ated on this basis, still
retains the seal of "Learning and Labor," with a college building in
the foreground and a field of grain in the distance. A number of our
institutions have recitations now in the forenoon that students may
devote the afternoon to labor. In some schools Monday instead of
Saturday is the open day of the week because this was wash-day for the
manual labor colleges. Even after the Civil War some schools had their
long vacation in the winter instead of the summer because the latter
was the time for manual labor. The people of our day know little about
this unsuccessful system.

It is evident, therefore, that the leaders who had up to that time
dictated the policy of the social betterment of the colored people had
failed to find the key to the situation. This task fell to the lot
of Frederick Douglass, who, wiser in his generation than most of his
contemporaries, advocated actual vocational training as the greatest
leverage for the elevation of the colored people. Douglass was given
an opportunity to bring his ideas before the public on the occasion of
a visit to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was then preparing to go
to England in response to an invitation from her admirers, who were
anxious to see this famous author of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and to give
her a testimonial. Thinking that she would receive large sums of money
in England she desired to get Mr. Douglass's views as to how it could
be most profitably spent for the advancement of the free people of
color. She was especially interested in those who had become free by
their own exertions. Mrs. Stowe informed her guest that several had
suggested the establishment of an educational institution pure and
simple, but that she had not been able to concur with them, thinking
that it would be better to open an industrial school. Douglass was
opposed both to the establishment of such a college as was suggested,
and to that of an ordinary industrial school where pupils should
merely "earn the means of obtaining an education in books." He desired
what we now call the vocational school, "a series of workshops where
colored men could learn some of the handicrafts, learn to work in
iron, wood, and leather, while incidentally acquiring a plain English
education."[1]

[Footnote 1: Douglass, _The Life and Times of_, p. 248.]

Under Douglass's leadership the movement had a new goal. The learning
of trades was no longer to be subsidiary to conventional educat