Some people here in America think that some of us make too much ado over the matter of industrial training for the Negro. I wish some of the skeptics might go to Europe and see what races that are years ahead of us are doing there in that respect. I shall not take the time here to outline what is being done for men in the direction of industrial training in Europe, but I shall give some account of what I saw being done for women in England.
Mrs. Washington and I visited the Agricultural College for women, at Swanley, England, where we found forty intelligent, cultivated women, who were most of them graduates from high schools and colleges, engaged in studying practical agriculture, horticulture, dairying and poultry raising. We found the women in the laboratory and classrooms, studying agricultural chemistry, botany, zo?logy, and applied mathematics, and we also saw these same women in the garden, planting vegetables, trimming rose bushes, scattering[Pg 72] manure, growing grapes and raising fruit in the hot-houses and in the field.
As another suggestion for our people, I might mention that while I was in England I knew of one of the leading members of Parliament leaving his duties in that body for three days to preside at a meeting of the National Association of Poultry Raisers, which was largely attended by people from all parts of the United Kingdom.
In the trip which Mrs. Washington and I made through Holland, we saw much which may be of interest to you. It has been said that, God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland. For one to fully realize the force of this one must see Holland for himself. One of the best ways to see the interior of Holland, and the peasant life, is to take a trip, as we did, on one of the canal boats plying between Antwerp, in Belgium, and Rotterdam, in Holland.
It was especially interesting for me to compare the rural life in Holland with the life of the country coloured people in the South. Holland has been made what it is very largely by the unique system of dykes or levees which have been built there to keep out the water of the ocean, and thus enable the people to use to advantage all the land there is in that small country.
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The great lesson which our coloured farmers can learn from the Dutch, is how to make a living from a small plot of ground well cultivated, instead of from forty or fifty acres poorly tilled. I have seen a whole family making a comfortable living by cultivating two acres of land there, while our Southern farmers, in too many cases, try to till fifty or a hundred acres, and find themselves in debt at the end of the year. In all Holland, I do not think one can find a hundred acres of waste land; every foot of land is covered with grass, vegetables, grain or fruit trees. Another advantage which our Southern farmers might have in trying to pattern after the farmers of Holland, would be that they would not be obliged to go to so much additional expense for horse or mule power. Most of the cultivating of the soil there is done with a hoe and spade.
I saw the people of Holland on Sunday and on week days, but I did not see a single Dutch man, woman or child in rags. There were practically no beggars and no very poor people. They owe their prosperity, too, very largely to their thorough and intelligent cultivation of the soil.
Next to the thorough tilling of the soil, the thing of most interest there, from which the coloured[Pg 74] people in America may learn a lesson, is the fine dairying which has made Holland famous throughout the world. Even the poorest family has its herd of Holstein cattle, and they are the finest specimens of cattle that it has ever been my pleasure to see. To watch thousands of these cattle grazing on the fields is worth a trip to Holland. As the result of the attention which they have given to breeding Holstein cattle, Dutch butter and cheese are in demand all through Europe. The most ordinary farmer there has a cash income as the result of the sale of his butter and milk.
Many of these people make more out of the wind that blows over the fields than our poor Southern people make out of the soil. The old-fashioned windmill is to be seen on every farm. This mill not only pumps the water for the live stock, but, in many cases, is made to operate the dairy, to saw the wood, to grind the grain, and to run the heavy machinery. These people are, however, not unlike our Southern people in one respect, and that is in having their women and children work in the fields. This, I think, is done in a larger measure even than in the South among the coloured people.
An element of strength in the farming and [Pg 75]dairying interests of these people is to be found in the fact that many of the farmers have received a college or university training. After this they take a special course in agriculture and dairying. This is as it should be. Our people in the South will prosper in proportion as............