were sixty students attending the school.  Indian and white children were also admitted.  Among the students there were also adults varying later in number from fifty-six to one hundred and sixteen.[3] This institution became very influential among the Negroes of Canada.  Travelers mentioned the Institute in accounting for the prosperity and good morals of the refugees.[4] Unfortunately, however, after the year 1855 when the school reached its zenith, it began to decline on account of bad feeling probably resulting from a divided management.

[Footnote 1:  Henson, Life of Josiah Henson, pp. 73, 74.]

[Footnote 2:  Henson, Life of Josiah Henson, p. 115.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., p. 117.]

[Footnote 4:  Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 309; and Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 249, 250.]

Studying these facts concerning the manual labor system of education, the student of education sees that it was not generally successful.  This may be accounted for in various ways.  One might say that colored people were not desired in the higher pursuits of labor and that their preparation for such vocations never received the support of the rank and file of the Negroes of the North.  They saw then, as they often do now, the seeming impracticability of preparing themselves for occupations which they apparently had no chance to follow.  Moreover, bright freedmen were not at first attracted to mechanical occupations.  Ambitious Negroes who triumphed over slavery and made their way to the North for educational advantages hoped to enter the higher walks of life.  Only a few of the race had the foresight of the advocates of industrial training.  The majority of the enlightened class desired that they be no longer considered as “persons occupying a menial position, but as capable of the highest development of man."[1] Furthermore, bitterly as some white men hated slavery, and deeply as they seemingly sympathized with the oppressed, they were loath to support a policy which they believed was fatal to their economic interests.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Minutes and Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention, etc., p. 25.]

[Footnote 2:  The Fifth Report of the American Antislavery Society, p. 115; Douglass, The Life and Times of, p. 248.]

The chief reason for the failure of the new educational policy was that the managers of the manual labor schools made the mistakes often committed by promoters of industrial education of our day.  At first they proceeded on the presumption that one could obtain a classical education while learning a trade and at the same time earn sufficient to support himself at school.  Some of the managers of industrial schools have not yet learned that students cannot produce articles for market.  The best we can expect from an industrial school to-day is a good apprentice.