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

Seventy-five families lived scattered in cabins over the two-thousand-acre plantation in easy access to their plots of land farmed on shares. Many of the men were paying for "time" bought by the owner of the plantation. Some had been arrested, and on trial found guilty. They had to pay either a certain sum or suffer imprisonment. The owner of the plantation paid the fines, and the men paid him for their time in labour. Schools were miles distant, and the only opportunity to teach the better way of life seemed to be establishing a settlement. The planter graciously granted the free use of the cabin aforesaid. Students from the Institute nailed the shingles on the open roof. The room was given a thorough cleaning, and in a short time a young woman graduate, now wife of the Principal of Christianburg Institute, Cambria, Virginia, and an undergraduate moved in with her home-made furniture—fashioned from dry-goods boxes, and covered with pretty chintz sent by an old friend who has now passed to her reward.

As a Sunday School had begun in one of the log houses several Sundays previous to the opening of the settlement, the young teacher's coming had been explained, and all had promised to contribute all they could to her support.

HOME-MADE FURNITURE

The first articles of food entered on the teacher's book to the credit of her patrons were two eggs, one can of syrup, one half-pound bacon, one quart meal, one can buttermilk. The teacher cooked her meals on her oven in the fireplace, did her work, and taught school in her cabin. The first day brought fifteen boys and girls. Ten of the fathers and mothers, eager to learn how to read and write, came to the night school. For two years the teacher struggled. Her patrons helped her with larder, and grew—measuring up to the standards of true living.

In spite of frequent patchings, the teacher's cabin became almost unfit for use. There came a time when umbrellas were indispensable in the cabin during a heavy downpour. In 1898 a way opened for the purchase of ten acres of woodland. A two-room cottage was built for the teacher on a clearing. No prouder workers could be found than the teacher and her pupils in clearing the land for possible crops. Beginning with 1900, the average annual yield was as follows: Two bales of cotton, forty bushels of corn, seventy-five bushels sweet potatoes, twenty bushels peanuts, twenty bushels pease, four loads shucks and fodder, greens, cabbage, and other vegetable products.

Two years ago a kitchen was added to the cottage, and the cooking classes of the school arose to the dignity of having a real stove and other necessaries. Sewing, cooking, gardening, and housekeeping classes have succeeded wonderfully. The boys of the settlement have received first prizes from Tuskegee Institute Agricultural Fair for their products put on exhibition.

One of the first fruits of the settlement work has been the promotion of a boy from that school to Tuskegee Institute. He has stood the test of four years in his classes, industrial and academic, and is now most promising.

The second step to place the work on a hopeful basis has been the purchase of ten more acres of land. A two-room cottage has been built recently, and the mother of the first settlement boy to come to the front, and one of our pioneer workers in the venture, has been given a chance to not only earn her living, but to serve as a native object-lesson of neatness in her home and surroundings. Eight years of constant work teaching old and young how to live has resulted in better built homes on the plantation. Owner has replaced one-room log cabins with two-room cottages.