But teaching the trades is but part of the system of industrial education at Tougaloo. Each boy is required to work at least one hour a day on the university farm. For all work over that hour the student receives pay, the highest allowance being 7c. an hour. The farm is not run to make money, but to educate. The idea is to make the operation of the farm an object lesson to the students in the better methods of agriculture and stock raising. Several students, enough to take care of the steady and continuous farm work, are employed all day on the farm and attend the night school, but the bulk of the farm labor comes from the students, who give from one to several hours to it outside of school. Last year the farm was run with but one man outside of the student help. The boys, while getting their book learning, tilled eighty-five acres of corn, fifteen acres of oats, with a second crop of peas, seventeen acres of cotton, eight acres of peas, three acres of sorghum, two acres of garden and five acres of berries and orchard. The stock cared for included 100 head of blooded cattle, forty sheep and forty swine. The farm furnished the boarding department 14,000 pounds of beef and pork, 84,476 pounds of milk, and other products in proportion. The university farm stock has a reputation State-wide, and the exhibits are features of the annual fairs held at Jackson. While every boy in the institution has to do some daily work on the farm, there is set apart for the ninth grade a special course of a year in agricultural instruction designed to make good, practical farmers of those who take it. So much for the boys.
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The girls get their full share of industrial training at Tougaloo. They have daily instruction in some branch of household duty, ranging from dish-washing to canning and preserving. Sewing is taught from the plain darning and mending to fitting and dressmaking according to the latest fashion plates. It has come to be well understood that the Mississippi lady of a house who gets one of the trained students from Tougaloo has "a perfect treasure."
THE STUDY OF HOUSEKEEPING.
One of the latest additions to the system of industrial training for girls at the university is a novelty. A cottage has been set apart—four girls are assigned to it for a month at a time. There they "keep house" in all details. They not only sweep and clean and cook, but they buy their supplies, keep account of all household expenses, and manage as they will have to do when they get homes of their own. A matron looks closely after the cottage feature, which is intended to teach neatness and economy and to develop executive ability.
With Tougaloo doing such a work as this, how could the white Mississippians feel otherwise than kindly toward her. The cry has been that "education ruins the nigger." It has been asserted over and over—so many times that most Southerners believe it as true as gospel—that higher education makes a negro too proud to work. But here is an education the very central idea of which is work—work with the hands and the eyes. Here is a university which gives to the State skilled mechanics vastly superior to those who "pick up" their trades; farmers who can make two bolls of cotton grow where one grew before; stockraisers who know all the fine points of the various breeds. Governor Lowry could well say in his last message to the Mississippi Legislature:
"This university, by its successful management, commends itself to your favorable consideration."
At the closing exercises of the year yesterday, Tougaloo took another step forward. Instead of turning out a class of graduates, the management increased the course and raised the standard. An institution which does that is certainly progressive.
Two of the notable things on the programme were an essay by Lucy Jenkins, on "What Tougaloo Does for the Girls," and an oration by James Miller on "Industrial Education." Both of them were well considered, well written and well delivered. The essayist and the orator were black, not yellow. Their efforts would have done credit to Anglo-Saxons of corresponding age, North or South. As for the musical part of the programme—ah, there was melody indeed.