inevitably and indelibly stamped in the foreheads of any cla.s.s of average tenant farmers, regardless of race or color.

In American agriculture the Negro has always held, and is yet holding, an important place; in fact, far more, as a rule, than has been accredited to him. Lest our judgment be too harsh in this particular, I have thought it wise to briefly scan the beginning and development of agriculture in the United States. In 1492 the first settlers found the Indians carrying on agriculture in a crude and limited way, by the women; their farm machinery consisting of their fingers, a pointed stick for planting, and the bones of animals and the sh.e.l.l of the clam for a hoe; with nothing more than a squatter's right as a voucher for the owners.h.i.+p of their farms. Prof. McMaster's History of the People of the United States, George K. Holmes, a.s.sistant statistician of the United States Department of Agriculture, in his "Progress of Agriculture in the United States," and other high authorities, tell us that the white man came, poor in the materials of wealth, a stranger in a strange land with a strange climate. His tools were but little, if any, improvement on those of the Indians, and agriculture as we know it to-day was an idealistic dream. The plow was an exceedingly crude thing and but little used, the hoe forming the princ.i.p.al implement of industry. After a piece of land had been continuously "cropped" until worn out, it was abandoned, or the cows turned upon it for a while. It is further said that the poor whites, who had formerly been indentured servants, were the most lazy, the most idle, the most s.h.i.+ftless and the most worthless of men. Their huts were scarcely better than Negro cabins, the chimneys were of logs, the c.h.i.n.ks being filled with clay. The walls had no plaster, the windows had no gla.s.s, and the furniture was such as they themselves made.

The grain was threshed by driving horses over it in the open field.

When they ground it they used a rude pestle and mortar, or placed it in the hollow of one stone and beat it with another. Beef or pork, generally salted, salt fish, dried apples, bread made of rye or Indian meal, milk, and a very limited variety of vegetables, const.i.tuted the food throughout the year. When night came on his light was derived from a few candles of home manufacture. The farmer and his family wore homespun. If linen was wanted, the flax was sown and weeded, pulled and retted, then broken and swingled, for all of which processes nearly a year was required before the flax was ready for the spinners, bleaching on the gra.s.s, and making and wearing. If woolens were wanted, sheep were sheared and the wool was dyed and spun and woven at home.

It was almost invariably true of all the settlers that the use and value of manures was little regarded. The barn was sometimes removed to get it out of the way of heaps of manure, because the owner would not go to the expense of removing the acc.u.mulations and putting them upon his fields. Such were the dreary conditions of the farmer's life in colonial days, living all the time very closely upon the margin of subsistence. Those conditions continued for some time after the Republic had been established, and were not measurably ameliorated until the present century had well advanced, until an improved intelligence--the dissemination of information, and the work of the inventor, had begun to take effect.

From the above we see how strikingly similar were the life, methods of agriculture, and the results obtained from the st.u.r.dy New Englander, who represented the best blood, bone and sinew of the old world, with its almost prehistoric civilization, to that of the American Negro, whose intellectual star is just beginning to rise above the horizon.

Over two centuries and a half ago the Negro found his way as a slave to America, in a little Dutch trading vessel, cheap labor being the chief motive which prompted such a gigantic scheme. The experiment flourished and grew, and at about the close of the eighteenth century six million slaves had been brought to this country. The major part of all the cotton, corn, cane, potatoes, tobacco, and other agricultural products, were planted, cultivated, harvested and prepared for, and, not infrequently, marketed by, the slaves. In fact, they were the agricultural backbone of the South. Since cotton forms the largest, and has been the most important agricultural product in the South, I think a hundred and nine years of its production will prove interesting and valuable: In 1791, 8,889 bales were produced, and the second cotton mill built at Providence, Rhode Island! the first one being built at Beverly, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1787. From this time on the acreage planted, the output and the number of cotton mills and spindles increased. The estimated area planted in cotton alone in 1852, 6,300,000 acres, and the census report of 1860 showed 1,262 cotton mills and 5,235,727 spindles in the United States, with an output of 4,861,292 bales. Despite the depressing effect of the four years of civil strife, it took only five years to almost completely regain the highest point reached in previous years. In 1889 and 1890 we find in the United States 19,569,000 acres planted, giving an output of 7,311,322 bales, with 905 cotton mills operating 14,088,103 spindles. In 1898-99 the acreage increases to nearly 25,000,000, with an output of 11,189,205 bales, representing a money value of $305,467,041. Such is the history, production and growth of the cotton industry in the United States, and were we to trace the other staple products we would find them none the less interesting, since they were produced largely by Negroes as slaves before the war, and as freedmen after the war. This applies especially to Southern products.

Whatever of truth there is in Mr. Van de Graff's grave apprehensions for the Negro, he with us must admit that the ills of the black tenant farmer are simply the ills of the Southern farmer in a more or less aggravated form. It is also true that the curse of such a system falls the heaviest on the smallest and most ignorant tenant farmer, who is the least capable of self-defense. For years we have been content to let the preachers preach, the lawyers argue, the philosophers predict, the teachers and the doctors practice with scarcely a question as to our priority of right. We have, in the face of the many oppositions which come to every race similarly situated, labored with endurance, patience and forbearance, until the birth of the twentieth century dawns upon us, steadily marching on, with something over $263,000,000 worth of unenc.u.mbered property to our credit. Now as to the number owning farms and following agricultural pursuits as a livelihood, we are pleased to submit some figures from the last census report, from Crogman, in his "Progress of a Race," and from other authorities.

Beginning with the little District of Columbia, with an aggregate area of 8,489 acres and 269 farms, there are seventeen Negro farmers, five of which own their land in whole or in part. Their farms contain 29 acres, of which 25 are improved. The total value of the land is $23,300, and the appurtenant buildings are worth $390; live stock to the value of $489; and farm incomes for 1899 amounting to $4,244. Ten farms, aggregating 258 acres, are operated by Negroes as cash tenants.

The reported values are, land, $114,600; buildings, $9,200; implements and machinery, $1,200; and live stock, $1,383. The total incomes for these farms in 1899 were $10,300. Two farms, together consisting of 21 acres, valued at $149,630, are operated by Negroes as salaried managers. Of the 17 farms operated by Negroes, only 1 contains less than three acres; 7 contain from 3 to 9 acres; 5 from 10 to 19 acres; 2 from 20 to 49 acres; and 2 from 50 to 99 acres, giving an average size for all of 18.1 acres.

In the state of Delaware the farms const.i.tute 85 per cent of the total land surface of the state, which is divided up into 9,687 farms, of which 8,869, or 91.6 per cent, are operated by whites, and 818, or 8.4 per cent, by Negroes. Of the latter cla.s.s 297 are operated by owners, and 35 by part owners. The value of their farms, including implements, machinery and live stock, together with the value of implements, machinery and live stock on the farms which other Negroes operate as tenants, is $495,187.

In Arizona we find that three Negro farmers operate their farms as salaried managers. Twelve own farms containing 1,511 acres, with farm property valued at $60,422; one leases a 39-acre farm for cash, and has implements and live stock worth $130. The total investment by Negroes in agriculture, exclusive of farms owned by them and leased to others, is, therefore, $60,552, which is a rather encouraging showing for Arizona.

Messrs. Walker and Fitch, graduates of Hampton Inst.i.tute, in 1896, made a careful canva.s.s of one congressional district in Virginia, and found as follows: Out of a total acreage of 1,944,359 acres, one fifteenth, or 125,597 acres, is owned by the Colored people, roughly estimated at $1,000,000. These figures mean farm owning chiefly, as $79,611 represent the total city property. They also report that in Gloucester county, 25 years from the above date, the Colored people owned less than 100 acres of land. To-day they own 13,000 acres of land free from any enc.u.mbrance. Mr. Fitch further adds that he has traveled quite thoroughly through more than ten counties of Virginia, with horse and buggy, during the present year (1896), and that in no county through which he traveled did the Colored people own less than 5,000 acres of land. He found also that much of the improved farming was being done by Colored men, and that the strong public sentiment against moving to cities was having the desired effect.

Again, the statistician reports, in 1890, 12,690,152 homes and farms in the United States, and of this number the Negroes own 234,747 free from all enc.u.mbrance, and 29,541 mortgaged; giving the percentage of mortgaged property owned by Negroes as 10.71, while the whole percentage of mortgaged property for the whole country is 38.97. It is further stated that of all the property held by Negroes, 88.58 per cent is owned without enc.u.mbrance. Since so much has been accomplished in the Negro's pioneer days of freedom, may we not predict with a considerable degree of a.s.surance that the next decade and a half will far exceed our most sanguine hope? The virgin fertility of our soils, and the vast amount of cheap and unskilled labor, have been a curse rather than a blessing to agriculture. This exhaustive system of cultivation, the destruction of forests, the rapid and almost constant decomposition of organic matter, together with the great multiplicity of insect and fungus diseases that appear every year, make the Southern agricultural problem one requiring more brains than that of the North, East or West. The advance of civilization has brought, and is constantly bringing, about a more healthy form of compet.i.tion. The markets are becoming more fastidious, and he who puts such a product upon the market as it demands, controls that market, regardless of color. It is simply a survival of the fittest.

We are also aware that the demands upon agriculture were never so exacting as they are now. All other trades and professions are holding out their inducements to the young men and women who are ready and willing to grapple with life's responsibilities. One says, "Come and I will make you a Gould." Another, a Rockefeller; still another, an Astor--with all the luxuries their names suggest. Too many of our own farmers illy prepare their land, cultivate, harvest and market the scanty and inferior crop, selling the same for less than it cost to produce it. I need not tell you that the above conditions imperatively suggest the proverbial mule, implements more or less primitive, with frequently a vast territory of barren and furrowed hillsides and wasted valleys. Instead of the veritable Klond.y.k.e, of which their dreams are made sweet, another mortgage has been added as an unpleasant reminder of the year's hard labor. With this inevitable doom staring them in the face, is it any wonder that so many of the youth of our land flock to the cities with the hope of seeking some occupation other than farming? The above conditions, together with the seemingly higher civilization of the city folk, I claim, are largely responsible for this. But be this as it may, in the light of what has been accomplished, I see for us a very bright star of hope in the education of two-thirds of the brightest and best of our youth in scientific agriculture.

The many excellent schools, colleges, nature study leaflets, farmers'

bulletins and reading courses, conferences, convocations, congresses, fairs, and the like, are all powerful educational factors designed to lead the race into higher agricultural activities. The agricultural schools, and higher inst.i.tutions of that character, are wisely laying much stress upon stock raising, dairying, horticulture, landscape gardening, poultry raising, and every manipulation incident to the successful operation of this great industry. These subjects have been taught almost wholly to young men, but recent experience has taught, not only in this, but in other countries, that many of these studies seem especially suited to women; and many are taking the advantages offered by schools in the matter of learning the technique of poultry raising, dairying, horticulture, landscape gardening, and the related sciences, along with their academy or college work, and as a reward are finding pleasant, profitable and healthful employment. Nature study, with the first principles of agriculture, is compulsory in many of the primary schools, and ere another decade is indelibly placed upon the historical records of the greatest events of the greatest century, it will find us wonderfully in advance in this particular.

Every year we see a perceptible increase in the funds for public education, and magnificent schools and colleges, with better paid professors, springing up here and there, stand out as beacon lights to this new and wonderful epoch. The wisdom of spending these ever-increasing millions upon the youth of our land becomes from year to year a matter of less concern as we seek to give our boys and girls a broader education than that of a pure scientist. It is very encouraging to note the course taken by our young men and women who have gone out from those inst.i.tutions--the way they have acquired land, built homes, and are devoting their entire time and talent in that direction. I have no fears but what we, in the course of time, will do our part both n.o.bly and well in the matter of feeding a hungry world.

SECOND PAPER.

THE NEGRO AS A FARMER.

BY H. A. HUNT.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Prof. H. A. Hunt]

PROF. HENRY A. HUNT.

Henry A. Hunt was born in Hanc.o.c.k County, Ga., in 1866. He attended the public schools of Sparta, the county seat, until 1882, when he entered Atlanta University and was graduated from the college course in 1890. He also completed the course of instruction given in the Industrial Department of that university. He kept up his expenses, in a measure, by working as a carpenter during his vacations and during his spare hours while in school. He was considered a most promising young man and a thorough scholar by his professors and schoolmates. He became a professing Christian while pursuing his college course. In all of the athletic sports of the university he took an active part and served as captain of the base ball team for several years. He graduated with the highest honors of his cla.s.s. Through a most flattering recommendation from the Superintendent of the Public Schools of Atlanta, Ga., he was called, in 1891, to the princ.i.p.als.h.i.+p of the Charlotte Graded School, which position he filled acceptably, until he resigned, during the same year, to accept the superintendency of the Industrial Department of Biddle University, Charlotte. N. C. In 1896 he was given, in addition to his industrial work, the superintendency of the Boarding Department of Biddle University. These two positions he is now filling in a most acceptable manner. Mr. Hunt's work and close touch with the young men of the university have been most gratifying. He encourages and takes part with them in all of their sports, being the leading spirit in their athletic a.s.sociation. He is a n.o.ble example of the manly man and his influence over the students for straightforward and manly endeavor has been truly helpful. The respect and esteem in which he is held by the graduates and undergraduates are most noteworthy. In August, 1900, Mr. Hunt called together the farmers of Mecklenburg and surrounding counties for the purpose of holding a farmers' conference. A permanent organization was effected, of which he was made president. The influence of these annual conferences is far-reaching and will no doubt result in great good to the farming cla.s.s of western North Carolina. He was for several years the president of the Queen City Real Estate Company of Charlotte, N. C., an organization designed to help those wis.h.i.+ng to obtain homes.