CHAPTER V Building Up a System
The system we decided to use at Tuskegee divided the school into two classes of students: those who worked with their hands two days in the week, and spent four days in the class room; and the night students, who, through the first year of their course, worked all day with their hands and spent their evenings in the class rooms. Of course, the student who worked ten hours each day was paid more than the one who laboured only two days in the week. The night-school students were to earn, not only their board, but something in addition. The surplus was to be used in paying their expenses in the regular day school after they had remained in the night school one or two years as they might elect. The night school, besides other opportunities, gave the student a chance to get a start in his books and also in some trade or industry. With this as a foundation, I have rarely seen a student who was worth much fail to pass through the regular course.
The night school had not been in session many weeks before several facts began to make themselves prominent. The first was the economic value of the work of the night students. It was plain that these students could perform much labour for which we should otherwise have had to pay out cash to persons not connected with the institution. It is true that the work at first was crude, but it should be remembered that in the earlier years the whole school was crude. All work in laying the foundation for a race is crude.
The economic value of hand work at the Tuskegee Institute can be illustrated in no better way than by data of the construction of our buildings. When a friend has given us twenty-five thousand dollars for a building, instead of having it constructed by an outside contractor, we have had the students produce the material and do the work as far as possible, and through this method a large proportion of the money given for the building passes into the hands of the students, to be used in gaining an education. The plan has a double value, for, in addition to the twenty-five thousand dollars which is diverted into channels through which a large number of students get an education, the school receives the building for permanent use.
BUILDING A NEW DORMITORY
Students draw plans, dig foundations, make the brick, cut timber, which they saw and make into joists and frames. The painting,
plastering, plumbing and roofing are also done by the students under the direction of their instructors.
Let us value the work at Tuskegee by this test: The plans for the Slater-Armstrong Memorial Trades' Building, in its main dimensions 283 × 315 feet, and two stories high, were drawn by a coloured man, our instructor in mechanical drawing. Eight hundred thousand bricks were required in its construction, and every one of them was manufactured by our students while learning the trade of brick-making. All the bricks were laid into the building by students who were being taught the trade of brickmasonry. The plastering, carpentry work, painting, and tin-roofing were done by students while learning these trades. The whole number of students who received training on this building alone was 196. It is lighted by electricity, and all the electric fixtures were put in by students who were learning electrical engineering. The power to operate the machinery in this building comes from a 125 horse-power engine and a 75 horse-power boiler. All this machinery was not only operated by students who were learning the trade of steam engineering, but was installed by students under the guidance of their instructor.
For other examples of the amount of work that our students do in the direction of self-help, I would mention the fact that they manufactured 2,990,000 bricks during the past twelve months; 1,367 garments of various kinds have been made in the tailor shop, and 541,837 pieces have been laundered in the laundry division by the girls.
Agriculture is the industry which we plan to make stand out most prominently; and we expect more and more to base much of our other training upon this fundamental industry. There are two reasons why we have not been able to send out as many students from our agricultural department as we have desired: