II.]
To expect the cooeperation of the white working classes in thus
elevating the colored race turned out to be a delusion. They reached
the conclusion that in making their headway against capital they had a
better chance without Negroes than with them. White mechanics of the
North not only refused to accept colored boys as apprentices, but
would not even work for employers who persisted in hiring Negroes.
Generally refused by the master mechanics of Cincinnati, a colored
cabinet-maker finally found an Englishman who was willing to hire him,
but the employees of the shop objected, refusing to allow the newcomer
even to work in a room by himself.[1] A Negro who could preach in a
white church of the North would have had difficulty in securing the
contract to build a new edifice for that congregation. A colored man
could then more easily get his son into a lawyer's office to learn law
than he could "into a blacksmith shop to blow the bellows and wield
the sledge hammer."[2]
[Footnote 1: _The Liberator_, June 13, 1835.]
[Footnote 2: Douglass, _Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass_,
p. 248.]
Left then in a quandary as to what they should do, northern Negroes
hoped to use the then popular "manual labor schools" to furnish the
facilities for both practical and classical education.
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