The October Collection by M. C. Strachan

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Oct 4, 1906

The October Collection

By M. C. Strachan

The colored brethren and sisters in the South look forward with a great deal of interest to the coming October collection, and we are praying that the thirteen thousand dollars of last year will be more than doubled this year. If this can be done, then not only can our mission school work be strengthened and extended, but it will be possible to add to the industrial features of the Oakwood school, the only institution we have among us for the training of colored workers for this neglected field.

We must hasten to put our training-school on vantage-ground, so that the colored laborer who is to go out into the work can be taught to accommodate himself to the conditions which demand the service of his head, his heart, and his hand, at his very door. Our colored youth should not be handicapped as they go out into the field. Their training should fit them for the peculiar conditions which they will meet in the field.

It is a grievous wrong to leave the Oakwood school to do the work of teaching the spelling-book and grammar, without providing it with the facilities with which to operate the different industrial features which would give to our colored youth a peculiar fitness for the work in the field. The hand, the eye, and the brain of our youth should be trained while he is learning to talk, read, spell, write, and cipher.

Various industrial features must be added to the Oakwood school, and the students should be taught to labor, and taught also to think with their labor, and to direct their labor by thought, and by labor increase their thought. Such manual labor will not only give strength to mind and heart, but it will also revolutionize the prevailing false notions and feelings in regard to the question of labor.

Labor has too long been divorced from such ideas as are herein set forth; but I believe it is possible, with the proper facilities and intelligent management, to instil the correct principles into the minds of our colored youth, and they can be made to see that the divine stamp has been placed upon honest toil, and that civilization in the future will make of its working men also thinking men, and by its processes of education, will make its working men cultivated men.

Workers trained in this manner and then sent forth into the field could accommodate themselves to the situation they meet from time to time, and their labors would give better results; but this can not be done now, as the Oakwood school is unprepared to do it. We trust that our brethren throughout the United States will do their very best in this October collection, and possibly our hopes may then be realized. M. C. Strachan.