"When the attention of philanthropists was first directed to the ignorant condition of the freedmen in the South, in nine cases out of ten the practical effort to do something for their improvement was controlled by clergymen, and was largely influenced by sentimental considerations. The chief object seemed to be to grow a great crop of negro preachers, lawyers and doctors. The result was so disheartening that, fifteen years after the war was over, there were grave doubts whether the coloured race in the South was not lapsing into a barbarism worse than that of slavery. Fortunately, among those educators and philanthropists there was at least one sane man, the late General S. C. Armstrong, of Hampton. His main idea was to train workmen and teachers. Mr Washington was one of these teachers. Of him and his work General Armstrong, shortly before his death, said:--'It is, I think, the noblest and grandest work by any coloured man in the land. What compares with it in general value and power for good? It is on the Hampton plan, combining labour and study, commands high respect from both races, flies no denominational flag, but is earnestly and thoroughly Christian, is out of debt, well managed and organised.'" Concerning the opinions, the aims and aspirations of General Armstrong's disciple, the same friend says:-- "Mr Booker T. Washington had become persuaded that most of the efforts at training his people in purely academic directions were almost entirely thrown away. He held that the time was not ripe, and his people were not prepared for the higher scholastic training of which the Greek and Latin classics are the basis, but that they needed to be taught how to work to advantage in the trades and handicrafts, how to be better farmers, how to be more thrifty in their lives, and, most of all, how to resist the money-lender's inducements to mortgage their crops before they were made. It was with these great ideas that he began his work at Tuskegee."