PROF. B. T. WASHINGTON, A. M.,
Principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute,
Tuskegee, Ala.
The success of the Tuskegee School is due, in a large measure, to the fact that it meets what is recognized as a great educational need. It carries along with the training of the head the training of the hand makes possible an education to the poorest boy and girl in the land, and sends each graduate out into the world familiar with some form of labor to the extent that he can earn thereby his daily bread. The experiment of this kind of training in solving the much-talked-of problem, is being watched on all sides with eager curiosity.
ARMSTRONG HALL.
Built by Students.
Tuskegee is no more Hampton than Hampton is the little school in the Sandwich Islands, from which General Armstrong received those earliest conceptions of the industrial education, afterwards realized on American soil in behalf of the American Negro. The peculiar exigencies of the situation gave rise to features in the more Southern school which are not to be found in the one nearer Mason and Dixon's line, and, in like manner, account for the absence in the younger school, of certain characteristics belonging to the older institution.
As those acquainted with the history of Tuskegee know, the school started in 1881 in an humble church and two shanties in the town of Tuskegee. There was then one teacher with thirty pupils; no land, no buildings, no apparatus, nothing but the $2,000 appropriated by the State for the payment of salaries. There are now over one hundred persons connected with the school in the capacity of instructors of some kind, nearly 1,200 pupils, including those attending the Training School; more than forty buildings erected by student labor, 2,600 acres of land, and a property valued at $225,000, unincumbered by mortgage.
ALABAMA HALL.
Built by Students.
This marvelous growth is due mainly to one man, Booker T. Washington, the principal of the school; and his success may be attributed to a combination of qualities—marked executive ability, high enthusiasm, keen, prophetic vision, and a wonderful power to see and to state the value of things commonly considered of small account. Some one has characterized Mr. Washington as "the man with a genius for common sense," and, probably, one might use many words in telling of him without giving so good a description as that conveyed in this terse expression.
