The Southern workman Volume 35 - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 Excerpt: ...like this, as though it were made of buildings and property, but a plant is not a dead collection of bricks or barns. A plant is a living growth and must grow from its own root; and the roots of the plant of Hampton lie in the self-effacement and fidelity of the founder, transmitted like the sap to the first tender life of the growing work and now expanding into the foliage of a great school fit to be set amid the multitudinous blooming of this effulgent spring. And what was it that made this man a strong foundation for a great plant? Many fortunate instances of his career conspired to make him a leader of men. A missionary home; a glimpse in boyhood of the education of a backward race, a wise college teacher, three years of war, two years among the freedmen--all these made a straight path--as we now see--from the Hilo school in Hawaii to the school at Hampton. Much of his teaching also was of a prophetic type. He was among the first to put the whole man to school and to recognize the hand, the head, and the heart as equal partners in education. He taught not only the black race but all races the moral uses of industrial efficiency, and the self-respect to be gained even by the humblest hand worker when, as Booker Washington said, he does a common thing in an uncommon way. How timely is this gospel of work! What is the matter with great numbers of prosperous people who have lost their initiative and energy and are afflicted with satiety and ennui? The matter is that they have forfeited the instinct for work and are discovering that worklessness means worthlessness and that if they have no work they must make a work of play. What is the matter with the modern labor union that it seems so often blighted with ineffectiveness? The matter is that the suspicion s...