It is important to note that the data for 1903 represent only one-half of the crop, as the land is now in grain and will be harvested in time for the next crop, or grazed, which, of course, will give a net balance according to the yield of this grain or its value in grazing. We think, therefore, that the foregoing facts answer quite conclusively all the questions in the affirmative, and that it is wise for the Southern farmer to purchase a home even of two acres.
CHAPTER XIV The Eagerness for Learning
Necessity compels most of the coloured youth seeking education to work with their hands and pay as they go. It is better thus, even for those who do not expect to follow trades. I do not believe that any young man who has worked his way through Yale or Harvard regrets the experience. All whom I have met were proud of the achievement, and considered it an important part of the training that was to make them useful and capable men.
Many thousand letters of application for admission to the Tuskegee Institute are on file in my office. Their general trend is one of the strongest arguments for the gospel of hard work with head and hands. These young men and women from nearly every state of the Union and many foreign countries are writing me scores of letters daily, asking for a chance to get an education. With them there is no such thing as taking it for granted that they will be sent to school by somebody else. They have felt the force of newly awakened ambition, and lacking money to support themselves for three, four or five years in school, are eager to work for it. If their parents share this ambition, it is often the case that prayers, and heartfelt wishes, and hopes are all they can give their children to help them along the rough road to freedom.
For lack of room, we are forced to refuse each year thousands of applicants, earnest, pleading candidates, most of them, who are willing to make any sacrifices, to endure any burden of toil, to get the training that is to help them and enable them to help others. Merely to look through these piles of letters as they have accumulated for years would require many days' labour. I have chosen a few of them at random, for they show why Tuskegee students are in earnest from the beginning of their school work to the end, and why they go out to earn a living, armed with sincerity of purpose.
I have taken the liberty of making them easier to read by correcting the crude spelling and expression in some of them.
