First, agriculture was the industry most disliked by the students and their parents in the earlier years of the school. It required nearly ten years to overcome this prejudice.
Second, nearly all of our buildings, seventy-two in number, have been built by the students, and the building trades have, of necessity, been emphasised. As soon as the building period slackens, we shall be able to send out a larger number skilled in all the branches of agriculture.
I have been asked many times about the progress of the students in the night school as compared with those in the day school. In reality, there is little difference. A student who studies two hours at night and works with his hands ten hours during the day, naturally covers less ground in the text-books than the day student, yet in real sound growth and the making of manhood, I question whether the day student has much advantage over the student in the night school. There is an indescribable something about work with the hands that tends to develop a student's mind. The night-school students take up their studies with a degree of enthusiasm and alertness that is not equalled in the day classes. I have known instances where a student seemed so dull or stupid that he made practically no progress in the study of books. He was away from the books entirely for a few months and put to work at a trade; at the end of a few months he has returned to the class room, and it has been surprising to note how much more easily he could master the text-books than before. There is something, I think, in the handling of a tool that has the same relation to close, accurate thinking that writing with a pen has in the preparation of a manuscript. Nearly all persons who write much will agree, I think, that one can produce much more satisfactory work by using the pen than by dictation.
DIGGING FOUNDATION FOR A NEW BUILDING ON THE INSTITUTE GROUNDS
While speaking of the effect of careful hand training on the development of character, it is worth while to mention an uncommonly instructive example. If any one goes into a community North or South, and asks to have pointed out to him the man of the Negro race of the old generation, who stands for the best things in the life of the coloured community, in six cases out of ten, I venture to say, he will be shown a man who learned a trade during the days of slavery. A few years ago, James Hale, a Negro, died in Montgomery, Alabama. He spent the greater part of his life as a slave. He left property valued at fifty thousand dollars, and bequeathed a generous sum to be used in providing for an infirmary for the benefit of his race. James Hale could not read or write a line, yet I do not believe that there is a white or black man in Montgomery who knew Mr. Hale who will not agree with me in saying that he was the first coloured citizen of Montgomery. I have seldom met a man of any race who surpassed him in sterling qualities. When Mr. Hale was a slave his master took great pains to have him well trained as a carpenter, contractor and builder. His master saw that the better the slave was trained in handicraft, the more dollars he was worth. In my opinion, it was this hand-training, despite the evil of slavery, that largely resulted in Mr. Hale's fine development. If Mr. Hale was all this with mere hand training, what might he have been if his mind had also been carefully educated? Mr. Hale was simply a type of many men to be found in nearly every part of the country.
The average manual-training school has for its main object the imparting of culture to the student; while the economic element is made secondary. At the Tuskegee Institute we have always emphasised the trade or economic side of education. With any ignorant and poverty-stricken race, I believe that the problem of bread-winning should precede that of culture. For this reason the students who have attended the night school at Tuskegee have, as a rule, mastered the principles and practice of agriculture, or have been taught a trade by means of which we felt sure they could earn a living. With the question of shelter, food and clothing settled, there is a basis for what are considered the higher and more important things.
