Meantime, starting in this decade yet especially developing
from 1885 to 1895, began the industrial revolution of the
South. The land saw glimpses of a new destiny and the
stirring of new ideals. The educational system striving to
complete itself saw new obstacles and a field of work ever
broader and deeper. The Negro colleges, hurriedly founded,
were inadequately equipped, illogically distributed, and of
varying efficiency and grade; the normal and high schools
were doing little more than common-school work, and the
common schools were training but a third of the children who
ought to be in them, and training these too often poorly. At
the same time the white South, by reason of its sudden
conversion from the slavery ideal, by so much the more
became set and strengthened in its racial prejudice, and crys-
tallized it into harsh law and harsher custom; while the mar-
vellous pushing forward of the poor white daily threatened to
take even bread and butter from the mouths of the heavily
handicapped sons of the freedmen. In the midst, then, of the
larger problem of Negro education sprang up the more practi-
cal question of work, the inevitable economic quandary that
faces a people in the transition from slavery to freedom, and
especially those who make that change amid hate and preju-
dice, lawlessness and ruthless competition.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133