10. Average wages per day, week, or month at this occupation? ________________
11. Kind and amount of property owned? _________________________________
12. Tell us something of the work you are doing this year. (We will also be pleased to receive testimonials from white and colored persons concerning your work).
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13. We especially wish to get in touch this year with as many of our former students as possible. Please give present addresses and occupations of all of these that you can.
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Booker T. Washington, Principal.
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.
Mr. Washington had this picture especially posed to show off to the best advantage a part of the Tuskegee dairy herd.
As previously mentioned the relationship between Mr. Washington and his Trustees was at all times particularly friendly and harmonious. While they were always directors who directed instead of mere figureheads, they nevertheless were broad enough and wise enough to give the Principal a very free rein. Preëminent among the able and devoted Trustees of Tuskegee was the late William H. Baldwin, Jr. In order to commemorate his life and work the William H. Baldwin, Jr., Memorial Fund of $150,000 was raised by a committee of distinguished men, with Oswald Garrison Villard of the New York Evening Post as chairman, among whom were Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, and Charles W. Eliot, and placed at the disposal of the Tuskegee Trustees. A bronze memorial tablet in memory of Mr. Baldwin was at the same time placed on the Institute grounds. At the ceremony at which this tablet was unveiled and this fund presented to the Trustees, Mr. Washington said in part, in speaking of his relations with Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Baldwin's relations to Tuskegee:
"Only those who are close to the business structure of the institution could really understand what the coming into our work of a man like William H. Baldwin meant to all of us. In the first place, it meant the bringing into our work a certain degree of order, a certain system, so far as the business side of the institution was concerned, that had not hitherto existed. Then the coming of him into our institution meant the bringing of new faith, meant the bringing of new friends. I shall never forget my first impression. I shall never forget my first experience in meeting Mr. Baldwin. At that time he was the General Manager and one of the Vice-Presidents of the Southern Railway, located then in its headquarters in the city of Washington. I remember that, a number of days previous, I had gone to the city of Boston and had asked his father if he would not give me a line of introduction to his son, about whom I had already heard in Washington. Mr. Baldwin's father readily gave me a line of introduction and I went in a few days after that and sought out Mr. Baldwin in his Washington office and he looked through this letter of introduction, read it carefully, then he looked me over, up and down, and I asked him if he would not become a trustee of this institution. After looking me over, looking me up and down for a few seconds or a few minutes longer, he said, 'No, I cannot become a trustee; I will not say I will become a trustee because when I give my word to become a trustee it must mean something.' He said, 'I will study the institution at Tuskegee, I will go there and look it over and after I have found out what your methods are, what you are driving at—if your methods and objects commend themselves to me, then I will consent to become a trustee.' And I remember how well—some of the older teachers and perhaps some of the older students will recall—that upon one day, when we were least expecting it, he stopped his private car off here at Chehaw and appeared here upon our grounds, and some of us will recall how he went into every department of the institution, how he went into the classrooms, how he went through the shops, how he went through the farm, how he went through the dining-room; I remember how he went to each table, and took pieces of bread from the table and broke them and examined the bread to see how well it was cooked, and even tasted some of it as he went into the kitchen. He wanted to be sure how we were doing things here at Tuskegee. Then after he had made this visit of examination for himself, after he had studied our financial condition, then after a number of months had passed by, he consented to permit us to use his name as one of our Trustees, and from the beginning to the end we never had such a trustee. He was one who devoted himself night and day, winter and summer, in season and out of season, to the interests of this institution. Now, having spoken this word, you can understand the thoughts and the feelings of some of us on this occasion as we think of the services of this great and good man.