winter. The boy who goes fishing; the girl who goes to the woods in search of the wild flowers; the man who roams over hill and valley in pursuit of game; the one who loves the song of the bird, the music of the brook, the rustle of the leaves, the sighing of the wind, the majestic sweep of the river, the swell of the ocean, the roar of the sea, is in touch with nature, and will forever love her. The love of nature begins in children unconsciously with the view they get of her first as a whole, from the hill-top and the mountain, from looking at bird and beast, and insect and flower, as they are in their natural home. To say that the child shall begin first by the analysis of particular phenomena, which is really the last thing to be done, is to reverse the order of nature, is to train his senses and judgment in a narrow, exact manner, which is sure to be disastrous to the natural development of his affections and emotions. The product of such a system of training may come to know the facts of the natural world around him, but he will never be in touch and harmony with the chiefest part of nature-with human nature-with common humanity. The best nature study is to bring the child into contact with nature under the Charts, readings, pictures, open sky. plant, insect, or bird, are only of value in the school-room, as they will stimulate the love for outdoor life. But to put these things into the course of study for daily task work, for lesson work, is to spread the work of the school over too much ground, is to fritter its energies upon things which the good teacher, out of her wide knowledge, and power of illustration, will make use of, as she goes along, whether the lesson be reading, geography, history, or even arithmetic. COURSE Of Study. Supts. Beer and Hamilton reported from the Committee on Course of Study, for rural ungraded schools, appointed at last session. The Committee held two meetings, at neither of which was there a full attendance. Some progress has been made, but in order to reach a more speedy solution of the problem it was requested that the whole matter be reported to the Convention of County Superintendents, and that the Committee be authorized to report to that body, which was agreed to. AUDITORS' REPORT. Supt. Berkey reported from the Auditing Committee the following statement of last year's finances, which had been examined and approved: 12.00 322.00 10.00 $16.00 10.66 10.31 55.75 3.75 July 14, 1896, No. 1. E. Mackey, Balance on Hand.. 10.00 71.59 13.45 -$1,066.17 18.38 .75 312.52 $753.65 USIC for this evening was very acceptably furnished by the Dudley Quartette. Governor Hastings, who was on the programme for this session, was detained at Harrisburg by the closing hours of the legislative session. Prof. Booker T. Washington, of Tuskegee, Alabama, was introduced by President Waller as one of the successful educators whom teachers delight to honor. To-day we have wisely devoted some time in doing honor to two of our distinguished men who have passed away; to-night we have the privilege of looking into the face of one who has grappled successfully with one of the greatest educational and social problems of the day. No one is better qualified to tell us about it, and we are honored in having him with us. Prof. Washington spoke for an hour or more, holding the close attention of his audience to his solution of THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. It is always a pleasure to meet a body of intelligent people, and especially of teachers, to look into their bright faces, and to speak to them concerning the conditions which prevail and the great problem which confronts the southern part of our country. It is a question that should have the interested study of every citizen of this country, and particularly of those who are training up the coming men and women in the public schools. It may be worth while at the outset to review hastily what has been done and what has been suggested during the past thirty years toward the solution of this question. Some of you will remember how when, two years ago, some six hundred people of our race embarked from Savannah for Liberia, some of the newspapers and some platform orators heralded the fact as "the beginning of the end," the key to the situation, the solution of the problem. One eloquent friend announced from the platform that now at length the question had begun to solve itself. But when it is remembered that on that same morning of the embarkation more than six hundred negro children were born in the "black belt," there seems little reason to suppose that our race will soon disappear in that way. Then there have been those who recommended the removal of the negro population to some unoccupied territory where they could all live together and be left to work out their own problem. But it requires little knowledge of the facts to prove that when we had built one high wall to keep the black man in, we must build a higher one to keep white man out [laughter]-indeed, no ten walls would keep him out if there was any money to be made there. He could not be kept even out of Africa, if we were all there, when any body reported that there was gold or diamonds or anything like that to be found there. So it seems that segregation is not a promising remedy. Here and there somebody tells you that the negro race will be "absorbed " by the white, and so the difficulty be removed. There is a little trouble about that, too. You know if a person has even so little as one per cent. of negro blood he is always counted one of us-not even ninety-nine per cent. of your blood can make a white man of him. [Laughter.] Have you thought what a confession of our superiority there is in that? It takes the whole hundred per cent. to make a man white, while only one per cent. makes him a negro. On that basis, we would be likely to absorb " you. In view of the facts of the situation, is it worth while to talk of "getting rid" of the negro at all? Might it not be taken for granted he has come to stay? And has he not the best right to stay? When your race came here, they came against the vigorous protest of the citizens of the country [laughter], but you convinced them by knock-down argument that you meant to stay. Our race, on the contrary, were brought here against their own protest [laughter], without their consent, at great expense and trouble to you, because you needed us [laughter]; you kept us here a long while without our consent, until we have come to think we belong here; so now we will stay here, if only because you may need us still. And if I can say a word tonight that will help to extend your sympathy to the "black belt" of the South, I shall feel that I have helped you as well as my own people. You may wonder whether my experience has been such as to qualify me for your helper, and especially your instructor; and you shall have the chance to judge. I was born a slave in 1857 or '58-I have no evidence as to the date, our family records were not carefully kept, but am certain that some time and somewhere, that event occurred [laughter]. At the close of the war, word came to the cabin where we lived that all the negroes were to come up to the big house; there we listened to the reading of a long paper, and when it was over my mother whispered to me "Now, my boy, we're free." So we went away to West Virginia, where I worked in the coal mines to help support my mother. While there I heard of an institution in Virginia where a poor black boy could work and earn his education, and resolved that sooner or later I would go there. Every penny or nickel was saved, and after several months I started for Hampton, and soon found myself in Richmond without money, without friends, without a place to stay. The first night I slept in a hole under a sidewalk; in the morning a ship loading at the wharf gave me work, and breakfast; I worked there some time, and at last got to Hampton with a surplus of fifty cents. There I found the opportunity to work for my education; to combine study with manual industry; and there I resolved that when I had got my education, I would go to the black belt and help our people as I had been helped. The outcome of that resolution was the starting of the school at Tuskegee, from which I come to you. And right here I want to say, do not think that I have come here simply to plead for the education of a few hundred young people at a single school, or even for the uplifting of our whole race. This work is in the interest of the white race as well as the black. Slavery wrought as much permanent injury to your race as to mine. Just so long as the rank and file of our people are left in poverty and ignorance, so long will they atford the Southern white man an excuse for snuffing out his own moral life. [Applause.] When the ballot is stolen from the negro, he suffers from the temporary injustice, but the white robber suffers permanent degradation. When a black man is lynched, he suffers physical death, but the lynchers moral death. [Applause.] Therefore the appeal to you is not for one school, nor for one race, but for all, black and white-for the entire future of our country. In 1881 the school at Tuskegee started with one teacher and thirty students, in an old cabin the roof which leaked so that when it rained we needed umbrellas. Now we are educating 850 young men and women, from 22 states, of an average age of 18 years, (none are admitted under 16, nor without some previous preparation). There are 81 instructors, and the entire population on the school grounds is between eleven and twelve hundred. We have been compelled to refuse some four hundred pupils. All this has come of an attempt to apply the results of careful, honest study of the conditions and needs of the people of that belt where it has been said that only the black man and the mule can live. By the way, there seems to be a curious affinity between those two, which has not been satisfactorily accounted for. [Laughter.] Thus far we have reason to be encouraged by the success of this first important attempt to cope with this great question, based upon thorough study of the needs and conditions and surroundings of the people. Many good people are tempted to ape the methods that have been used in missionary work done long ago and far away, without considering the present and local conditions. This is not practical, and besides, the results of those methods upon the missionary are not encouraging. Everywhere we hear of labor suspended or stopped by "nervous prostration. I do not say we will never get there, but we haven't yet-we know more about "chills and fever." [Laughter.] We must adapt ourselves to conditions. I remember a friend who found a bright colored boy in Liberia studying Cicero, which greatly pleased him; but there was one drawbackthe boy was minus pantaloons. [Laughter.] We would consider the next step in such a case to be the setting up of a tailor shop and let the boy put half-time on study and the other half on learning to make pants. That is our idea of industrial education. Thirty years ago our race practically entered upon the settlement of a new country. Now what a new country needs for the first fifty years is largely on material linesscientific and industrial development. Hence the industrial element should be prominent in our education. Our schools are worked in accordance with this. We go up to about what you would call a high school course-no dead languages, but more physical science. We find we can give the student work which helps him to keep himself during the nine months' course. Their labor adds to the economic value of the institution, and we give them instruction in exchange for labor. We have 700 acres of land, and there is plenty of work to be done. We wanted a chapel; we drew our own plans, made our own brick, and erected the building almost wholly ourselves. The young women are employed in the laundry, and in making and mending clothing. So we have the building they put up for us, and they have the knowledge we taught to them, and it is a fair exchange. In every one of our 26 industrial departments we have cultured teachers, and our buildings are put up under proper architectural supervision; so both ends are looked after. I ought not to forget here to tell you that the institution is religious in the best and highest senseteaching a religion that is not only for Sunday, but for every day. One of the most valuable features of this system is that it gets rid of the old idea that hand labor is degradation or disgrace. Students who work together with their hands and in their classes have no such feeling. This is just what is needed to overcome the temptations which which beset especially a race just released from slavery; this opportunity to work and learn is the short road to independence, and the builder of moral backbone. [Applause.] We believe that when the Bible tells us to "work out our own salvation," it means just what it says-that we are to work it out with our own hands, our horses, our steam engines. Nothing valuable can be had without effort. Some of our people think that after working for 250 years for other people's benefit, we ought to rest for awhile-and some do [laughter]; but you will find most of them work hard, and yet are always in debt, and bave to mortgage their crops. We want to change all that, and expect to do it. But we must learn to do things in easier ways, like you white people. I saw a man in Ohio planting corn-that is, the machine planted the corn, and the man sat under an umbrella and drove the horses. What chance has the black man down in Georgia, planting the old way, and trudging behind his mule, against that man with the machine? We want to learn your ways of doing things, where they save labor and increase production. There is a good deal of prejudice in men, but there is none in the dollar. People will buy where they can get what they want in the cheapest market. We want to give the negro boy the knowledge and skill that will enable him to sit under the umbrella and drive the horses, and make a crop that will compete with yours. In business the weaker goes to the wall; and we recognize the fact, and are trying to strengthen ourselves. ers. Have we made an economic success of our institution? Well, to begin with, Northern people give us the money to pay our teachOur plant has cost $80,000; nearly all the work on it has been done by our students, and it is now valued at $300,000, and there are no mortgages on it. It is not practicable, nor would it be desirable, that the North should attempt to educate all the colored people of the South; but it is practicable to educate a body of men and women to go out among their kindred and teach them how to lift themselves-and I need not say whether that is desirable. Look at the condition of these people when they began life for themselves. In the country districts they had nothing to live upon while they raised their first cotton crops. They had to have advances of food, clothing, etc. Thus grew up the system of mortgaging the crops expected in the future. Many of them rented their land and cabins at fifteen to forty per cent., and of course they came out in debt. A man would pay $15 rent for a mule that could be bought for $60 cash. Have they not had time to learn something? you ask. Well, the schools in in the country are open an average of three and a half months in Alabama-of course in the large cities they have eight and nine months, but the bulk of our people are in the rural districts. There was spent on the education of each colored child in Alabama this year just 72 cents, while in Massachusetts it is from $15 to $18. In one county there is not a single colored church, only three months school, the teachers are paid $15 a month, and the school board does not own so much apparatus as a piece of crayon. Is it fair to measure a people in such circumstances by the standards of more favored states, or to expect them to perform their political and social duties as intelligently, consistently and conscientiously? Eightyfive per cent of our people work on plantations, and their environment is what I have described. What have we a right to expect of them? The difficulties on the moral and religious side are obvious. In the old slave days the negro justified his raids on his master's henroost by argument like this: My body belongs to my master-so do the chickens; if I take the chickens to feed my body, master has so much less chicken, so much more nigger." [Laughter.] You can all understand the results. While our progress is not very hopeful, nor perhaps very encouraging on these lines, the case is far from hopeless. The black man usually knows he is down, and wants to get up. He has one legacy of good from slavery-he learned to work; but he has not the knowledge and skill to make his labor pleasant and profitable, nor has he yet learned to utilize its results. He invests too much in whiskey and cheap jewelry. You will sometimes find a $10 clock in a cabin where a whole family live in one room. What are we doing to change this? Well, there was one young girl went out from Tuskegee into one of those three-months' school districts to teach. She did not stop at the children, but went out among the older people, organized them into a club or conference which met weekly to consider practical questions. She taught those people to live on bread and potatoes until they were out of debt, and raised a crop without a mortgage on it. She taught them how to save and use their money. Year after year a month was added to the term, until now they have eight months school, the oneroom cabins are being replaced by two and three-room cottages, they have a growing church and Sunday-school, and it is a privilege to see the faces of the people beaming with hope and happiness. All this brought about by one teacher who was also a leader, living in their midst and showing them how to live. This is one instance; I could talk to you for hours of similar cases, showing the possibilities of industrial education. It is to such work we must look for the solution of the race problem of the South; and we are making a beginning. [Applause.] You cannot reach all; in many of the older faces you read the lack of will-power which is the worst result of slavery. But we were 250 years getting down to that level, and cannot expect to get up again in 25 years. We want educated leaders, men and women who can both work and teach; and we are training them. Many good people think that all a community needs is the organization of a church. Now no one has more faith in religion than myself; but I find it hard to make a good Christian of a hungry man. It is not best to prepare for splendid mansions in the next world by living in one-room cabins in this, nor to go barefoot here and wait for golden slippers there. Our people are enthusiastically religious, and very demonstrative; and if one is quiet and does not shout, he is said to have white man's religion" [laughter.] A favorite expression of the black man has been "Give me Jesus and take all this world" --and too often the white man has taken him at his word so far as this world is concerned. But while we encourage every religious aspiration and develop religious life, in order to do that we must teach habits of neatness and thrift, three-roomed houses and economy and bank accounts, just as you white people do. In proportion as we do this we will lift up ourselves and our children. So will we become intelligent, capable, worthy American citizens. [Applause.] What will be the outcome in the relations of the two races in the South? That question demands the careful attention of all of us, but it is yet far from solution. I thank God I have grown to the point where I can sympathize with the white man as well as the black. I am careful to advise my students not to allow their superior advantages to make them feel themselves above their white neighbors, but to sympathize with them and help them as opportunity offers. We want to strengthen and build up character at every point, and hatred and prejudice tend to drag it down. I am determined that no race and no individual shall drag me down by making me hate him. [Applause.] I have observed that in practical life most people do not care much about each other unless the one has something that the other wants. The same is true of races. In business pure and simple there is not much pre judice againt the black man. A black man who keeps a grocery, if he is clean and has the goods the community wants, sells to white and black; as mechanics, we see them laying brick side by side. So our institution is teaching its pupils the things which will make them useful and valuable to others. It is the application on a large scale of the kindergarten principle; so we have brickyard, and wheelwright, shop and printing office; the organ of the Democratic party is printed in our office [laughter]-we do not edit it, only do the mechanical work. We have no warmer friends than the white people of Tuskegee. You see how it counts when the dependence is not all on one side, when our men can go out and take their place in the working world. It works out into politics, too; whan a black man has saved a little money and holds a mortgage on a white man's house that he can foreclose, he is not driven from the polls when he comes to vote. When black Tobe Jones lends his white neighbor $50 and treats him considerately when it is hard for him to pay, "Tobe Jones is a gentleman." And one Tobe Jones in every community, thrifty, provident, business-like and therefore successful, would do more to solve the race problem than all the laws Congress could pass. [Applause.] The black man who has $500 to lend can always find a white borrower, and his position is determined. The black man whose house and its appointments give such evidence of refinement and culture that the white visitor takes off his hat when he enters, is your true civilizer. One of our students was an expert in dairying; the place of manager of a creamery was vacant; he was recommended; objection to his color was made; it was suggested that he would not color the butter [laughter]; he got the place; the first shipment of butter commanded one cent a pound more than be rights, but it is more important that we be prepared to do so [applause], and that is as true of the white man as the black. I am glad to have the opportunity of addressing so many teachers, and impressing upon them the truth that as our ten millions rise or fall, so must your sixty millions. Whenever injustice or harm is done to the lowest, all are degraded. We must honestly try to prepare the negro to take his place on the highest plane; we must open up to him the possibility of independence and progress; if when that is done he cannot or will not step up, he will prove the truth of the claim of some, that this is a "white man's problem." We are a patient people; even when others try to push us down, we try to lift ourselves, and thereby lift them with us; and we have come forward under many disadvantages; let us see what we can do when we have a fair chance. We need not be disheartened by oppressive laws; man can make no law that will stop the progress of manhood [applause], though it may delay. If ever a race has "turned the other cheek" to the smiter, it has been the African; we have proven ourselves under the severest trials a God-fearing, law-abiding people. We went into slavery things; we came out citizens. We went into the great civil struggle with chains on our wrists; we came out with the ballot in our hands. [Applause.] Is not such a race worth saving, and making a part of our American citizenship, and so giving us democratic institutions in reality as well as in name? [Applause.] After very many who were in attendance had shaken hands with the eloquent lecturer, the audience dispersed. THURSDAY MORNING. 'HE devotional exercises were con fore, and the color question was dropped: ducted by Rev. R. F. Randolph, of the next shipment brought two cents advance, and he was one of the whitest men there [laughter and applause]. We must be able to produce something that others need, and we shall command their respect; we must prove that we can stand upon our own feet, and develop our own material, moral, and religious life. Some of our people are like some of yours -they want to learn the last lesson first ; they want the crop without the work. We had an example of this after the war, when everybody who knew a little more than the mass wanted to go to Congress, or at least to the Legislature. Men spent time in what they called politics that ought to have gone into carpentry, or dairying, or truck gardening; and the result was what might be expected. We are not making many mistakes of that kind now. We are finding out that as we become useful and productive, and so achieve independence, we come into possession of all the rights that belong to us. is very important that we exercise our civil It the First M. E. church of New Castle. Pending appointment of tellers to hold the election of officers, the withdrawal of some names left no contest for any office, whereupon the unanimous ballot of the Association was cast for the members named on page 75, and they were declared elected. It was announced that the Presidentelect had been called by telegram to Atlantic City by reason of the sickness of his daughter. Dr. Crawford, of Allegheny College, being absent, Supt. J. Y. McKinney, of Beaver Falls, spoke on the question referred to the former, namely, THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER. Mr. McKinney said he had hoped the learned gentleman announced on the |