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 heard not long ago a story of one of our graduates which delighted me as an illustration of the real Tuskegee spirit. A man had occasion to go to the village of Benton, Alabama, in which Mr. A. J. Wood, one of our graduates, had settled ten years before, and gone into business as a general merchant. In this time he has built up a good trade and has obtained for himself a reputation as one of the best and most reliable business men in the place. While the visitor was there, he happened to step to the open back door of the store, and stood looking out into a little yard behind the building. The merchant joining him there, began to call, "Ho, Boy. Ho, Boy," and finally, in response to this calling, there came crawling out from beneath the store, with much grunting, because he was altogether too big to get comfortably from under the building, an enormous black hog.

"You see that hog," the man said. "That's my hog. I raise one like that every year as an object-lesson to the coloured farmers around here who come to the store to trade. About all I feed him is the waste from the store. When the farmers come in here, I show them my hog, and I tell them that if they would shut their pigs up in a pen of rails, and have the children pick up acorns in the woods to feed them on, they might have just such hogs as I do, instead of their razor-backs running around wild in the woods.

"Perhaps I can't teach a school here," the man added, "but if I can't do that, I can at least teach the men around here how to raise hogs as I learned to raise them at Tuskegee."

In securing the best breeds of fowls and animals at Tuskegee, I have the added satisfaction of seeing a better grade of stock being gradually introduced among the farmers who live near the school.

After I have gathered my eggs, and have at least said "Good morning" to my pigs, cows, and horse, the next morning duty—no, I will not say duty, but delight—is to gather the vegetables for the family dinner. No pease, no turnips, radishes nor salads taste so good as those which one has raised and gathered with his own hands in his own garden. In comparison with these all the high-sounding dishes found in the most expensive restaurants seem flavourless. One feels, when eating his own fresh vegetables, that he is getting near to the heart of nature; not a second-hand stale imitation, but the genuine thing. How delightful the change, after one has spent weeks eating in restaurants or hotels, and has had a bill of fare pushed before his eyes three times a day, or has heard the familiar sound for a month from a waiter's lips: "Steak, pork chops, fried eggs, and potatoes."

HOGS AS OBJECT LESSONS

As I go from bed to bed in the garden, gathering my lettuce, pease, spinach, radishes, beets, onions and the relishes with which to garnish the dishes, and note the growth of each plant since the previous day, I feel a nearness and kinship to the plants which makes them seem to me like members of my own family. When engaged in this work, how short the half-hour is, how quickly each minute goes, bringing nearer the time when I must go to my office. When I do go there it is with a vigour and freshness and with a steadiness of nerve that prepares me thoroughly for what perhaps is to be a difficult and trying day—a preparation impossible, except for the half-hour spent in my garden.

All through the day I am enabled to do more work and better work because of the delightful anticipation of another half-hour or more in my garden after the office work is done. I get so much pleasure out of this that I frequently find myself beseeching Mrs. Washington to delay the dinner hour that I may take advantage of the last bit of daylight for my outdoor work.