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INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION OF THE BLACKS.'

It hardly seems fitting for you to associate my history and thought with those of Alexander Hamilton, one of the great men not born to die. And yet it may not seem immodest in me to suggest that the great and lowly, the rich and poor, the white and black, the ex-master and the ex-slave, have this in common, that each in his own way, and in his own generation, can put forth his highest efforts to serve humanity in the way that our country most needs service; in this all of us can be equal-in this all can be great. If any of you have the faintest idea that I have come here in the capacity of an instructor along any line of education I wish you to part with such an impression at once. My history and opportunity have not fitted me to be your teacher; the most that I can do is to give you a few facts out of my humble experience and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I was born a slave on a plantation in Virginia, in 1857 or 1858, I think. My first memory of life is that of a one-room log cabin with a dirt floor and a hole in the center that served as a winter home for sweet potatoes, and, wrapped in a few rags on this dirt floor I spent my nights, and, clad in a single garment, about the plantation I often spent my days. The morning of freedom came, and though a child, I recall vividly my appearance with that of forty or fifty slaves before the veranda of the "big house" to hear read the documents that made us men instead of property. With the long prayed for freedom in actual possession, each started out into the world to find new friends and new homes. My mother decided to locate in West Virginia, and after many days and nights of weary travel we found ourselves among the salt furnaces and coal mines of West Virginia. Soon after reaching West Virginia I began work in the coal mines for the support of my mother.

While doing this I heard in some way, I do not now remember how, of General Armstrong's school at Hampton, Va. I heard at the same time, which impressed me most, that it was a school where a poor boy could work for his education, so far as his board was concerned. As soon as I heard of Hampton I made up my mind that in some way I was going to find my way to that institution. I began at once to save every nickel I could get hold of. At length, with my own savings and a little help from my brother and mother, I started for Hampton, although at the time I hardly knew where Hampton was or how much it would cost to reach the school. After walking a portion of the distance, traveling in a stage coach and cars the remainder of the journey, I at length found myself in the city of Richmond, Va. I also found myself without money, friends, or a place to stay all night. The last cent of my money had been expended. After walking about the city till midnight, and growing almost discouraged and quite exhausted, I crept under a sidewalk and slept all that night. The next morning, as good luck would have it, I found myself near a ship that was unleading pig iron. I applied to the captain for work, and he gave it, and I worked on this ship by day and slept under the sidewalk by night, till I had earned money enough to continue my way to Hampton, where I soon arrived with a surplus of 50 cents in my pocket.

I at once found General Armstrong, and told him what I had come for, and what my condition was. In his great hearty way he said that if I was worth anything he would give me a chance to work my way through that institution. At Hampton I found buildings, instructors, industries provided by the generous; in other words, the chance to work for my education. While at Hampton I resolved, if God permitted me to finish the course of study, I would enter the far South, the black belt of the Gulf States, and give my life in providing as best I could the same kind of chance for self-help for the youth of my race that I found ready for me when I went to Hampton, and so in 1881 I left Hampton and went to Tuskegee and started the Normal and Industrial Institute in a small church and shanty, with 1 teacher and 30 students. Since then the institution of Tuskegee has grown till we have connected with the institution 69 instructors and 800 young men and women, representing 19 States; and, if I add the families of our instructors, we have on our grounds constantly a population of about 1,000 souls. The students are about equally divided between the sexes, and their average is 18 years. In planning the course of training at Tuskegee we have steadily tried to keep in view our condition and our needs rather than pattern our course of study directly after that of a people whose opportunities of civilization have been far different and far superior to ours. From the first, industrial or hand training has been made a special feature of our work.

This industrial training, combined with the mental and religious, to my mind has several emphatic advantages. At first few of the young men and women who came to us would be able to remain in school during the nine months and pay in cash the $8 per month charged for board. Through our industries we give them the chance

An address delivered by Booker T. Washington, principal of the Tuskegee (Ala.) Normal and Industrial Institute, at the dinner in honor of Alexander Hamilton, Brooklyn, N. Y., January, 1896.

of working out a portion of their board and the remainder they pay in cash. We find by experience that this institution can furnish labor that has economic value to the institution and gives the student a chance to learn something from the labor within itself. For instance, we cultivate by the labor of our students this year about 600 acres of land. This land is not only cultivated in a way to bring in return to our boarding department, but the farm, including stock raising, dairying, fruit growing, etc., is made a constant object lesson for our students and the people in that section of the South. A three-story brick building is now going up, and the bricks for this building are manufactured at our brick yard by students, where we have made 1,500,000 brick this season. The brick masonry, plastering, sawing, sawing of lumber, carpenters' work, painting, tinsmithing, in fact everything connected with the erection of this building is for permanent use, and the students have the knowledge of the trades entering into the erection of such a building. While the young men do this, the girls to a large extent make, mend and laundry their clothing, and in that way are taught these industries.

At the

Now, this work is not carried on in a miscellaneous or irregular manner. head of each industrial department we have a competent instructor, so that the student is not only learning the practical work but is taught as well the underlying principles of each industry. When the student is through with brick masonry he not only understands the trade in a practical way, but also mechanical and architectural drawing to such an extent that he can become a leader in this industry. All through the classroom work is dovetailed in the industrial-the chemistry teaching made to tell on the farm and cooking, the mathematics in the carpentry department, the physics in the blacksmishing and foundrying. Aside from the advantage mentioned, the industrial training gives to our students respect and love for laborhelps them to get rid of the idea so long prevalent in the South that labor with the hands is rather degrading, and this feeling as to labor being degrading is not, I might add, altogether original with the black man of the South. The fact that a man goes into the world conscious of the fact that he has within him the power to create a wagon or a house gives him a certain moral backbone and independence in the world that he would not possess without it.

While friends of the North and elsewhere have given us money to pay our teachers and to buy material which we could not produce, still very largely by the labor of the students, in the way I have attempted to describe, we have built up within about fourteen years a property that is now valued at $225,000; 37 buildings, counting large and small, located on our 1,400 acres of land, all except three of which are the product of student labor. The annual expense of carrying on this work is now about $70,000 a year. The whole property is deeded to an undenominational board of trustees, who have control of the institution. There is no mortgage on any of the property. Our greatest need is for money to pay for teaching.

What is the object of all this? In everything done in literary, religious, or industrial training the question kept constantly before all is that the institution exists for the purpose of training a certain number of picked leaders who will go out and reach in an effective manner masses by whom we are surrounded. It is not a practical nor desirable thing for the North to educate all the negroes in the South, but it is a perfectly practical and possible thing for the North to help the South educate the leaders, who in turn will go out and reach the masses and show them how to lift themselves up. In discussing this subject it is to be borne in mind that 85 per cent of the colored people South live practically in the country districts, where they are difficult to reach except by special effort. In some of the counties in Alabama, near Tuskegee, the colored outnumber the whites four and five to one.

In an industrial sense, what is the condition of these masses? The first year our people received their freedom they had nothing on which to live while they grew their first cotton crop; funds for the first crop were supplied by the storekeeper or former master, a debt was created; to secure the indebtedness a lien was given on the cotton crop. In this way we got started in the South what is known as the mortgage or crop lien system-a system that has proved a curse to the black and white man ever since it was instituted. By this system the farmer is charged a rate of interest that ranges from 15 to 40 per cent. By this system you will usually find three-fourths of the people mortgage their crops from year to year, as many deeply in debt and living in one-roomed cabins on rented land. By this system debts and extravagances are encouraged, and the land is impoverished and values fall.

The schools in the country districts rarely last over three and one-half months in the year, and are usually taught in a church or a wreck of a log cabin or under a brush arbor. My information is that each child entitled to attend the public schools in Massachusetts has spent on him each year between $18 and $20. In Alabama each colored child has spent on him this year about 71 cents, and the white children but a few cents more. Thus far in my remarks I have been performing a rather ungracious task in stating conditions without suggesting a remedy. What is the remedy for the state of things I have attempted to describe?

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