The Industrial College (Article)

The Industrial College (Article)

Discussion of Stowe's mention of free labor

THE INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE. - An esteemed Anti-Slavery friend, in writing to us from Birmingham, England, says: - "I was much pleased with Frederick Douglass' letter to Mrs. Stowe, on his plan for an Industrial School, and the great importance of the Colored People advancing to manual arts, and fastening themselves to the white population through 'their cardinal and everyday wants.' I should like to have given an extract from it in our Report, which is just written, but it is linger than usual as it is. . . . . . . . . . I observe the at plan for the School matures. . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Stowe's address to her countrywomen, on the Nebraska Bill, is beautiful; but dearer to me than most of what she has written are her observations on the Free Labor movement, in the long address to the Glasgow ladies. From a multitude of duties, we must choose the nearest to us; and this, certainly, is the duty that especially devolves on the English, seeing that they support the system every day and hour in their commercial transactions. My husband says, if we looked on Slave Produce as poison , we should soon find the way to forego its use. What is it but poison to the slaveholder to help in the support of the system? I think it is because it is so little and simple a measure that we undervalue it; there is a prevailing idea that something great is needed to remove a great evil? I am not, however, finding any fault with the expression in your Report of the devotion and earnest labor required in the Anti-Slavery cause. No evils can be remedied without these."

6.16.1854