INCREASE OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR COLORED AMERICANS
Trades, Business Occupations, and Professions Opening Up in Every Part of the United States—Four Hundred Millions of Acres of Fertile Land Waiting for the Tiller—Agricultural and Mechanical Facilities Multiply—Honor and Profit Within the Grasp of Every Colored American
Nearly every occupation known to the world of endeavor, that is to say: the trades; arts and sciences; commerce; business; manufactures; skilled labor, and others, are now filled by Colored Americans with success and profit.
There are at least one hundred and fifty different occupations and professions utilized by Colored Americans, and not a single occupation can be mentioned or thought of that is not open to them.
One colored citizen in any business, occupation, or profession, means another one, and the field grows more extensive every year, with the advantages offered by institutions of learning, trade and mechanical schools and colleges, and every industry represented by an institution of learning.
The Colored American is to be found in the Army and Navy of the country, and the walks of life which are not menial are so various that one is almost tempted to disbelieve the evidence of the record.
There are 17 State Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges in the United States, and in all of them, the Colored American stands on a par with the other races, often at the head of his class.
Distributed through the various States, are one hundred and eighty-four special Normal and Industrial schools of the highest class, specially maintained for the benefit of the Colored Americans.
To these add 14 schools of law, medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy, and it will be seen that the colored citizen has opportunities within easy reach.
If he does not want to fit himself for a high position, then the training in the public schools gives him an insight into business which makes him the equal of any other race in the struggle for existence.
We must put the Colored American upon the same basis, or foundation, as the other races, and in doing so, and giving him the same advantages, it is most astonishing to find that he is improving along the same line, and in the same ratio as the other races. That is, the Colored citizen is the intellectual equal of the other races, when given equal opportunities and advantages.
It must be admitted, to be strictly just, that without advantages of education or uplifting environment, the races are also equal in ignorance and prejudice. A perusal of any of our great daily newspapers easily demonstrates this as a truth.
TRAINING SCHOOLS FOR WOMEN
There are 36 institutions for the education of Colored women, and in addition, there are 63 Training schools for nurses conducted by Colored Americans.
It has been proved numberless times by actual experience, under the most trying circumstances, that our Colored women make the very tenderest of nurses. In these training schools, are to be found the most important factors in the improvement of the health of our Colored Americans. Indeed, their services are so valuable that they are not limited to their own race.
At the close of the Civil war only five per cent of our Colored Americans could read and write. In the year 1900, the number had increased to 55.5 per cent, and in 1910, the number reached 69.5 per cent. This is an astonishing increase in education, and it proves the reason why our Colored Americans are forging to the front in the arts and sciences, trade, commerce, and the professions. It is stupendous progress when we consider that scarcely two generations were required to bring about this uplift of an entire race. It takes the banner of racial improvement.
It appears that the manufacturing and mechanical pursuits are very attractive to our Colored Americans, the increase during the last ten years being about 40 per cent. If we may make the comparison, it is on record that 62 and ²⁄₁₀ per cent of all our Colored Americans are engaged in profitable occupations, whereas, there are forty-eight and six-tenths of the White Americans so engaged.
TRADE AND MANUFACTURING PURSUITS
The employment of Colored Americans in domestic and personal service is becoming less and less every year, under the influence of education, and is being changed into trade and transportation, mechanical and manufacturing pursuits. This means as plainly as anything, that our Colored Americans have found opportunities, and that they are taking advantage of them. And where there have been opportunities to permit such a transformation, there must be others equally as advantageous and numerous—that is a law of trade and of progress. One business or occupation successfully carried on always begets another.
THE JEW, THE IRISHMAN AND THE ITALIAN
In considering the various occupations, trades, etc., in which our Colored Americans are engaged, the locality must be taken into account. The colored man, like the Jew, the Irishman, and the Italian, meets with more prejudice in one than in another locality, and he must govern his occupation in a great measure by that prejudice, until he is strong enough to overcome it, and intelligent enough to find a way to overcome it.
There are many who hold that the Colored American in the South finds less opposition and prejudice against him in the trades and occupations than in the North. There is less also in the East than in the West, except that in the Middle West, or the northern portion of Mississippi Valley, where there is less prejudice against the employment of Colored Americans outside the large cities where the trades unions prevail and control. Owing to this diminution of prejudice in the Middle West, the number of Colored Americans in that part of the country is increasing, likewise improving.
In the South, it is said, the differences between the two races is not so much prejudice against employment, as a political idea that the Colored Americans are on the way to obliterate the color line.
Notwithstanding this opposition, the Colored American readily finds room for his labor where he would be impeded in the North and West from the opposition of the great labor unions, the great aim of which is material progress and not intellectual.
It is for the Colored American, therefore, to govern his choice of a business, trade, or profession by the locality in which he lives or purposes remaining during his natural life. In that selection, he is afforded advantages to rise to any limit of perfection and thus obtain profit from his talents and capacity.
THE SKILLED WORKMAN
The man who limits himself to become a skilled workman, or a successful tradesman anywhere, must drop his personal grievances, and not attempt to father the evils and troubles of the race upon himself.
Who cares about the downtrodden condition of Ireland? The Irishman who is constantly calling attention to the heel of the oppressor upon his neck, makes a poor workman and remains stationary in the lower level.
The Jew who talks about the sufferings of his race receives but little sympathy because he is referring to ancient history. So it is with the others and so it is with everybody who attempts to take upon his own shoulders the ills and burdens of the whole. In the first place, it is not his business, and in the second place, people around him are fighting their way up, while he is always looking down to see how far he must fall, and he gets dizzy and does fall.
It is an old but true saying applicable to Colored Americans as it is applied to everybody else: “Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone.”
There is one subject of the greatest importance to Colored Americans, because the opportunities are enormous, but they will be lost in the course of time, and can never be regained.
That subject is the land question; the farm problem.
It is almost like sounding a tocsin to repeat what everybody is saying, every economist urging, and every civic reformer giving as the remedy for overcrowded cities, and a cure for vice and crime: “Back to the farm.”
In the “Wise man’s philosophy,” every Colored American is advised to become a land owner. Get an acre, two acres, ten acres, twenty acres, forty acres, and so on. Why? There are two good reasons why:
1. Every man must have a home of some kind unless he prefers to be a tramp or a beggar with his hand held out for pennies.
2. There is no possible uplift without being a producer of something, and land offers the easiest solution of the production problem.
FORTUNES TO BE MADE
The enormous markets of the country in our great cities, make such a heavy demand upon production, that the commonest vegetables and fruit are brought from great distances at a high cost of transportation. Within reach of every populous center, there is to be found vacant land that could be made productive with very little labor, and the result would be profitable, for the supply must keep up with the demand. But out in the vast territories of the Mississippi Valley, there are fortunes to be made in producing cereals, cotton, tobacco, live stock, butter, poultry, and fruit. There is an unlimited field, and every one who has ventured into it finds a large reward in a good bank account. A man cannot begin and then, when he gets tired, lie down in the furrow and expect nature to pull him out. It never has and it never will as many know to their cost.
It is estimated, that in the Mississippi Valley and its adjoining territory, outside of mountain tops and rivers and lakes, there are in the markets, four hundred million acres of land as fertile as the valley of the river Nile. It is beyond the reach of present railroad transportation and therefore it has been left untilled.
It matters little whether this enormous quantity of land exists or whether it is exaggerated by one-half, it is a fact that millions upon millions of acres of land are left untilled and can be had for small sums of money. There are lands in Texas as an illustration, which can be purchased for from one to four dollars an acre, with forty years to pay for it in. This is not only the case in Texas, but cheap land can be had even in the State of Illinois, or New York. In the great corn belt, the farmers raise corn only, and even buy and bring their butter, eggs and fresh vegetables from Chicago or St. Louis. Whoever heard of such a thriftless condition? It is true, corn pays, but there is such a thing as getting too much of one thing and not enough of another.
Investigation and inquiry shows that if a man should start a small vegetable garden anywhere, on rented land, and supply the corn barons with vegetables, eggs and butter, he would make a good profit and get a large trade.
The idea sought to be conveyed is, that by taking advantage of a demand where there is no supply, there is an opportunity to be seized without arguing about it. It is there.
The advent of the motor track, which runs into localities fifty or a hundred miles distant, carrying from five to ten tons of a load, and trailing as much more, offers an opportunity for several workers to club together and carry their products to market at small expense.
Our agricultural and mechanical colleges are turning their attention in that direction, and preparing to fill the field. But it is a large field and can not be fully occupied in a hundred years to come.
It is worth thinking about when a Colored American is in doubt what opportunity to seize.
The main object in every man’s life, if he has any manhood and intelligence, is to produce something. He may use his hands or he may use his brain, but the result is that something is produced, and whatever is produced possesses some value.
THE FIELD OF OPPORTUNITY
Ten per cent of our population is made up of Colored Americans. This number creates a demand that it would be profitable to supply, but when it is considered that the other ninety per cent, or ninety millions of people are constantly demanding something, and take everything that comes along, there is an everlasting field of opportunity into which every Colored American can fit in some capacity if he makes the slightest effort.