Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/51

Rh labor and drudgery, instead of being an example to the former slave women, only affords a gratification to their spite and malevolence.

The freedman imagined that whatever superiority white people have over the blacks is owing to education; and as Eve was induced to think that if she and Adam should eat of the forbidden fruit they would be as gods, so the ordinary African thought if his child could only read, write, and cipher, he would be in every way the equal of the Caucasian. He was utterly unable to discriminate between a man with only capacity to fill with infinite labor a postal card and one who could reason out the law of gravity or define the principles of electricity. With this glorified idea on the subject of education, their enthusiastic desire for schools is not surprising. Their only idea of the difference between Prospero and Caliban was, that one could read and write and the other could not.

However absurd these views were, and however great the disappointment which follows, the result is good. If the entire race could read, write, and cipher, it would be an excellent thing. An utterly uneducated man, unless he chances to be of extraordinary acuteness, is at the mercy of one who is learned; the latter may assert that twice twenty are fifty, and the ignorant man, unable to disprove the assertion, submits. Enough education to enable a laboring-man to calculate the amount of his wages, and to verify the entries and summing of his pass-book, is necessary to prevent his being cheated by unscrupulous men. A vast number of the colored people are now educated to that extent, with great advantage to the better understanding between employer and employé. If the latter can comprehend simple accounts, there will be little difficulty in the settlement of his wages; but it is difficult to explain figures to the ignorant man, who, in most cases, imagines himself defrauded, simply because he can not comprehend. Persons who have to do with working-men, white or black, will readily agree that there is tenfold more trouble in adjusting accounts with those who are illiterate than with those who have even rudimental education.

The opportunities of the blacks for obtaining education in the South are abundant, greater, indeed, in many places than those in reach of the whites. In the State wherein the writer resides, each county is divided into school districts of convenient size, each with self-contained power of subdivision, under certain conditions: these districts are autonomous under general State laws; they decide for themselves, by popular vote, the amount of tax they are willing to pay respectively for the purpose of education, which tax is collected by the revenue collector as other taxes are; they elect each three directors to manage the scholastic affairs and funds, selection of teachers, etc. In vast numbers of these districts the blacks largely outnumber the whites, and elect not only magistrates, constables, etc., but also school directors, and in school matters the white element is utterly disregarded, except