with poverty & its attendant miseries.
The same provision is made by the public for their
education & maintenance as for others. The School
Committee who superintend ye Free schools in this Town, (where
they are most numerous)
have given it in charge to the School masters to re-
ceive black & instruct black children as well as
white; but I excepting but I have not heard of more than
2 or 3, black children who
have been sent to the public schools. Some I believe
attend Women's schools where they learn to readhave
taken had any advantage of this priviledge tho' ye No of
blacks
& to use the needle. in this Town probably exceeds 1000
-- It is a very easy thing to acquire
a common school education here, & not only at
the
public but at private schools -- The Card-manufac-
tory supplies the means. Most of the labour is done
by machinery, but the sticking of the wires in the
leather is done by hand, & is an employment for chil-
dren. The School-mistresses take the materials from
the manufactory, & in the intervals of reading set the
children to work, which if they are diligent pays for
their schooling & perhaps yields some little profit to the
Mistress.
If therefore the In this mode the children of blacks
as well as whites may be initiated in & at ye
same
time acquire a habit of industry. But no schools
are set up exclusively by ye community for the blacks
exclusively. excepting by the
community. Sometimes they have had instructors of
their own Colour & at their own Expence.