tween the
white and colored skilled laborers.[4] The white artisans prevailed
upon the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Georgia to enact
measures hostile to their rivals.[5] In 1845 the State of Georgia made
it a misdemeanor for a colored mechanic to make a contract for the
repair or the erection of buildings.[6] The people of Georgia,
however, were not unanimously in favor of keeping the Negro artisan
down. We have already observed that at the request of the Agricultural
Convention of that State in 1852 the legislature all but passed a bill
providing for the education of slaves to increase their efficiency and
attach them to their masters.[7]

[Footnote 1: Buckingham, _Slave States of America_, vol. ii., p. 112.]

[Footnote 2: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, p. 36.]

[Footnote 3: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, pp. 31,
32, 33.]

[Footnote 4: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, p. 34,
and _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 365.]

[Footnote 5: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, pp. 31,
32.]

[Footnote 6: Du Bois and Dill, _The Negro American Artisan_, p. 32.]

[Footnote 7: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 339.]

It was unfortunate that the free people of color in the North had
not taken up vocational training earlier in the century before the
laboring classes realized fraternal consciousness. Once pitted against
the capitalists during the Administration of Andrew Jackson the
working classes learned to think that their interests differed
materially from those of the rich, whose privileges had multiplied at
the expense of the poor. Efforts toward effecting organizations to
secure to labor adequate protection began to be successful during
Van Buren's Administration. At this time some reformers were boldly
demanding the recognition of Negroes by all helpful groups. One of the
tests of the strength of these protagonists was whether or not they
could induce the mechanics of the North to take colored workmen to
supply the skilled laborers required by the then rapid economic
development of our free States. Would the whites permit the blacks
to continue as their competitors after labor had been elevated above
drudgery? To do this meant the continuation of the custom of taking
youths of African blood as apprentices. This the white mechanics of
the North generally refused to do.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Minutes of the Third Ann