“We insist that every student shall become highly skilled in whatever trade or pursuit he takes up; but we allow him to acquire a partial and rough-and-ready knowledge of other crafts subsidiary to his own. For instance, it is found that the individual harness-maker cannot compete with factory work, so that few students now take a complete course in that craft; but a boy who becomes a thoroughly skilled shoemaker also learns so much of harness-making as to render him an efficient repairer. In the same way our thoroughly trained carpenters also acquire a certain amount of skill in bricklaying, plastering, painting, and tinsmithing; and the girls, in addition to complete instruction in house-work, laundry-work, dressmaking and cooking, also learn something of simple carpentry, paper-hanging, painting, and the repairing of tinware, shoes, etc. In small villages and country districts it is very important to know something of everything as well as everything of something.”
“And where, amid all this, does academic study come in?”
“Students in their first year who are working for wages attend the night-school only. After that, if they are training for teachers, they enter the day-school, and devote only a minor portion of their time to manual work. But we take care that those who are mainly engaged in handicrafts and agriculture do not neglect their mental development on the academic side; and we find, with scarcely an exception, that the boy who does the best work in the classroom does the best work at the bench. The annual cost of academic training (apart from board, etc.), is seventy dollars, or £14, of industrial training, thirty dollars, or £6. To many of our students, in accordance with their abilities and their necessities, we are able to allot scholarships which cover these fees; but we are greatly in need of more such scholarships. For the general needs of the institution an endowment fund of three million dollars is required; but as yet we have been able to raise only about half that sum. The United States Government pays a small sum for each of the Indians whom it sends to the Institute; but it does not cover their expenses.”
“And how do the negroes and the Indians get on together?”
“Without the slightest friction. They live in separate houses—there is the Wigwam, the home of the Indian boys, and nearer the river is Winona Lodge, the Indian girls’ dormitory. But you have seen them working side by side in the workshops, and you will see them presently dining side by side in Virginia Hall.”
“A Changed Ideal.”
Dr. Turner took us through the very interesting Indian Museum, used also as a lecture-hall, and through the beautiful and admirably equipped Huntington Memorial Library, containing, among other things, one of the largest existing collections of books on the negro race and its problems.
“Do you find,” I asked, “that many of your students come to you with the idea that book-learning is a more dignified and desirable thing than manual training?”
“No,” was the reply; “that particular form of ignorance is rapidly passing away. But now and then students come to us with ambitions which we can scarcely encourage. A good many years ago now, a boy presented himself with the announcement that he wanted to be trained for the career of a prize-fighter. We did not reject him, but we found means of modifying his aspirations. He proved to be an unusually intelligent youth, and at the end of his course was chosen the valedictorian of his class. The subject of his address was ‘A Changed Ideal.’ He is now the head of an agricultural college.”
A Happy Family.