TEACHERS' SALARIES IN CITIES.

Average annual salaries of teachers and supervising officers in cities of over 8,000 inhabitants, summarized by States, etc.

CHAPTER XLVII.

MISCELLANEOUS EDUCATIONAL TOPICS.

CONTENTS.-Need of a commission for investigating the negro problem.-Information relative to the appointment of cadets to the U. S. Military Academy.-Gardiner Greene Hubbard.-The school of comparative jurisprudence and diplomacy of Columbian University.-South Carolina State summer school for teachers.-The possibilities of Alaska.-Educational provisions of Cecil Rhodes's will.-Dr. William Henry Ruffner, and his work for popular education.-Burke Aaron Hinsdale.-What the Government fails to do for the people.-Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute.-Ventilating schoolrooms by windows and fireplaces.-Catholic parochial schools in Eastern Massachusetts.-The college man as leader in the world's work.-Statistics of elementary education in foreign countries.

THE NEED OF A NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR INVESTIGATING THE NEGRO PROBLEM.

[From the report of Hon. J. L. M. Curry, chairman of the educational committee of the John F. Slater fund.]

Since 1860 the negro has attracted unusual attention, more thorough and scientific study, especially along ethnological and sociological lines, than ever before. In the East, because of increased modern discoveries, we have abundant archæological and historical material. On the contrary, among the negroes there is an utter dearth of such aids to investigation. No written documents, no tombs and palaces, no inspirng memories from Thermopylæ or Salamis, no objects teaching the actual life of the past, but we are confronted by a dreary, sterile waste, an arid nullity. As there is such little inducement to study the native land, the primitive home of the negro, the student must confine himself to those of the race who were torn from Africa and brought under the influence of other races, cults, and civilizations. Practically all periods are prehistoric, and no influence is traceable on other peoples. Early and later centuries are alike destitute of invention, commerce, literature, international relations. It is well that in studies we are having aids from Dubois, Washington, Thomas, Johnson, and others of partial negro ancestry. Every slaveholder knew that a characteristic of the negro, inherent or an evolution from his servile condition, was his secretiveness. No white person is the full confidant of the negro. It is doubtful whether the confessional secures a frank and full disclosure. Dr. Slattery, of Baltimore, after twenty-two years in the closest relations with the race, says "there is no white man living who has the negroes' entire confidence." With my well-known and gratefully acknowledged labors for the upbuilding of the freedmen, I have found it impossible to gain full testimony as to their social and religious conditions. The facts as they lie on the surface are not always a proper indication of what lies below.

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During the last year numerous utterances, in press and public address by learned professors, investigators in social statistics, and by others of both races, have appeared, presenting various aspects of the ever-recurring negro problem. Some of these have been hopeful, but more have been tinged with darkest hues. Temperate and thoughtful discussion will eliminate error and bring out truth. Unfortunately, prejudice and ignorance blind us to facts, warp judgment, and injuriously affect conclusions. One writer, of negro ancestry, with large observation drawn from residence and official position both in the South and North, has in a recent, much-reviewed book, "The American Negro," presented a most doleful and pessimistic view of the negro question, giving an exaggerated and repulsive picture of faults and vices, of industrial, mental, and moral incapacity, of depravity in men and women, of insensibility to their own vileness, of party subordination, of inappreciation of duties and requirements of American citizenship. He emphasizes the need of "thoroughly safeguarding every step in the training of the negro with forceful and effective methods of instruction." What is imperatively needed is "a training of the perceptive, constructive, and executive faculties of man, in order that he may have an intelligent notion of what he undertakes to do and the faculty of knowing when and how to do it in the best possible way." Wise as are the disapproval of applying to negro children the same methods of education that are used in the case of white children of intelligent ancestry, environed with more or less cultured homes, and the insistence upon an industrial education, as covering the entire ground of the ordinary negro needs and wants, yet the educational committee and the chairman certainly, after long and anxious study of the problem in its manifold bearings, can not accept these doleful and discouraging conclusions. It is preferred to take the more rational and hopeful conclusions of other students, especially of Mr. Washington, whose strong and persuasive and. buoyant testimony is more conducive to hopeful effort and to Christian teachings. My observations and reasonings make me to trust in the slow but sure progress, and in the ultimate attainment of a higher and nobler condition. What has been done is not what was wished, is often very disappointing-results sometimes not commensurate with the outlay-but it justifies continued and wiser efforts. The painful thing, after the experience of years, in connection with what has been written, of conservative or destructive character, is the "lame and impotent conclusion," the failure to meet admitted difficulties by practical and adequate suggestions and remedies. The anxious mind waits, seeks for a solution which remains unspoken. How are evils to be averted, dangers to be met, conditions to be changed, hopes to be realized? Where is the path which leads to safety, to light? Statesmanship is lacking, philanthropy accomplishes a little, and religion points to agencies and outcome which may require indefinite time.

In view of the circumstances, unprecedented and marvelous, connected with the negro, his advent to America, his enslavement, his history, his emancipation and the consequences thereof, public opinion should be slow to find fault, and should be charitable in seeking excuses and palliatives for errors and wrongs. The obstacles, inherent and ignorantly or criminally imposed, have been apparently insurmountable. Whatever there is in heredity, in unbroken millennial continuity of poverty, ignorance, barbarism, savagery, paganism, in the degrading influence of slavery and inferiority, has stood like an impenetrable barrier in the way of progress. Deplorable as slavery was to the Afro-American, there was some relief to the dark background. It made homogeneous a diverse negro race; it gave a language1 and improved religion, habits of obedience, subjection to authority, regular and systematic labor, acquaintance with productive industries, food, shelter, and clothing, the benefit of kind treatment, the humanizing influence of contact with a cultivated race and those beneficent ameliorating influences which come from personal example and associa tion with the refined, the pious, the free. Emancipation, intended for good, and 1 A missionary in Africa, Bishop Penick, said that in his schools the boys had thirty-six languages.

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lauded as a providential deliverance, as an open door to greater enjoyment of human and civil rights, has not produced the expected results.

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By a singular perversity of fact and reason, education, heretofore regarded as a priceless boon, as the cause and result of free institutions, of civilization, as a necessity to human development, to attainment of a higher life, worth millions of expenditure and the best administrative capacity, is now by some regarded as the source and provocative of crime, as incompatible with the best development of a race, and as so full of harm that it should be doled out most sparingly and under rigid limitations. The truer doctrine is, that remedies for social, political, and personal maladies are not material and legislative, not quick and direct, but by the slower and surer method of mental education and moral regeneration. The question of negro education, in itself, is a big one, of prodigious import, and we should get some lessons of patience and wisdom from the conduct of Great Britain, Holland, and Germany in their dealings with dependent and inferior races. An American, by a kind of peculiar instinct, evolved from his own history, turns to the church house and the schoolhouse as the pioneer factors in civilization and good government. During and immediately after the war of secession, the General Government, through the Freedmen's Bureau, undertook to furnish the means of education, but soon withdrew its support, and since, persistently and in inconsistent disregard of the claims of the negro and the obligations resulting from emancipation and enforced citizenship, has refused national aid for fitting the negro for his suddenly created and imposed rights and privileges. Religious denominations were prompt and liberal in devising schemes for education, and, by a blunder, from the evil effects of which the race has not recovered, dubbed the schools "colleges" and "universities,” and adopted inapplicable and unattainable courses of study. Methods and courses of instruction, borrowed from advanced civilization, were sought to be applied to new and strange conditions, without reference to age, race, pursuits, environments, capacities. What these early established schools and others of like aim and character are doing and have done, deserve, despite serious mistakes, grateful commendation rather than censure and criticism. They should have encouragement and aid, but far more effective and wide-reaching agencies are needed. All these denominational and private schools reach but a small fraction of the uncountable mass of negro children. The total enrollment in the public schools of the South of negro children, in 1898-99, was 1,511,618, or 52 per cent of an estimated number of negro children of 2,912,910, and the public expenditure from State revenues for these children, from 1870 to 1901, was about $117,000,000.

The American Missionary Association, at its last meeting, said:

While we are thankful to the forces of philanthropy and religion in the North, which have been able to do so much in planting schools and churches, and lifting the colored race up to a level of self-respect, the South has not failed in doing its part. Considering their means, they have taxed themselves heavily for the support of schools and have afforded nearly, if not quite, equal advantages to the children of former slaves as to their own.

What Hampton, Spelman, Tuskegee, Claflin, Tougaloo, and others are doing is a great blessing, but the aggregate attendance does not reach over 45,000. What of the millions that have not been, never can be, reached by these schools! Many people seem unwilling to recognize the great fact, the most important fact in our history, that these children can be reached only through the public, State-established, State-controlled, State-supported public schools, and that "free schools for all the people," the education of the illiterate, here, within our own ancient territorial limits, at our own doors, is the paramount issue, overshadowing all other questions, domestic or foreign, which can be presented to, or acted upon, by our people. This education is more vital to our internal peace and prosperity than are navies and territorial expansion to our external defense.