Working With the Hands / Being a Sequel to "Up from Slavery," Covering the Author's Experiences in Industrial Training at Tuskegee

by Booker T. Washington

What can these young men and women find to do when they return to their homes?

What are the industries in which they and their parents have been supporting themselves?

The answers were not always to my liking, but this was not the point at issue. I had to meet a condition, not a theory. What I might have wanted them to be doing was one thing; what they were actually doing was the bed-rock upon which I hoped to lay the foundation of the work at Tuskegee.

It was known that a large majority of the students came from agricultural districts and from homes in which agriculture in some form was the mainstay of the family. I had learned that nearly eighty per cent of the population of what are commonly called the Gulf States are dependent upon agricultural resources, directly or indirectly. These facts made me resolve to attempt in downright earnest to see what the Tuskegee Institute could do for the people of my race by teaching the intelligent use of hands and brains on the farm, not by theorising, but by practical effort. The methods in vogue for getting enough out of the soil to keep body and soul together were crude in the extreme. The people themselves referred to this heart-breaking effort as "making a living." I wanted to teach them how to make more than a living.

I have little respect for the farmer who is satisfied with merely "making a living." It is hardly possible that agricultural life will become attractive and satisfactory to ambitious young men or women in the South until farming can be made as lucrative there as in other parts of the country where the farmer can be reasonably sure of being able to place something in the bank at the end of the year. For the young farmer to be contented he must be able to look forward to owning the land that he cultivates, and from which he may later derive not only all the necessities of life, but some of the comforts and conveniences. The farmer must be helped to get to the point where he can have a comfortable dwelling-house, and in it bathtubs, carpets, rugs, pictures, books, magazines, a daily paper, and a telephone. He must be helped to cherish the possibility that he and his family will have time for study and investigation, and a little time each year for travel and recreation, and for attending lectures and concerts.

GRINDING SUGAR-CANE AT THE SCHOOL'S SUGAR-MILL

But the average farmer whom I wanted to help through the medium of the Tuskegee Institute was far from this condition. I found that most of the farmers in the Gulf States cultivated cotton. Little or nothing in the form of stock or fowls, fruits, vegetables, or grain was raised for food. In order to get the food on which man and live stock were to live while the cotton crop was being grown, a mortgage or lien had to be given upon the crop, or rather upon the expected crop, for the legal papers were usually signed months in advance of the planting of the crop.

Cotton in the South has been known for years as "the money crop." This means that it is the one product from which cash may be expected without question as soon as the crop is harvested. The result of this system has been to discourage raising anything except cotton, for the man who holds the mortgage upon the crop discourages, and in some cases prevents, the farmer from giving much of his time and strength to the growing of anything except cotton, since the money-lender is not sure that he can get his money back from any other crop.