The American Missionary — Volume 36, No. 2, February, 1882

by Various

The Industrial department at Tougaloo University embraces: 1. General Farming. 2. Strawberry Culture. 3. Gardening. 4. Stock-Raising. 5. General Housework. 6. Work in Laundry. 7. Work in Sewing-Room.

In our general farming we have confined our work to those crops that we can consume on the place—corn, oats and potatoes. We expect to cultivate cotton hereafter, rotating it with other crops. Corn yields fairly, but not equal to the West, of course. The oat crop, I think, can be made equal to the Western crop. We have done enough with grasses to satisfy ourselves that grass can be very profitable grown and marketed.

The strawberry crop can be grown, picked and marketed almost entirely with student labor. We have to hire a little outside help during the picking season. This is both a pleasant and profitable industry. We can begin shipping about April 10, or earlier, according to the season. Chicago is our market. The garden is a great help in supplying our table, and in any of our schools we ought to be able to cultivate a garden for the family with student labor with good results. But gardening for profit must be taught, and requires skill and means.

Four years ago we ventured to purchase a little thoroughbred Ayrshire and grade Jersey stock. We had no appropriation for such purchases, but felt that we must make a beginning. We needed the milk to use. We had land and must utilize it. The scholars needed to be taught the value of good cows. We have not only awakened interest in the minds of the students, in the matter of stock-raising, but also in the minds of some of the old planters about us.

The general housework and the work in the laundry and sewing-room have been well managed under the oversight of our matron and others, but in these, as in other departments already mentioned, the returns seem slight when compared with the expense of sustaining the labor.

If we look at some of the difficulties, we shall perhaps feel more forcibly the absolute need of sustaining industrial schools. The people know nothing in the line of general farmwork, except the culture of corn and cotton in the old way. They know nothing of the value of rotation in crops, underdraining, fertilizing, etc. They know nothing of the use and care of improved implements. There has been no sense of responsibility developed in them. They break tools, misplace them, lose them. A new set of hands use the tools and teams each day of the week. In a jolly, good-natured way, time is killed, and but little is accomplished. These faults must be corrected. This takes time and patience. Meanwhile the leakage and breakage and drainage is costing. In the strawberry field we have not the advantage of skilled pickers and packers, but must put new hands in the field each year. In the garden, the boys want to use the big cotton hoes, and cut and slash as they do in the field, and so they tear up the tomatoes and root up the rutabagas, and cut up the cabbages. Many of the boys have never had a fork or a rake in their hands. They know how to “gear up” a mule to plow, but would be utterly lost if they should undertake to put a decent harness on a horse and hitch him into a wagon.

In the housework the girls are no more responsible about their sweeping and scrubbing, their washing and wiping, than the boys are on the farm. In the laundry they often forget to kindle the fire until it is time to commence ironing. Then they must stand and wait for the irons to heat. In the wash-room they would as soon use a box of soap as a bar. In the sewing-room they sew and then rip, and then sew up again and rip out again. The girls have followed the plow or trundled baby wagons, and know nothing about sewing, knitting, darning, or anything else that fits them for real home life.

Multitudes of young men have their hearts set upon the pulpit and platform while there is scarcely one in ten thousand who is learning a trade. Our carpenters and masons, our tinners and shoemakers are men who are in middle life, or whose heads are frosted for the grave. These young people that we are educating will need school-houses and churches and court-houses; but the way things are going now, there will be no one to build them after their fathers are gone. In view of these facts, we have urged the establishment of shops where trades can be taught, but we are headed off with the fact that we cannot pay expenses. Do other departments of training pay expenses? Wherever the work of training is done, expense is incurred. But people will give to make teachers and preachers. Ah! they forget that the Lord Jesus worked in a carpenter’s shop before he preached the glad tidings; that Peter learned the art of catching fish before he caught men; and that Paul made tents for depraved men to use as homes in this world before he told them of the heavenly mansions. What is needed in these young people is the development of character. Manliness, womanliness, self-reliance can only be developed by a course of training that teaches hands, heads and hearts at the same time.

I have spoken of the comparative expense of our industries, but it is by no means all outgo and no income. I have no balance sheet to present with this paper, but the milk goes from the stable to the pantry by the bucketful, the vegetables from the garden to the kitchen by the basketful, and the strawberries from the field to the fruit-room by the crateful. Besides the berries used in our family, we receive from $25 to $100 net per acre from those shipped. We have raised this year $700 worth of sweet potatoes. At very moderate prices we have on hand now at least one thousand dollars worth of thoroughbred and grade stock over and above what has been paid for it. I think I am safe in saying that in spite of all the difficulties, in ordinary seasons, our outside work brings in enough to pay for the labor put upon it.