The annual budget of this department alone is now nearly fifty thousand dollars a year, and more than a thousand acres of land are cultivated under the supervision of the agricultural staff. The modest building which Secretary Wilson helped to dedicate has long since been outgrown and the department is now housed in a large, impressive brick building known as the Millbank Agricultural Building.
Under the provisions of the Smith-Lever Act, passed by Congress in 1914 for the purpose of aiding the States in Agricultural Extension Work, Booker Washington secured for Tuskegee a portion of the funds allotted to the State of Alabama for such work. With the aid of these funds Agricultural Extension Schools have been organized. These schools are conducted in coöperation with the Agricultural Department of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute and the farm demonstration work of the United States Department of Agriculture. They are really a two days' Short Course in Agriculture carried out to the farmers on their own farms. These schools have the advantage over the Short Course given to the farmers on the Institute grounds in that they have the farmers' problems right before them, to be diagnosed and remedies applied at once. Through such schools farm instruction is being carried to the Negroes of every Black Belt County of Alabama.
T.M. Campbell of the Tuskegee Institute, the District Agent in charge of these Extension Schools for the Negro Farmers of Alabama, reports that among the subjects taught the men are home gardening, seed selection, repair of farm tools, the growing of legumes as soil builders and cover crops, best methods of fighting the boll-weevil, poultry raising, hog raising, corn raising, and pasture making. The women are instructed in sewing, cooking, washing and ironing, serving meals, making beds, and methods for destroying household pests and for the preservation of health. At all the meetings the names and addresses of those present are taken for the purpose of following them up by correspondence from the district agent's office, so that the benefits of the instruction shall not be lost from one year to another. The slogan for these Alabama schools is: "Alabama Must Feed Herself." Practically all the black farmers have shown a pathetic eagerness to learn and the white farmers and the white demonstration agents everywhere have heartily coöperated. Churches, schoolhouses, and courthouses have been placed at the district agent's disposal for the Extension School session. One of the most hopeful features of the experiment has been the great interest in this new and better farming aroused among the boys and girls—an interest which the ordinary rural school sadly fails even in attempting to arouse. All told throughout the State 3,872 colored people attended these schools the first year. The sessions were usually opened by a prayer offered by one of the rural preachers. In one such prayer the preacher said among other things: "O Lord, have mercy on dis removable school; may it purmernate dis whole lan' an' country!" At another meeting, after the workers had finished a session, some of the leading colored farmers were called on to speak. One of them opened his remarks with the words: "I ain't no speaker, but I jes wan' a tell you how much I done been steamilated by dis my only two days in school!"
A report of one of these schools held recently at Monroeville, Ala., reads: "Only subjects with which the rural people are directly concerned are introduced and stressed by the instructors, such as pasture making, necessary equipment for a one and two horse farm, care of farm tools, crop rotation, hog raising, care of the cow, seed selection, diversified farming, how to make homemade furniture, fighting the fly, and child welfare.
"The home economics teacher attracted the attention of all the colored farmers and also the white visitors by constructing out of dry goods boxes an attractive and substantial dresser and washstand, completing the same before the audience, even to the staining, varnishing, hanging the mirrors and attaching the draperies." One paper, in estimating the value of these Movable Agricultural Schools said: "Given ten years of good practical agricultural instruction of the kind that was imparted to the Negro farmers, their wives and children, for the past three weeks in Wilcox, Perry, and Lowndes counties, there is no reason why every Negro farmer in the State should not only help 'Alabama feed herself,' but so increase the yield of its marketable products that the State will be able to export millions of dollars' worth of food and foodstuffs each year."
These Extension Schools are advertised by posters just like a country circus, except that the language is less grandiloquent. On the following page is a typical announcement presented in heavy black type on yellow paper.
Co-operative Extension Work in Agriculture and Home Economics
STATE OF ALABAMA
FARMERS ATTENTION!
AN EXTENSION SCHOOL