However, I was the successful contestant, the first winner of the prize of $25. The next day I provided myself with new shoes and socks. I also received my diploma that same year, 1897, within two days of receiving the prize, and was very happy to receive it and the diploma at the same time.
Two summers and one winter after graduating I taught school at Mamie, Ala. When I was not teaching I worked on the farm of the family with which I boarded. For this work I received very little pay, but I had been taught at Tuskegee that it was better to work for nothing than to be idle—a Booker T. Washington precept.
The second winter I was first assistant in the Ozark city school, Ozark, Ala., and was offered the principalship for the next term, but I declined in order to further pursue postgraduate studies in agriculture at Tuskegee. I remained there for six months. I then went West, to Rockford, Ill., to do practical work in that section for the purpose of strengthening and improving the theory and practise already learned.
It was harvesting season and I soon secured work. I put all my energy into the work of the rugged Western farm and succeeded admirably in following the threshing-machine, in husking corn, and in doing the other farm labors common to Western fall and winter seasons. My first four months were spent on the farm of a widow. After the harvesting was over she offered me the farm, with its implements, barns, horses, and dairy herd, if I would remain and pay her certain percentages of the profits, but I told her that I was only a student in search of knowledge.
The next spring I secured work with a very progressive Irishman. He was a farmer, as well as secretary and treasurer of a modern creamery and butter factory. This work I preferred, because it was along my chosen line, and of a very high grade.
For one year I worked in this establishment, and was not absent from duty even one day. My employer once said to me that he had heard and also read that Negroes were lazy, shiftless, and untrustworthy. He had not come into contact with enough Negroes to draw his own conclusions, so he asked me if there were more like me. I told him that I did not consider myself an exception, but that I had had the advantages of superior training at Tuskegee. He did not know before that I was a Tuskegee graduate. He seemed surprised to know that a graduate would work as a common farm-hand. He said he had found no white ones who would. I then explained to him that I was seeking a comprehensive knowledge of farming conditions North and South. I value that year on those Western farms next to my training at Tuskegee.
I was planning to return to the South and start a farm of my own, when I was asked by Mr. Washington to join a company of Tuskegee young men who were wanted to go to Africa for the purpose of experimenting in cotton-growing under the German Government. It was a call I could not resist. Here was a chance for the largest possible usefulness. Here I could have a part in a monumental undertaking, and I gladly agreed to go. The wages offered were flattering, and all expenses in connection with the trip were borne by the Kolonial Komittee of the German Government. The Executive Council of the Institute selected Shepherd L. Harris, Allen L. Burks, and myself, all graduates of the school, and Mr. James N. Calloway, a member of the Faculty, who had had charge of the school's largest farm, and who was selected to head the expedition. We sailed from New York on November 3, 1900, and reached Togo by way of Hamburg on December 31, 1900. Later five additional Tuskegee students joined us, but of the original party I am the only one left. A report of the beginnings of our work was published after two years, with elaborate illustrations to commemorate what we had been able to accomplish. Samples of the cotton made into hose and various other articles were distributed among those interested in the success of the experiment. That report may be secured from the Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komittee, Berlin, Germany.
Not long since I sent to Principal Washington a summary of the work we have been trying to do. He regularly insists that Tuskegee graduates shall send him reports of what they are doing, and my letter to him was in response to that request. We keep in touch with Tuskegee and its work after leaving the institution through a correspondence prized by every graduate of the school. The summary I include here, as it may be of interest to the reader:
At the outset it was very difficult to excite any interest at all in our work on the part of the natives. For some reason they mistrust every proposition made them by a foreigner, and in the beginning they would not even accept the gift of cotton-seeds from us. They claimed that if they should accept our seeds we would come again and claim our own with usury. Many of the Europeans here said that the natives would never become interested in the movement. But we worked on, and now already in the farming districts are hundreds of native cotton farms. Now they no longer mistrust us, but they come and ask for cotton-seeds, and a conservative estimate places the incoming native harvest near the thousand-bale mark. Of course the native methods are very irrational. They cultivate their cotton altogether as a secondary crop. But we are content, at the beginning, to let them cultivate in their own way.
We find distributed through the colony not less than three distinct species of cotton, with some hybrids and varieties; but none of these are indigenous, and, having been left in a neglected state for centuries, are consequently not far removed from nature and are not so remunerative when put under even the best culture. The seeds imported from America are not able to survive the greatly changed conditions of climate. Here is our greatest obstacle. Our course was plain. If we did not have a plant that exactly suited us, we had to make it.