COMMUNICATIONS.

EDUCATION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE.

REV. J. E. RANKIN. D. D.

The following paragraphs are from the paper read by Dr. Rankin at the anniversary at Syracuse. It was intended that it should be printed with the proceedings, but, by accident, it was not left in the hands of the committee. We hope to publish it in full in a series of documents which we have in preparation. After valuable historical statements, and a vivid picture of the needs, and of the progress already made, among other good things, the Doctor says:

The southern portions of this country cannot always remain blind to the truth that their material prosperity depends upon the employment of educated labor. Sociologists claim that an educated laborer will produce twenty-five per cent. more than an uneducated one. If a colored man is worth $100 a year without an education, he is worth twenty-five per cent. more with one. The thrift of New England has been largely dependent upon the common-school houses there. Give a man education enough to transact ordinary business, to enable him to keep his accounts in writing, to improve his mind daily by reading, to understand the institutions of his country, to have an insight into the laws which shall govern him in relation to his neighbors and his God, to know his rights and his duties, and he is twenty-five per cent. better as a producer than he was before. The necessity of keeping the colored man ignorant, of keeping out discussions relating to human rights, involved the other necessity of keeping a population unintelligent, unthinking and, so far forth, unproductive, as appeared in the very implements employed for tilling the soil.

The southern portions of this country cannot long remain oblivious of the fact that the illiterate class are largely the criminal class; that ignorance fosters crime. In New England only seven per cent. of the population—and these almost entirely of foreign birth—are illiterate. Eighty per cent. of all the crime committed, is by these illiterate persons. It really comes to this: “Which is the wisest outlay of public money—that put into schools and school-houses, or that put into almshouses and jails?”

It is not merely intelligence which prevents crime. It is the early formation of habits of industry. It is the pre-occupation of the mind, so that it does not become the devil’s workshop. And when one considers a late slave population, free but without the training which freedom especially requires, inheriting all the evil tendencies which slavery engenders; and then, on the other hand, a white population, largely dependent for support upon the labor of others, indolent from habit or from pride, and largely inheriting analogous tendencies—it is easy to see that here is a state of things especially favorable to crime.

I know that these are material considerations, that they are upon a low plane of working, and very unlike those which actuated our New England fathers, with whom the school-house was collateral to the Church, and the spelling-book to the Bible. This of our fathers is the higher plane of effort occupied by the American Missionary Association. Political economists and statesmen can perceive the material bearings of this subject, and, little by little, as light spreads, the Southern States will be compelled for those reasons to see that their people have facilities for education, will comprehend the truth that school-houses and school-teachers add to the value of acres—as the President lately said at Nashville. Meanwhile, this Association, through its Normal Schools and Universities, is training up colored teachers and preachers to labor, as leaders, among their own people, as school systems shall be founded and maintained by law.

It is not enough that the different States of the South adopt a liberal system of public schools. Where, among colored people, shall suitable teachers be found? This race, like every other, must work out its own salvation. Favored ones must mount high, and reach down a helping hand to those below them. It cannot depend wholly upon white teachers. Oh, if there could rise up from among them gifted men and women, who were willing to devote themselves to their own race, to different classes of their own race, just for the sake of lifting them up from degradation! This is the aim of these institutions of the American Missionary Association—to train up the better, the choicer minds among colored youth, for the work of teaching and preaching; so that they may be eager to devote themselves to the mental and moral uplifting of their own race! If this “land that was desolate is yet to become like the garden of Eden”; if the thrift and industry of the more favored portions of this land are yet to be seen in all portions, I believe that no one agency will have been more instrumental in this, than the institutions of learning early established for the colored people!

At this time, the American Missionary Association limits its sphere to schools of the higher class. If it can train the teachers; if it can mould the minds and kindle the hearts of those who are soon to mould the minds and kindle the hearts of the thousands of colored children and youth, who are to be the colored men and women of the future, it could not have a higher mission; it could not do better, whether for the country or for the human race.

Brethren, this is no longer a Southern question—a question which the South must be left to solve for themselves. We must help them, as involved in the destiny which they work out for us, as well as for themselves. For, if this millstone of ignorance be not taken from their necks, we go down with them into the depths of the sea!

FROM A LIFE MEMBER.

I am glad you have returned to the old form of Magazine. Although a Life Member, and thus entitled to receive it without pay, yet I am glad to inclose fifty cents for it, and most earnestly hope each and every one who receives the Magazine will do the same promptly, and thus increase the income of the A. M. A. twelve thousand and five hundred dollars.

Yours sincerely,

A Life Member.

(From the N. Y. Herald.)

SLAVE AND FREE LABOR COTTON.

Twelve crops of cotton have been raised by free labor, and the comparison of the returns with an equal number of crops before the war shows some interesting results. The period of free labor may properly be divided into two portions—the first, including four years, during which the crops of 1865 to 1868, both inclusive, were made, and in which the labor system was greatly disorganized; the second, including eight years—1869 to 1877—when free labor was fairly well organized. If we divide the twelve crops preceding the war in the same manner, we shall get the following results:

FIRST PERIOD—FOUR YEARS.

Bales.

Crops of 1849–’50 to 1852–’53, inclusive 10,729,874

Add consumption of the South, not then included in the commercial crop statement 500,810

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Total (slave) 11,230,684

Crops of 1865–’66 to 1868–’69, inclusive (free) 9,246,793

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Excess of slave crop over free 1,983,891

SECOND PERIOD—EIGHT YEARS.

Crops of 1869–’70 to 1876–’77, inclusive, being eight years of organized free labor 31,570,212

Crops of 1853–’54 to 1860–’61, inclusive, being eight years of slave labor immediately preceding the war 27,535,949

Add Southern consumption then excluded from commercial crop statement, but included since the war 1,261,892–28,797,841

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Excess of free labor 2,772,371

In the last eight years free labor has, therefore, overtaken the palmiest days of slavery, and has produced two and three-quarter million bales more cotton. This crop is now more free from the encumbrance of debt than ever before, and with it has been raised a supply of food far greater than slavery ever compassed.

Without entering into minute statistics, it is safe to say that the money value of the thirty-one and a half million bales of cotton produced in the last eight years has been over two thousand million dollars in gold, and that over two-thirds of this value has been exported.

Texas, which seems to be the true land of the cotton farmer, has made the greatest relative progress, now producing double the crop of cotton that she made before the war. During the last cotton year, on less than half of one per cent. of her area, or on less than half an acre in a hundred, she produced a quantity of cotton equal to one-half the entire consumption of the United States.