The Negro in the South: His Economic Progress in Relation to his Moral and Religious DevelopmentDu Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
History
The Negro in the South: His Economic Progress in Relation to his Moral and Religious Development
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
African Americans -- Southern States
When I began with the man he was working about three days in the week.
The old fellow grew interested and began to work a little longer,
until the last time I rode by that house the old man was working
nearly every day in the week, while they were living in a two-room
house and everything had changed. The hardest task I had was to get
him to put up a chimney for the second room, finally he put up one and
although it was a pretty rickety, crooked affair, yet it answered the
purpose and he felt proud of it. When I left this time he informed me
that by the time I came back he would try to have both of those rooms
whitewashed. I am not through with that family yet. I am going to work
on that woman until through her I will get the old man to work five
and six days out of the week.
It should always be borne in mind that, for any person of any race,
literary education alone increases his want; and, if you increase
these wants without at the same time training the individual in a
manner to enable him to supply these increased wants, you have not
always strengthened his moral and religious basis.
The same principle might be illustrated in connection with South
Africa. In that country there are six millions of Negroes.
Notwithstanding this fact, South Africa suffers to-day perhaps as
never before for lack of labor. The natives have never been educated
by contact with the white man in the same way as has been true of the
American Negro. They have never been educated in the day school nor in
the Sunday-school nor in the church, nor in the industrial school or
college; hence their ambitions have never been awakened, their wants
have not been increased, and they work perhaps two days out of the
week and are in idleness during the remaining portion of the time.
This view of the case I had confirmed in a conversation with a
gentleman who had large interests in South Africa.
How different in the Southern part of the United States where we have
eight millions of black people! Ask any man who has had practical
experience in using the masses of these people as laborers and he will
tell you that in proportion to their progress in the civilization of
the world, it is difficult to find any set of men who will labor in a
more satisfactory way. True, these people have not by any means
reached perfection in this regard, but they have advanced on the whole
much beyond the condition of the South Africans. The trained American
Negro has learned to want the highest and best in our civilization,
and as we go on giving him more education, increasing his industrial
efficiency and his love of labor, he will soon get to the point where
he will work six days out of each week.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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