Читать книгу: «The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918», страница 31

BOOK REVIEWS

The Virgin Islands of the United States of America. By Luther K. Zabriskie, Former Vice-Consul of the United States at St. Thomas. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1918. Pp. 339. Price $4.00.

This is an historical and descriptive work containing facts, figures and resources about a country ninety per cent of the population of which belongs to the Negro race. It is a detailed account of practically every interest of concern to the tourist, the merchant, the geographer and the historian. It is made still more valuable by its one hundred and nine illustrations and two maps which clearly demonstrate what the United States Government has received in return for the purchase price of $25,000,000.

The first effort of the author is to give a short sketch of the history of the Virgin Islands. He then takes up the question of purchasing the islands. In discussing these political and historic questions, however, the author is too brief and neglectful of important problems which the student of history would like to know. The author no doubt carefully avoided these questions for the reasons that he was then and still is in the diplomatic service of the United States. The book is chiefly concerned with the actual government of the group, the occupations of the people, and the place of the islands in the commerce of the world.

Largely interested, therefore, in those things which generally concern a consul, Mr. Zabriskie has written a valuable commercial treatise. He explains such things as steamer service, harbor facilities, banking, currency, sanitation, transportation, cattle raising, agriculture, manufactures, imports and exports. The last part of the book is exclusively devoted to the most recent history of the Virgin Islands. There is a discussion of the sale negotiations, the convention between the United States and Denmark, the announcement of the sale, the formal transfer of the islands, the farewell service and the temporary government provided. This part of the book is not merely descriptive. It contains the actual documents as in the case of the convention between the United States and Denmark, which is given in the English and Danish languages.

Your Negro Neighbor. By Benjamin Brawley. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1918. Pp. 100. Price 60 cents.

In this book Dean Brawley does not reach the standard set in some of his other works, but he has here some facts and suggestions which are worth while. The book begins with an appeal to the people of the United States in behalf of the Negroes who, despite their many grievances, are now fighting to make the world safe for democracy although their own country is not safe for them. In directing these remarks to the citizens of this country the author gives in detail the Negroes' grounds for complaint and shows how because of the unjust treatment of the blacks in the United States this country has become an object of suspicion in South America, where the color line is not known.

The second chapter of the book is a statement of the Negroes' place in history. This, however, is too brief and unscientific to be of much value to one in quest of facts of Negro history. It seems unnecessary here also to devote a special chapter to such isolated facts of history in writing a book dealing with a social problem.

The chapter bearing on the Negro as an industrial factor contains interesting material taken from statistical reports. The author discusses such questions as the reliability of Negro laborers, the antagonism of the labor unions, housing conditions, and the like. Taking up the institution of lynching, Dean Brawley goes over old ground but gives striking facts to portray this blot on the American civilization. Then without showing any close connection between the two the author takes up Negro education since the Civil War. Here we see another failure to treat an important question intensively and scientifically. He then gives a sketch of Joanna P. Moore, a missionary of much worth, takes up certain critics and their fallacies, asserts the possibility of the race and closes with a plea for a moralist.

This in brief is the work recently produced by a man who is undertaking to address the American people on almost every phase of Negro life and history. This work, however, is merely the author's observations or impressions of the Negroes among the whites. The very work itself shows that Dean Brawley is undertaking too much. He is best as a literary critic but in sociology and history his works do not measure up to standard.

Orville Holliday.

The American Cavalryman. By Henry F. Downing. The Neale Publishing Company, New York, 1917. Pp. 306. Price $1.50.

This is a Liberian romance written by Henry F. Downing, a colored man who evidently spent some years in Liberia. The diction is good, the style pleasing, and the story interesting, but it is not a sympathetic portrayal of African character and customs. It is written from a white man's point of view and shows a tendency to regard the white man's civilization of today as the only true standard. He shows, however, that he does not always approve of the European method of dealing with the African. While describing an unequal contest between the cavalryman and natives, he says: "But alas! in war, as in finance and love, victory does not always smile upon the most deserving. She usually favors the numerically stronger side; that is, unless the less numerous party is armed with quick firing guns, dumdum bullet, and other harmless weapons that Europeans think it criminal to employ against one another, but cheerfully use to Christianize and civilize the poor helpless black African."

The chief value of the work lies in its portrayal of native customs, some of which are beautiful, some wholly barbarous and all more or less tinctured with superstition. But, when we pause to think how rife superstition still is among all so-called civilized peoples, we conclude that it is a belief hard to eradicate from human nature. Even in our own country people were hanged as witches a little over a hundred years ago.

While cunning and shrewdness are shown to hold an exalted place in the native character, still lying and cheating, when discovered, are severely punished. Loyalty to friends and fidelity to pledges are held in great esteem. Human life does not seem to be valued very highly judging from the readiness with which a chief extinguished it by having all disloyal or disobedient followers beheaded at a moment's notice. It is evident throughout, however, that human nature is the same in civilized and uncivilized peoples.

There is no attempt to portray the history of Liberia in these pages, a thing which in my opinion would have made the work stronger and far more valuable. It does give a fair picture of Monrovia, the capital city, and presents, to some extent, the need for wise and just administration and the necessity of funds to improve the city and endow it with parks, libraries, and places of amusement. The value of the American constabulary force is felt and the importance of increased communications, union and helpfulness between the government and the tribes are emphasized. Altogether it is a work worth writing and worth reading, although it does not give enough prominence to the nobler traits of the native character.

Ida Gibbs Hunt.

Education for Life. By Francis G. Peabody, Vice-President of the Board of Trustees. The Story of Hampton Institute, told in Connection with the Fiftieth Anniversary of the School. Doubleday, Page and Company, New York, 1918. Pp. 393. Price $2.50.

This work has for its background a brief account of the Negro during the Civil War and the Reconstruction, serving as the occasion for the beginning of the successful career of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute. The actual history of the institution appears under such captions as the beginnings of Hampton, the years of promise, the coming of the Indian, the years of fulfilment, the end of an era, the coming of Frissell, and the expansion of Hampton. The author has endeavored also to explain the relations of Hampton and the South and to forecast the future possibilities of this school. The work is well printed and beautifully illustrated.

In the Springfield Republican of July 6, 1918, A. L. Dawes said in her review of this work:

"Hampton institute has chosen a fitting occasion, the completion of fifty years of life and work, to issue the history of its achievement. It comes at the end of one distinct epoch, and the beginning of another, when it is of much value to consider the results which make a foundation for new progress. It is a record of wonderful achievement, and this amazing institution may well be proud of it. We are led from the huddled camp of contrabands in 1868 to the allied armies in 1918; from a crowd of men and women without a past and seemingly without a future—even a possibility only to the eyes of patriotism and faith—we are led in these pages to the ranks of efficient soldiers and brilliant officers fighting with southern men whose grandfathers called their grandfathers slaves!

"Faith has become pride and patriotism has become an individual possession in a resurrected race. The book might well have been called by that title—'The Resurrection of a Race'—but its distinguished author, in calling it 'Education for Life,' has chosen to consider Hampton's double mission to the race and to the world in connection with education. This latter aspect of its work makes the book particularly pertinent at this time of world reconstruction. This attractive volume will be read with interest and satisfaction by the many widespread friends of Hampton Institute, and it will also be sought with eagerness by another audience, the large public, which is seeking new theories of education for a new world. This group will find it a clear and compelling statement of a new philosophy of education worked out there, heretofore neither recognized nor understood outside, but limited either to manual training or vocational education.

"Hampton has been fortunate in its biographer. It is a labor of love, by Rev. Francis G. Peabody, one of the few remaining trustees whose service covers its three epochs and whose friendship has inspired its three principals. Perhaps no one else has so entered into the life of the place. He has made himself one with pupils and faculty and trustees and public in such friendly fashion that he may rightly say 'we' from any point of view. His many readers will look for noteworthy diction amounting to a new use of words, grace of speech and charm of phrase, a startling power of insight, a passion for social service and the revelation of the spiritual in all human affairs, with the inspiration which compels. These things Dr. Peabody's readers expect of him, but it might have been questioned whether he could write a history. In this book he has shown us that history is the story of life, and he has used all these abilities to discover and fitly express the life which has become Hampton Institute. Not the least of all his skill has appeared in what he has left out—so that the book is never dull though it is crowded with facts. Everything is here that is needed to answer the questions of any objector, and what is more difficult, of any friend. The illustrations are not only interesting, but valuable footnotes to history, and there are a number of collections of statistics at the end of the book of incomparable worth to the student of these subjects; we cannot enough commend their range and selection.

"Among the rest, we notice a just commendation of the Hampton Club in this city. All through the book explanation forestalls objection, while old friends find new information and new reasons for half-understood methods. Such are the accumulating exposition of the Hampton idea, and the description of circumstances and resources which condition all action, and determine the measure of progress. Those who know and love this wonderful place will be gratified at the stress laid on the 'Hampton spirit' of service as the explanation of its success, as well as the constant recognition of the spiritual in the methods as well as the aims of this hothouse of missionary effort. No one familiar with the school would have found the record complete without the stressing of this element at once its motive and its life. Few could have so well defined that elusive but forceful thing—'the Hampton spirit.'

"It needed all the writer's ability to set forth fitly the ardent Armstrong and the able Frissell—witness his success in this characterization of them:

"'Never were two administrative officers more unlike each other. Armstrong was impetuous, magnetic, volcanic; Frissell was reserved, sagacious, prudent. The gifts of the one were those of action; the strength of the other was in discretion.'

"He has given us all fresh knowledge of both men. By his choice and collocation of extracts he shows Armstrong not only to have had the enthusiastic impact on his world known to all men, but also a forelooking philosophy which guided him to a definite end. He brings out the long line of unusual circumstances which prepared him for this work, and in repeating the vision in which like a Hebrew prophet the young officer was called to teach the Negroes, the writer shows that work to have been a definite growth. No one who knew Samuel C. Armstrong can ever forget him, or ever describe him, but not one of his wide circle ever failed to be moved by any contact with him to put forth his own powers to their full measure.

"Dr. Peabody does full justice to the help and service of the Freedmen's Bureau, which from the first linked the institution with the government, and to the American Missionary Association, which made its beginning possible. He further shows many missionary and philanthropic sources upon which it has always drawn. If he halts a little in enthusiastic justice to Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, who began this crusade, he has evidently done it best—an unexpected best it must be said, from a Harvard professor! Samuel Armstrong was moved by his Christian impulses and missionary inheritance to help these needy people, but there could hardly have been a more unpromising opportunity.

"The task which Armstrong took up was greater than the present generation can imagine. Dr. Peabody has recognized this by a clear and dispassionate description of the situation in 1868, an analysis of the greatest value to the present-day reader. Armstrong's high courage and faith brought him to the day when he saw the race well on the high road to its place in the sun, before he dropped his mantle on the shoulders of his successor. It is doubtful, perhaps, whether he saw clearly how much he had done nor how firmly he had established his principles of the necessity of work and respect for it. Dr. Peabody brings out very distinctly this his great achievement, but it is superfluous to quote from a story which everyone will want to read for himself.

"Mindful of the fact that education depends upon personal contact, this book deals largely with the work of the two outstanding personalities, who have made the institution what it is. Hollis Burke Frissell, who took up the work of principal when Armstrong left it twenty-five years ago—'Dr. Frissell' as everyone knew him—proved to be in some ways one of the great men of his time, certainly so if you give a high value to education. As one of his close friends has said of him, 'He invariably grew to the measure of the stature that his work called for.'

"If Dr. Peabody has failed at all in the hard task of describing one in whom the full round of qualities blended into the white light of simplicity it is perhaps in not making his virility sufficiently evident. The first and last impression Frissell made was of lovableness, and he was so intent on getting work done that he never cared to be known as its author. Therefore, even his friends did not always discover his strength or sometimes his greatness. He carried on the school to a phenominal success and he developed more than one beginning to a definite policy.

"In the latter part of Gen. Armstrong's career a simple occurrence changed the whole character of the school. From it the school developed into a world institution. When the government asked Gen. Armstrong to continue the education of seventeen Indians already begun by Capt. Pratt, the task was undertaken as a civil and Christian duty, but thus was started a government policy, and an educational experiment which, carried on and broadened to other races under Dr. Frissell, has changed the face of our own land and altered the conditions of backward races the world over. Because of this great historical fact, Hampton should always keep up its Indian department, which witnesses to the beginning of its world relation.

"The passing of time after the Civil War and emancipation also made possible to Dr. Frissell the development of another policy, that of the unification of the North and the South. This was something very near his heart, and for it he started the southern education board—which was his creation more fully than Dr. Peabody explains—the Jeans board, much of the southern work of the Rockefeller or general educational board and other well-known agencies to this end. And to accomplish the reconciliation of the races and the regions he gave the vital force which finally cost him his life. The future will render this service its due meed of praise, as the writer so well sets forth, a service carried on in the midst of misunderstanding and sharp criticism.

"Dr. Peabody has devoted himself especially on bringing out the growth of Dr. Frissell's carefully-thought-out educational ideals, whereby he added the value of work to the necessity of it in a complete education. Under Frissell, as is so well shown, Hampton entered on its second stage, its relation to the philosophy of education. Men came from all over the world to study the question of the training of native races. Inspired by his work, Frissell saw the possibilities on every side, and looked far into the future. Thus, as has been said, his set purpose broadened the school to include Porto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, and even Africa, making it what he loved to call it, a 'race laboratory.' That he succeeded appears in the constant stream of officials, educators and philanthropists from all over the globe coming to Hampton that they may study and copy its methods. The vision of the future which was given to Dr. Frissell was not so much a vision of a new race, as with Armstrong; it was for Frissell a vision of a new humanity.

"It is this vision of 'Education for life' which Dr. Peabody brings out so clearly—both its meaning and its value. The oldest friends of Hampton have hardly understood it before, so well does he explain it, and so thoroughly does he show that its purpose is to make men and women. Artisans and skilled workmen come out of it, but its first purpose is to develop individuals and all its interests tend to this end. This explains its limitations also, and answers many complaints. The white teacher who recently left because there was 'no future' for her own career; the educator who complained of a system which continued to educate on general lines when some vocational diversion would be more profitable; those who support the objections of the 'Crisis' that Hampton is not a university—all these critics fail to understand the new philosophy of Hampton and its dominant human motive. It would be a great mistake if, as appears to be hinted here, any concessions should be made to the demand of these last critics, whose aims would destroy the whole idea of Hampton, and its value as a world experiment. The author of the book and distinguished student of social ethics so strongly brings out its claim to a new education, for a new world that (to repeat) the reader cannot fail to inquire if this is the solution of the future in our forthcoming new world.

"Dr. Peabody brings us to the beginning of the third era and pays a deserved tribute to the new principal. Rev. James E. Gregg, who enters on the task at a critical time. Just now, when the race question is acute both here and everywhere, and when the new democracy is demanding a new education, there could hardly be a greater opportunity for the man or the school.

This inadequate sketch of a most informing and inspiring book may well be closed with a few paragraphs which sum up the aims of Hampton Institute:

"'In short, the fundamental issue in all education for life is between a training to make things and a training to make character. Is a man to be taught carpentering primarily that a house shall be well built, or that in the building the man himself shall get intelligence, self-mastery and skill?'

"'The principle was definitely accepted that these shops and classes were maintained, not as sources of profit, but as factors in an education for life. Young men and women were not to be regarded as satisfactory products of Hampton Institute because each could do one thing and get good wages for doing it, but because each had been trained to apply mind and will to the single task, and had made it not only a way of living, but a way of life.'

"'Trade education as conceived gradually developed and finally realized at Hampton Institute is a development of the person through the trade, rather than a development of the trade through the person. The product is not primarily goods, but goodness; not so much profit as personality.... These students become delivered from the benumbing conditions of modern industry by the emancipating and humanizing effect of the Hampton scheme of industrial training, and those who are thus initiated in a large view of their small opportunities are likely to find their way, not only to those occupations, which are still open at the top, but to those resources of happiness which are discovered when work has become a vocation, and labor has contributed to life.'"