[Footnote 1:  The Liberator, July 4, 1835.]

[Footnote 2:  Minutes and Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color, p. 34; and Monroe, Cyclopaedia of Education, vol. iv., p. 406.]

This work was more successful in the State of New York.  There, too, the cause was championed by the abolitionists.[1] After the emancipation of all Negroes in that commonwealth by 1827 the New York Antislavery Society devoted more time to the elevation of the free people of color.  The rapid rise of the laboring classes in this swiftly growing city made it evident to their benefactors that they had to be speedily equipped for competition with white mechanics or be doomed to follow menial employments.  The only one of that section to offer Negroes anything like the opportunity for industrial training, however, was Gerrit Smith.[2] He was fortunate in having sufficient wealth to carry out the plan.  In 1834 he established in Madison County, New York, an institution known as the Peterboro Manual Labor School.  The working at trades was provided not altogether to teach the mechanic arts, but to enable the students to support themselves while attending school.  As a compensation for instruction, books, room, fuel, light, and board furnished by the founder, the student was expected to labor four hours daily at some agricultural or mechanical employment “important to his education."[3] The faculty estimated the four hours of labor as worth on an average of about 12-1/2 cents for each student.

[Footnote 1:  Minutes and Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color, p. 25.]

[Footnote 2:  African Repository, vol. x., p. 312.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., vol. x., p. 312.]

Efforts were then being made for the establishment of another institution near Philadelphia.  These endeavors culminated in the above-mentioned benefaction of Richard Humphreys, by the will of whom $10,000 was devised to establish a school for the purpose of instructing “descendants of the African race in school learning in the various branches of the mechanical arts and trades and agriculture."[1] In 1839 members of the Society of Friends organized an association to establish a school such as Humphreys had planned.  The founders believed that “the most successful method of elevating the moral and intellectual character of the descendants of Africa, as well as of improving their social condition, is to extend to them the benefits of a good education, and to instruct them in the knowledge of some useful trade or business, whereby they may be enabled to obtain a comfortable livelihood by their own industry; and through these means to prepare them for fulfilling the various duties of domestic and social life with reputation and fidelity as good citizens and pious men."[2] Directing their attention first to things practical the association purchased in 1839 a piece