There are many peripatetic representatives, white and black, of schools for colored people going round among our churches, pleading for money to sustain enterprises that are simply personal ventures, and some of them actual frauds. They tell a pitiful story. Individual gifts and church contributions are given them, and when the time comes for the annual contributions to sustain the long-planted and successfully-operating schools of the A. M. A., either nothing or but little is given, on the ground that a contribution has already been made to help a colored school somewhere. This is a very serious matter. The money thus paid, in the majority of instances, is worse than wasted, and legitimate and well-attested work is made to suffer in consequence.
We regard this paper as a valuable contribution to the discussion of the great question that now presses, and for many years to come will press, the duty of the North to help the South, as the latter section of our beloved country emerging from the war-shattered old tries to adjust itself to the peace-unfolding new.
Away back in 1837, Richard Humphreys, a Philadelphia Friend, left a bequest to establish a school for the purpose of "instructing the descendants of the African race in school learning, in the various branches of the mechanics, arts and trades, and in agriculture, in order to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers." The Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth was founded by that bequest, and has been for years offering the advantages of "school learning." The managers feel that the time has come when the full idea of the founder should be carried out. An industrial department is to be added "for teaching the boys the trades of carpenter, bricklayer, plumber, etc., giving instruction in the use of tools to those who are to become teachers, and also giving instruction to the girls in useful employments, including cooking, sewing and other household duties."
This is a step in the right direction, though the managers have been a little slow in moving. It was frequently said that the old abolitionists were ahead of their times. We have an evidence of it here. Forty-eight years after the good man has passed away those in trust of his bequest awake to the power of his ideas. Educators in other parts of the country have already felt this necessity and tried to meet it. Industrial education is now provided for in nearly all the important colored schools of the South; and judging from the industrial exhibit of the schools at the New Orleans Exposition, considerable progress has been made. The friends of the colored people rejoice in the opening up of every new channel through which the colored youth can have a better chance to rise and get on in the world.