PREFACE
For several years I have been receiving requests, from many parts of the United States, and from foreign countries as well, for some detailed information concerning the value of industrial training and the methods employed to develop it. This little volume is the result, in part, of an attempt to answer these queries. Two proven facts need emphasis here:
First: Mere hand training, without thorough moral, religious, and mental education, counts for very little. The hands, the head, and the heart together, as the essential elements of educational need, should be so correlated that one may be made to help the others. At the Tuskegee Institute we find constantly that we can make our industrial work assist in the academic training, and vice versa.
Second: The effort to make an industry pay its way should not be made the aim of first importance. The teaching should be most emphasised. Our policy at Tuskegee is to make an industry pay its way if possible, but at the same time not to sacrifice the training to mere economic gain. Those who undertake such endeavour with the expectation of getting much money out of an industry, will find themselves disappointed, unless they realise that the institution must be, all the time, working upon raw material. At Tuskegee, for example, when a student is trained to the point of efficiency where he can construct a first-class wagon, we do not keep him there to build more vehicles, but send him out into the world to exert his trained influence and capabilities in lifting others to his level, and we begin our work with the raw material all over again.
I shall be more than repaid if these chapters will serve the purpose of helping forward the cause of education, even though their aid be remote and indirect.