I want you to take delight in getting hold of these people and taking them through our shops, guiding them through our various agricultural and mechanical departments. Be sure that you exert every effort possible to make them comfortable and happy while they are here. Heretofore the students have been so generous, at the time of this meeting, that many of them, if necessary, have given up their rooms that these people might have a comfortable night's rest. I do not know where you have slept, but I do not think that in the history of the school a student was ever asked to give up his room to any of these people that he did not gladly and freely do so. I believe that you are going to do the same thing this year.
I want you, also, to remember that you not only can help the Conference to be a success by being polite and kindly to the farmers who come from this and other Southern States, but also by being polite and attentive to the representatives from the large institutions that will be here. We will have present representatives from every large institution engaged in the education of our people. It means much for the principals and instructors in these large colleges and industrial schools to leave their work and come as far as many of them do, to spend these days here. We have a responsibility on their account; we desire them to feel that it has been worth their while to leave their work and spend their time and money to come here for these meetings. We wish them to get something out of our industries here; we wish them to get something out of the training here, in every department, something which they can take back to their own institution to make their work there stronger and better.
Now as to yourselves. You can get something out of this Conference for yourselves, by getting hold of everything possible, so that when you go out from Tuskegee you will have just that much more helpful information to put into practice. I want to see you go out through the South and establish local conferences. Call them together, and teach the same kind of lessons that we teach at these gatherings at Tuskegee. You can get the most out of this Conference by putting into practice this effort to make other people happy. To get the greatest happiness out of life is to make somebody else happy. To get the greatest good out of life is to do something for somebody else. I want you to find the persons who are most ignorant and most poverty stricken; I want you to find the persons who are most forlorn and most discouraged, and do something for them to make their hours happy. In doing that, you will do the most for yourselves.
I want each boy and each girl who belongs to this institution to be deep down in his or her heart a gentleman or a lady. A gentleman means simply this: a generous person; one who has learned to be kind; one who has learned to think not of himself first, but of the happiness and welfare of others. Let us put this spirit into our Conference day the coming week, and the day and week will be the greatest and most successful that we have ever had. Let our resolution be that the persons who come here, whether they represent a university, a college, an industrial school, a farm, or a shop—let our resolve be that when these people leave here they shall take away with them from Tuskegee something that will make their lives happier, brighter, stronger and more useful.
WHAT IS TO BE OUR FUTURE?
Last Thursday afternoon I received a telegram from a gentleman stopping for a time in a city in Georgia, asking me to come there at once on important business; and being rather curious to know what he wanted of me, I went. I found that this man was in the act of making his will, and that he had in mind the putting aside of a considerable sum in his will—some $20,000, in fact—for this institution.
The special point upon which this gentleman wished to consult me was the future of the Institution. He said that he had worked very hard for his money, that it had come as a result of much sacrifice and hard effort, and that there were friends of his who were beseeching him to use his money in other directions, because they thought it would be more likely to do permanent good elsewhere. And so he wished to know what the future of this Institution is likely to be, because he did not care to risk his money upon an uncertain venture, one that was likely to prosper for a few years, and then fail. He said that he would not like to give his money to an institution where it would not go on through the years, accomplishing a certain amount of good. Accordingly the question he repeated to me over and over again was: "What is to be the future of Tuskegee?" He wished to know whether, if we were given the money, it would go on from year to year, blessing one generation after another.
My point in speaking to you to-night is to emphasize what I think our good friend Professor Brown has already brought to our attention in one or two of his talks to us this week, the importance of making this institution what it ought to be, what its reputation gives it, and what its name implies.