Instead of the old barracks, there are now over fifty-five buildings, including dormitories, academic and science buildings, a large trade school, domestic science and agricultural buildings, a beautiful church, a large saw-mill and shops where students help to earn their board and clothes and receive instruction in blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, painting, house-building, cabinet-making, upholstery, shoemaking, tailoring, harness-making, printing, and engineering. Two large farms with greenhouses, barns, and experiment stations give employment to students and instruction in agriculture. The laundry, dining-rooms, kitchens, and sewing-rooms give employment to the girls, and in them they receive instruction in sewing, dressmaking, laundering, and other branches which fit them to instruct their people in these lines. All the domestic work of the place is performed by the students. The average age of the pupils is nineteen years.
ACADEMIC CLASS-ROOM.
In 1870 this institution was chartered by special act of the General Assembly of Virginia. It is not owned or controlled by State or government, but by a Board of seventeen Trustees, representing different sections of the country, and six religious denominations, no one of which has a majority. The school now has a property worth over $600,000, free from debt, and an endowment fund of over a half-million. It receives aid through the State of Virginia for its agricultural work and from the general government toward the board and clothes of Indians, but it is obliged to appeal to the public for $80,000 a year.
The Slater Fund Board makes a generous yearly appropriation toward its trade-school work, and help is received from the Peabody Fund, but the school depends for the large part of its yearly expenses upon charitable contributions.
GIRLS' MANUAL TRAINING.
Twenty-five years ago the imperative need of the Negro was teachers in the country public schools of the South, who could show the people by example, as well as by precept, how to live, how to get land and build decent houses. This need still remains, but, with the improvement of the colored race, more thoroughly equipped teachers are necessary, not only for the public schools, but for the workshops, and for the industrial and agricultural schools that have started up all through the South and among the Indians of the West. To meet this need Hampton provides an Academic Department with a corps of able teachers, mostly graduates of normal schools and colleges, who give thorough instruction in the English branches. Beside this, manual training is given to the boys, and sewing, cooking, and bench work to the girls. Those of the boys who show aptitude for trades in the manual training classes can receive thorough instruction in the Trade School, a building costing $50,000 and especially adapted to the work. Competent instruction in carpentry, wood turning, cabinet-making, bricklaying, plastering, wheelwrighting, blacksmithing, painting, machine work, and mechanical drawing carry students through a systematic course in their different departments, fitting them to be teachers of trades. Chance is also given to do actual work in the sixteen productive industries on the school grounds.
