[Footnote 1: _Minutes of the Third Annual Convention of the Free People of Color_, p. 18.]
The friends of the colored race, however, were not easily discouraged by that "vulgar race prejudice which reigns in the breasts of working classes."[1] Arthur Tappan, Gerrit Smith, and William Lloyd Garrison made the appeal in behalf of the untrained laborers.[2] Although they knew the difficulties encountered by Negroes seeking to learn trades, and could daily observe how unwilling master mechanics were to receive colored boys as apprentices, the abolitionists persisted in saying that by perseverance these youths could succeed in procuring profitable situations.[3] Garrison believed that their failure to find employment at trades was not due so much to racial differences as to their lack of training. Speaking to the free people of color in their convention in Philadelphia in 1831, he could give them no better advice than that "wherever you can, put your children to trades. A good trade is better than a fortune, because when once obtained it cannot be taken away." Discussing the matter further, he said: "Now, there can be no reason why your sons should fail to make as ingenious and industrious mechanics, as any white apprentices; and when they once get trades, they will be able to accumulate money; money begets influence, and influence respectability. Influence, wealth, and character will certainly destroy those prejudices which now separate you from society."[4]
[Footnote 1: _Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, p. 26.]
[Footnote 2: This statement is based on articles appearing in _The Liberator_ from time to time.]
[Footnote 3: _Minutes of the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, 1831, p. 10.]
[Footnote 4: _Minutes of the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, 1831, p. II.]
To expect the coöperation of the white working classes in thus elevating the colored race turned out to be a delusion. They reached the conclusion that in making their headway against capital they had a better chance without Negroes than with them. White mechanics of the North not only refused to accept colored boys as apprentices, but would not even work for employers who persisted in hiring Negroes. Generally refused by the master mechanics of Cincinnati, a colored cabinet-maker finally found an Englishman who was willing to hire him, but the employees of the shop objected, refusing to allow the newcomer even to work in a room by himself.[1] A Negro who could preach in a white church of the North would have had difficulty in securing the contract to build a new edifice for that congregation. A colored man could then more easily get his son into a lawyer's office to learn law than he could "into a blacksmith shop to blow the bellows and wield the sledge hammer."[2]