cunning of intellect into some knack or aptitude which gives its possessor an advantage in productive industry. But the skill to use tools and direct machinery is a superior gift. Invention is fast discounting the value of special gifts of manual dexterity. Science is the seed-corn, while artisan skill—yes, even art itself—is only the baked bread.
The first step above brute instinct takes place when man looks beyond things as he sees them existing before him, and begins to consider their possibilities; he adds to his external seeing an internal seeing. The world assumes a new aspect; each object appears to be of larger scope than in its present existence, for there is a sphere of possibility environing it,—a sphere which the sharpest animal eyes of lynx or eagle cannot see, but which man, endowed with this new faculty of inward sight, perceives at once. To this insight into possibilities there loom up uses and adaptations, transformations and combinations, in a long series, stretching into the infinite behind each finite real thing. The bodily eye sees the real objects, but cannot see the infinite trails; they are invisible except to the inward eye of the mind.
What we call directive power on the part of man, his combining and organizing capacity, all rests on this ability to see beyond the real things before the senses to the ideal possibilities invisible to the brute. The more clearly man sees these ideals, the more perfectly he can construct for his behoof another set of conditions than those in which he finds himself.
The school, in so far as it gives intellectual education, aids the pupil by science and literature. Science collects about each subject all its phases of existence under different conditions; it teaches the student to look at a thing as a whole, and see in it not only what is visible before his senses, but also what is invisible,—what is not realized, but remains dormant or potential. The scientifically educated laborer, therefore, is of a higher type than the mere "hand laborer," because he has learned to see in each thing its possibilities. He sees each thing in the perspective of its history. Here, then, in the educated laborer, we have a hand belonging to a brain that directs, or that can intelligently comprehend, a detailed statement of an ideal to be worked out. The laborer and the overseer, or "boss," are united in one man. Hence it is that the productive power of the educated laborer is so great.
The school may indefinitely reinforce the effect of this general education by adding manual training and other industrial branches, taking care to make the instruction scientific; for it is science that gives scope and power of adaptation to new conditions. The instrument of modern civilization is the labor-saving machine. The negro cannot share in the white man's freedom unless he can learn to manage machinery. Nothing but drudgery remains for a race that cannot understand applied science. The productive power of a race that works only with its hands is so small that only one in the hundred can live in
race, if other conditions are equal. Then he will have to submit to the stress of modern competition. The skilled white mechanic protects himself by his trade union; into that he is not likely to admit the negro mechanic. If the skilled negro mechanics form their own trade unions, the superiority of the members must be of the most striking character to create a preponderating influence in their favor in the mind of the employer, who naturally leans towards individuals of his own race. Let the negro unions work at cheaper rates and the white mechanics be forced to come down to the same wages, the former would at once be exposed to those destructive conditions to which I have referred. These are the influences that diminish the prospect of the negro taking an active part in the manufacturing development of the South, except in those branches of labor which are distinctly below such as require special skill and training.—P. A. B.
