CHAPTER XII.
GREAT PROGRESS OF NEGRO.
The predicament of Millard was rendered all the more distressing by the engagement of most of his friends in the conspiracy against the life of “Uncle” Alex Bettis. They were not in ignorance, however, of the chase for Leslie Duncan and the desire to get into it themselves probably hastened the brief consultation which resulted in the release of Bettis on his promise to see to it that the classes of study in his school included agriculture and not social and political economy. Besides Brother Bettis’ prayer was a masterful plea for the forgiveness of the sins of those bent on taking his life. It was pathetic. Some of the mob shed tears, real heart-felt tears, that flow from the heart in our moments of contemplation of the generousness of God and beauty of his handiwork as naturally as rain from a mountain summer cloud.
Those who felt the Omnipotent power of God in the kindness and prayers of this simple old colored man counselled with the more marble-hearted and vicious of their number, and all at last agreed that while the old man’s magnetic influence and his powerful, mysterious control over himself in a period of the greatest suspense might prove a monster with which they would have to deal later on, none could have the heart wicked enough to put him to death.
So Mr. Bettis demonstrated a strategic ability that should prove to be the admiration of white men, learned and skilled in the art of strategy, as well as proved conclusively in his own case, the efficacy and power of prayer. Until the day of his death he always maintained that it was not the delay which the preparation of the dinner occasioned giving him time to influence the men against taking his life; nor, indeed the kindness displayed in the act of feeding and nourishing his enemies, but wholly and absolutely the power of God in answer to prayer!
This demonstration in his own case of the saving efficacy of prayer was worth more to him than all the volumes of theology ever written could have been in reaching the ears and hearts of his benighted followers, who had to be made to see and feel with their own sense of sight and touch the evidence of the tangible things which an educated mind finds, without literal interpretation, in everything, even in rocks and stones and running brooks.
He preached not to the heads of his hearers, but to their hearts; not about Emerson, Spencer, Napoleon, or Shakespeare, but about Jesus Christ, His death, His resurrection and His power to resurrect even them, as He was resurrected if only they would believe on Him and live such lives as He had lived.
Is it not remarkable that a man with the power to carry such a message to those who stood in such great need if it should have been singled out for destruction by those whose interest he was serving in disseminating the unadulterated doctrine of the lowly Nazarene? Yet history of sacred and profane origin all record that the men and women who really benefit their kind do so at the risk of martyring themselves.
The power of prayer which the Rev. Alexander Bettis used so dramatically in rescuing himself from an ignominous death was used effectively in the establishment and later the development of a great school in which through the adoption of the methods pursued at the Schofield school at Aiken, the condition of thousands of children and hundreds of homes have been reformed, even transformed, revolutionized and made new. This school in honor of its founder and executive head until the day of his death is known as the Bettis Academy and is located on a farm of several hundred acres near Trenton, S. C. The interest taken in it at its earliest inception by Miss Schofield, together with the great work done by Mr. Bettis at his own expense without any compensation whatever, made the institution possible and a force from the start in the education of the Negroes from many of the counties of South Carolina and Georgia.
The great personality of the founder attracted to the school like a loadstone, large numbers of Negroes, and Miss Schofield, who enjoyed Mr. Bettis’ confidence in full, seeing the opportunity which the school afforded her to accomplish the maximum of results, most heartily cooperated in the conduct of it. She not only wrote and lectured for her school but for Bettis Academy as well.
In fact, every line written and every word spoken in the interest of, or inimical to, the interest of all related enterprise affect each other for good or evil, in the same proportion. This makes the attempts to injure one race of human beings by another race without injury to itself impossible, and is the foundation rock upon which the Negro race can stand with perfect confidence, that absolute justice will eventually be done it.
To the intelligent supervision of the organization of the Bettis Academy much credit is due Martha Schofield. She was the store-house from which ideas of the most experienced and practical sort emanated for perfecting all departments, especially the industrial department. The school in a few years, paid her back many times by the wide interest its patrons took in the Farmers’ Conference, a local organization for every colored school in the country, original with the Schofield Normal and Industrial Institute, having for its object the encouragement of the farmers to buy land, to raise more food supplies, to stop mortgaging their property and to extend the term of the country school. At the general meetings of these Conferences which were held in February of each year in the chapel of the Schofield school, Bettis’ followers were largely in attendance. This gave Miss Schofield the opportunity she so much desired of meeting face to face the fathers and mothers of those whom she regarded as the foundation-stone for the new structure of civilization which freedom and her educational work was building.
Among the wide range of subjects discussed, no question was given so much importance as better living conditions. These discussions, in which hundreds present participated, discouraged the habit of living in cabins. With what practical knowledge the attendants gained at the general meeting, augmented by the instruction given the students of the schools, every Negro family in a wide area was greatly benefited. Miss Schofield, out of the funds of her school employed an organizer whose duty it was to organize a conference in every community, without cost to the members. The benefits to be derived from the work were apparent in a short time in many ways. One room cabins soon evolved into homes of at least two rooms and even three, four and five; tenants as fast as they could became owners of homes; many mortgages were burned and few were given, and increases in production of crops were very noticeable. Terms of schools were lengthened from two months to four, five and even six months, as a result of the work of the conferences. But better than all was the extraordinary improvement apparent in the manners, morals, habits and dress of all who came to the general meetings. At these meetings Miss Schofield, who was host to the large gathering, made up of delegates from each conference, presided, and each session was conducted in a parliamentary manner, thus educating the delegates in the matter of conducting the meetings of the various local conferences to the best advantage.
Thus it will be seen that Miss Schofield’s activities embraced a wide range of influence and as her contemplations, of course, extended beyond the reach of actual performance it is to be regretted that time enough from the drudgery of work in her school was never found for her to write and publish a manual of important information for the guidance and direction of missionaries in welfare work. It is an extravagant waste of any system of social responsibility to permit the departure of its members before first obtaining for all time the entire treasury of their store house of wisdom and compiling the information in convenient form for future use.
Miss Schofield’s organization of the Negro farmers into clubs for the purpose of mutual helpfulness indicates that she appreciated the fact that one person can do but little within herself for the benefit of the people, but by securing their cooperation to the extent of getting them to practice as a whole and teach in unity the things most needed to be taught, results of the most far-reaching consequences could be achieved. She was a labor-unionist with most practical and up-to-date ideas.
Much of what has been accomplished by the agricultural departments of some of the States and by the Federal Department of Agricultural for the Negro of the cotton district is directly traceable to efforts of Miss Schofield, the pioneer of industrial training for the Negro. Her system to bring the methods by which the Negro could improve his condition within reach of all appears to the author as superior in practicability to any yet advanced. This idea of carrying to the people systems pregnant with practical uses for the regulation of their work in all the arts, that of printing, shoe repairing, harness making, carpentering, school teaching, and business of every kind contemplated a unity of action by each. She enjoined as she taught the principle illustrated by the old man with the seven sons and the bundle of sticks a strict regard for the community of interest underlying all related industry. This has made it possible for every Negro within reach of her influence to have gained some knowledge of a better way of getting along in the world, and combined with the work which is being done and has been done already by other schools and colleges, accounts for the remarkable development of the race in the occupation of farming.
According to the report of the thirteenth census of 1910 there were 920,883 colored farmers in the United States. Twenty six and two-tenths per cent. of these owned their farms, and 73.60 per cent. constituted renters, while 2 per cent. managed farms. The same report also shows that while the value of all farm property of white people almost doubled between the years of 1900 and 1910, the value of all farm property of colored people more than doubled, to be exact, showed an increase of 134 per cent. In the classes of property reported, conspicuously noticeable is the increase in the value of live-stock. The increase of the live stock of the whites showed 58.60 per cent., while that of the Negroes showed an increase of 105.50 per cent. In the value of farm buildings the percentage of increase was 76.70 for the whites and 131.80 for the Negroes. The percentage of increase in the matter of improved farm implements and machinery was 60.80 per cent. for the whites and 81.70 per cent. for the Negroes.
When it is considered that the Negro has had at his disposal but fifty years for self-improvement and growth in all the arts, limited in the pursuit of them by the restrictions placed around him by reason of his race, his progress in every direction except, perhaps, in the exercise of the right of suffrage, becomes more than remarkable—it is phenomenal, especially in the occupation of farming, to which he is unquestionably better adapted than to any other calling.
In the matter of owners of homes both on the farm and in the city, the Negroes, those who did and those who did not come under Miss Schofield’s instructions in this, “the most important matter of their lives,” as she often told her students, appear from the 1910 census, to have made an equally creditable showing. In the Southern States the percentage of the white and Negro population owning their homes, was white 50.50, Negro, 23.10 per cent. The percentage of Negroes who owned their homes entirely, without encumbrance, was 18.10 per cent.; that of the whites 39.50. In 1900 the percentage was, whites 43.50; Negroes 16.80. It will be seen from the official figures of the government that the percentage of whites owning their homes in the decade between 1900 and 1910 decreased 4 per cent., while the percentage of the Negroes increased 1.30 per cent.
If the Negroes were not discriminated against in the pursuit of their occupations in the cities; if they were encouraged to buy homes and beautify and improve them, instead of being discouraged by the many obstacles placed in their way, such for instance, as the agitation by some of the best white people not to rent a home built by Negro labor, and the probability of another riot such as that in Atlanta in 1906, it is entirely within his power to eclipse any race of men the Southern white people could possibly induce to come and make homes among them. In time they will do it in the morality of their lives, just as they now are outstripping the members of the race laying claim to the purest blood that ever flowed in Aryan veins, in the art of farming.
The hope of the race lies in the multiplication of the opportunities for every member to obtain an education, such an education as Martha Schofield contemplated for all; and the demand by the law abiding, God serving element of the white race that the colored people be given every opportunity for the exercise of their powers that equity and justice dictate. The Negroes want nothing more, ask nothing more, but in justice to their own self respect and the rights of man can accept nothing less.
That they have shown themselves worthy of freedom, which certainly cost the white people more than the cost of insuring them certain inalienable rights will entail, is emphatically indicated by comparison of Negro per capita property with that of the freed Russian serfs in 1861, two years before the emancipation of the Negro. The Russians situated in the most fertile sections of the Muscovite empire, numbering over 14 millions, have in the same time it has taken the Negroes to accumulate 700 million dollars worth of property but 500 million dollars in property. The accumulations of the two peoples freed at about the same time are $70 per capita for the Negro and $36.00 for the Russians. In the same Russian province only 30 per cent. of the serfs can read and write, while in the United States 61 per cent. of the Negroes can read and write.
Yet in the face of this wonderful development of the race; in opposition to the aspirations necessary to make achievements of this kind possible, there is race prejudice, degradation and humiliation. This is doing more to produce poverty among both races and hold in check the progress of a great section of the country than all the other agencies for evil combined.
The remedy for this will perhaps be found in the education of the whites, stimulation in this direction being assured by both the compulsory school attendance laws being passed, and the rivalry in education between the races already set in motion by the Negroes.
Almost two million colored children are enrolled in the normal schools and colleges. There are 35,000 colored teachers now actively engaged in the common schools and about four thousand professors in the colleges and normal and industrial institutions. The value of the property devoted to education of the Negro is nearly twenty million dollars. There was expended in 1915 nearly $5,000,000 for the higher and industrial training of the race while $10,000,000 was spent on elementary instructions in the common schools. The stimulating effect which these figures should have and, undoubtedly will have on the education of the whites will serve to increase very largely the facilities for their education, which is the remedy most needed, in the opinion of the leading white people, as well as the author, for the dissipation of much of the race prejudice responsible for the passage of a great number of discriminatory laws and for the arbitrary execution of those having a discriminating effect in their operation, if not in their wording. This enlightening information, however, concerning the facilities for the education of the Negro is very much offset by the announcement that the number not in school in the South is greater than the number in school.
There are 2,000,000 Negro children of school age in the South not in school. Let all who would aid in the solution of the Negro problem find a means of reaching these 2,000,000 blacks by the school, and the neglected ignorant whites, in self-defense, will be forced into the school room. Give the black child $10.23 per capita instead of $2.82 now allotted for its education, raise the per capita to that spent for the education of the white child, and the white people will then double the money for the education of their children. This would raise the expenditures for Negro education in the common schools of the South to about $35,000,000 annually, and this amount is actually needed in putting the two million out of school in school and stirring the whites to greater activity in the education of their own race.
