ey
were not able to secure Negroes to work for them; and these poor
whites were constantly trying to imitate the slaveholding class in
escaping labour, as they, too, regarded it as anything but elevating.
But the Negro, in turn, looked down upon the poor whites with a
certain contempt because they had to work. The Negro, it is to be
borne in mind, worked under constant protest, because he felt that his
labour was being unjustly requited; and he spent almost as much effort
in planning how to escape work as in learning how to work. Labour with
him was a badge of degradation. The white man was held up before him
as the highest type of civilisation, but the Negro noted that this
highest type of civilisation himself did little labour with the hand.
Hence he argued that, the less work he did, the more nearly he would
be like the white man. Then, in addition to these influences, the
slave system discouraged labour-saving machinery. To use labour-saving
machinery, intelligence was required; and intelligence and slavery
were not on friendly terms. Hence the Negro always associated labour
with toil, drudgery, something to be escaped. When the Negro first
became free, his idea of education was that it was something that
would soon put him in the same position as regards work that his
recent master had occupied. Out of these conditions grew the habit of
putting off till to-morrow and the day after the duty that should be
done promptly to-day. The leaky house was not repaired while the sun
shone, for then the rain did not come through. While the rain was
falling, no one cared to expose himself to stop the rain. The plough,
on the same principle, was left where the last furrow was run, to rot
and rust in the field during the winter. There was no need to repair
the wooden chimney that was exposed to the fire, because water could
be thrown on it when it was on fire. There was no need to trouble
about the payment of a debt to-day, because it could be paid as well
next week or next year. Besides these conditions, the whole South at
the close of the war was without proper food, clothing, and
shelter,--was in need of habits of thrift and economy and of something
laid up for a rainy day.

To me it seemed perfectly plain that here was a condition of things
that could not be met by the ordinary process of education. At
Tuskegee we became convinced that the thing to do was to make a
careful, systematic study of the condition and needs of the