Part 66

Clerical Work.--Negroes are given employment as clerks in the government service at Washington, D. C. There is a large number of railway-mail clerks, with salaries ranging from one thousand to fifteen hundred dollars a year. Nashville, Tenn., has three mail clerks who have held their respective routes for more than ten years.

Common Laborers.--This class includes porters, janitors, teamsters, laborers in foundries and factories. The usual wages paid for this class of work is $1 a day.

The barbering and restaurant businesses, toward which the Negro naturally turned just after emancipation, for which their training as home servants seemed especially to fit them, are not so largely followed now owing to the fact that the best talent of the race have entered the professions. Yet, however, in some places the Negro restaurant keeper does a thriving business. In Chicago, Illinois, there were two fine up to date restaurants which did a good business. One of these employed white help exclusively.

The Negro blacksmiths and wheelwrights do a good business, sometimes taking in from $5 to $8 a day.

As shoemakers and repairers, and furniture repairers and silversmiths, the Negro is successful, and is kept busy. In painting there is a colored contractor in Nashville who does business on a large scale. He is proprietor of his own shop, employs a large number of men, and secures the contract for a large number of fine dwellings. His patronage is confined mostly to white people.

Nashville has a steam laundry owned and operated entirely by colored men, and it has a large white patronage. In the rural districts most of the Negroes devote themselves to farming, either working on the farms of others or are themselves proprietors of farms.

Domestic Service.--In this field of labor both men and women are found. The average wages paid the men is $15 a month and board. The women receive from $5 to $12 a month, according to age and work. In addition to their wages they also receive lodging, cast-off clothes, and are trained in matters of household economy and taste. At present there is considerable dissatisfaction and discussion over the state of domestic service. Many Negroes often look upon menial labor as degrading and only enter it from utter necessity, and then as a temporary make-shift. This state of affairs is annoying to employers who find an increasing number of careless and impudent young people who neglect their work, and in some cases show vicious tendencies.

The low schedule for such work is due to two causes: One is, that from custom many Southern families hire help for which they cannot afford to pay much; another reason is that they do not consider the service rendered worth any more. This may not be the open conscious thought of the better elements of such laborers, but it is the unconscious tendency of the present situation, which makes one species of honorable and necessary labor difficult to buy or sell without loss of self-respect on one side or the other.

Day Service.--A large number of single women and housewives work out regularly in families, or take washing into their homes; and, like house servants, are paid by the week, or if they work by the day from 30 to 50 cents a day. This absence of mothers from home not only occasions a neglect of their household duties but also of their children, especially of girls. Aside from house servants and washerwomen, many of the women are seamstresses and readily find employment in white families. Some do a remunerative business in their own homes. The Negro woman is especially successful as a trained nurse, and a considerable number of the brightest and most intelligent among the young women are entering upon that calling. Conclusion.--The closing years of the nineteenth century indicate remarkable advancement on the part of the Negro in all industrial lines; but the twentieth century will doubtless furnish opportunities which will enable him to carry these beginnings to their legitimate fruition.

TOPIC XX.

THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.

BY REV. WILLIAM E. PARTEE, D. D.

WILLIAM E. PARTEE, D. D.

Rev. William E. Partee, D. D., was born at Concord, N. C., of Christian parents in the year 1860 and at an early age placed in the common schools of his native town. He was left an orphan at the age of ten, but by determination and the help of friends he gained an education. When but sixteen years of age he taught a country school. He was graduated from the collegiate and theological departments of Biddle University and was licensed to preach in 1883 and ordained in 1884 by the Presbytery of Catawba and entered upon his life work by serving as pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church at Concord, N. C., for more than three years, among his early playmates and companions.

In the year 1887 he took charge of a mission church and school at Gainesville, Fla., serving acceptably in that work for more than four years and standing faithfully by his people during that memorable epidemic of yellow fever in 1888. In 1892 he was called to the pastorate of Laura Street Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, Fla., which position he occupied for nearly seven years. During two years of that time he was also principal of one of the city graded schools. In 1896 he was sent as commissioner from the Presbytery of East Florida to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at Saratoga.

In 1898 he resigned from his work in Jacksonville to take charge of the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond, Va. Thus he has been engaged for many years in the active work of the ministry, always doing earnest and faithful work and held in high esteem by the people of every community in which he has labored.

He was married in 1886 to Miss Edith I. Smith, of Lynchburg, Va., who proved a worthy and efficient helper in his work, and uncomplainingly shared with him the trials and vicissitudes which fall to the preacher's lot in life for fourteen years. Then the Master called her to rest from her labors.

To form a correct estimate of the Negro as a Christian we must take into account the "depths from which he came."

Back of his forty years of freedom lie more than two hundred years of bondage, in which he was forced to obey the will of another absolutely and kept in ignorance. All real manhood was repressed and every ambition curbed. Though under the control of the Christian Church and people of the South, and living on the farms and in the homes and families of their masters, mingling in their lives and their society, and subject to their moulding influence, yet, as a rule, the moral principles and qualities necessary to a religious life were not taught him, neither was he encouraged to cultivate them.

There was no lawful marriage, no true home, but husband and wife were the property of a master who used or abused either as he chose; their children grew up under the same conditions and were encouraged or forced into unchastity, lying, stealing and betraying of one another under the teaching that there was no moral wrong to them since they were the property of another who was responsible for their acts. There could be no growth in morals, and there can be no true religion without morals. To say the least they came out of bondage with a dwarfed moral nature, and to this day suffer more or less from the effects of it. The carnality of slavery has not yet ceased to bear fruit, as we all know. Ever and anon it shows itself in those horrible acts which the newspapers report in full.

It takes long and weary years to root out of a race or nation evils that have become fixed in its nature. But while there is much to be deplored as to laxity in morals among the masses there has been constant and steady improvement in this regard. It is no doubt true that any race, kept in bondage under similar conditions, and for the same length of time as the Negro was, would come out of it in no better condition, and would, perhaps, show no better record in forty years than this race has shown, and especially so if that bondage were preceded by heathenism.

Dr. Haygood has said, "The hope of the African race in this country is largely in its pulpit. No people can rise above their religion; no people's religion can rise above the doctrines preached and lived by their ministry."

The Negro began almost unaided and alone in this particular. As to their religion they were very largely left to themselves during slavery. Their ministers were ignorant and unlettered. Many of them were pious, but many were ungodly and unscrupulous. So theirs was a religion largely without the Bible. It consisted of bits of Scripture here and there, of glowing imaginations, of dreams and of superstitions; yet it was the best they knew.

Then many years of freedom had passed by before fully equipped ministers could be provided them. During those years faithful servants of God, unlettered, did their best to be the true religious leaders of the people (all honor to them), but they necessarily came short in many respects and could not carry the people up to the higher plane of religious life.

With these things before our minds we say that the race has shown a remarkable growth in the essentials of true Christian manhood. Their notions may, in some things, be crude; their conceptions of truth may be realistic; they may be more emotional than ethical; they may show many imperfections in their religious development; nevertheless is it true that their religion is their most striking formative characteristic. So susceptible are they that no other influence has had so much to do in shaping their better character, and what they are to become in their future development will be largely determined by their religion.

While in their church and social life there are some elements of evil and superstition, some of which are the inheritance of past ages in the fatherland, while others have been developed in this country by the conditions of life during the years of slavery, still any fairminded person who takes the pains to correctly inform himself will acknowledge that these are being gradually but surely eradicated.

As a Christian he commends himself in his faith and devotion. Though his religion may sometimes be defective in its practical application to the principles of right conduct and living, God, heaven, hell and the judgment day are realities to him. He believes the truths of the Bible to be real, and thus he is sound in the faith so far as he understands it, and that is more than can be said of many who are better informed than he. What a rare thing to find one an infidel! Where can you find a people more susceptible to religious teaching?

The emotional nature is highly developed, and they are quick to respond to whatever appeals to their sympathies and affections. Emotion has its place in religion and is not to be ignored, but to be properly used and controlled and directed. To move any one we must first reach the feelings; if these can be aroused they may develop into a conviction that the subject of them should adopt a given course of action, and he accordingly does so. I am not sure after all that we should seek to repress such to any great extent. It may be a point in his favor, for since he is easily and powerfully impressed by strong appeals, he is the more readily brought under the influence of the wise teacher or leader. It is true in some cases that mere physical excitement is mistaken for being "filled with the spirit," and thus some swing to the extreme in this direction. It is noticeable, however, that this is being rapidly outgrown and more self-control is being practiced. After all it does seem that being easily moved and swayed may furnish the lever by which the wise and prudent may begin to lift them to the higher ground of religious life. No doubt in most cases there is deep down beneath the easily overwrought feelings a true religious disposition, with much spirituality and divine energy.