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

I have just finished reading a little pamphlet written by Mr. George W. Carver, Director of the Agricultural Department at Tuskegee, giving the results of some of his experiments in raising sweet potatoes for one year. This coloured man has shown in plain, simple language, based on scientific principles, how he has raised two hundred and sixty-six bushels of sweet potatoes on a single acre of common land, and made a net profit of one hundred and twenty-one dollars. The average yield of sweet potatoes to the acre, in the part of the South where this experiment was tried, is thirty-seven bushels per acre. This coloured man is now preparing to make this same land produce five hundred bushels of potatoes.

I have watched this experiment with a great deal of pleasure. The deep interest shown by the neighbouring white farmers has been most gratifying. I do not believe that a single white farmer who visited the field to see the unusual yield ever thought of having any prejudice or feeling against this coloured man because his education had enabled him to make a marked success of raising sweet potatoes. There were, on the other hand, many evidences of respect for this coloured man and of gratitude for the information which he had furnished.

If we had a hundred such coloured men in each county in the South, who could make their education felt in meeting the world's needs, there would be no race problem. But in order to get such men, those interested in the education of the Negro must begin to look facts and conditions in the face. Too great a gap has been left between the Negro's real condition and the position for which we have tried to fit him through the medium of our text-books. We have overlooked in many cases the fact that long years of experience and discipline are necessary for any race before it can get the greatest amount of good out of the text-books. Much that the Negro has studied presupposes conditions that do not, for him, exist.

The weak point in the past has been that no attempt has been made to bridge the gap between the Negro's educated brain and his opportunity for supplying the wants of an awakened mind. There has been almost no thought of connecting the educated brain with the educated hand. It is almost a crime to take young men from the farm, or from farming districts, and educate them, as is too often done, in everything except agriculture, the one subject with which they should be most familiar. The result is that the young man, instead of being educated to love agriculture, is educated out of sympathy with it; and instead of returning to his father's farm after leaving college, to show him how to produce more with less labour, the young man is often tempted to go into the city or town to live by his wits.

The purpose of the Tuskegee Negro Conference is to help the farmers who are too old, or too bound down by their responsibilities, to attend schools or institutes; to do for them, in a small way, what Tuskegee and other agencies seek to do for the younger generation. Coloured men and women make long and expensive journeys to be present, coming from all the Southern and several of the Northern states. They have found that their money is not wasted, for they learn much by seeing what has been done at the school, from the advice of experts, but more especially by the exchange of opinions and by comparing experiences in their own field of work. These meetings are not for whining or complaints. Their keynote is hopeful courage. To look up and not down, forward and not backward, to be cheerful and mutually helpful, is the golden rule of the conference.

It was decided from the first to confine the proceedings to matters which the race had closely within its own control, and to positive, aggressive effort, rather than to mere negative criticisms and recitations of wrongs. I wanted these coloured farmers and their wives to consult about the methods and means of securing homes, of freeing themselves from debt, of encouraging intelligent production, of paying their taxes, of cultivating habits of thrift, honesty and virtue, of building school-houses, and securing education and high Christian character, of cementing the friendships between the races.

In these conventions, as in other ways, we have tried to keep alive the feeling of hope and encouragement. We have seen darker days than these, and no race that is patient, long-suffering, industrious, economical, and virtuous, no race that is persistent in efforts that make for progress, no race that cultivates a spirit of good-will toward all mankind, is left without reward.

The Farmers' Conference each year adopts a declaration of principles, which sum up its objects in such words as these:

"Our object shall be to promote the moral, material, and educational progress of this entire community. Believing, as we do, that we are our own worst enemies, we pledge, here and now, from this time forth, to use every effort—

"To abolish and do away with the mortgage system just as rapidly as possible.