While speaking of the effect of careful hand training on the development of character, it is worth while to mention an uncommonly instructive example. If any one goes into a community North or South, and asks to have pointed out to him the man of the Negro race of the old generation, who stands for the best things in the life of the coloured community, in six cases out of ten, I venture to say, he will be shown a man who learned a trade during the days of slavery. A few years ago, James Hale, a Negro, died in Montgomery, Alabama. He spent the greater part of his life as a slave. He left property valued at fifty thousand dollars, and bequeathed a generous sum to be used in providing for an infirmary for the benefit of his race. James Hale could not read or write a line, yet I do not believe that there is a white or black man in Montgomery who knew Mr. Hale who will not agree with me in saying that he was the first coloured citizen of Montgomery. I have seldom met a man of any race who surpassed him in sterling qualities. When Mr. Hale was a slave his master took great pains to have him well trained as a carpenter, contractor and builder. His master saw that the better the slave was trained in handicraft, the more dollars he was worth. In my opinion, it was this hand-training, despite the evil of slavery, that largely resulted in Mr. Hale's fine development. If Mr. Hale was all this with mere hand training, what might he have been if his mind had also been carefully educated? Mr. Hale was simply a type of many men to be found in nearly every part of the country.

The average manual-training school has for its main object the imparting of culture to the student; while the economic element is made secondary. At the Tuskegee Institute we have always emphasised the trade or economic side of education. With any ignorant and poverty-stricken race, I believe that the problem of bread-winning should precede that of culture. For this reason the students who have attended the night school at Tuskegee have, as a rule, mastered the principles and practice of agriculture, or have been taught a trade by means of which we felt sure they could earn a living. With the question of shelter, food and clothing settled, there is a basis for what are considered the higher and more important things.

While I am speaking of the comparative value of manual training and industrial education, there is one other difference between them to which I ought to call attention. The proportion of students who complete an industrial or trade course is likely to be smaller than the proportion completing a literary or manual training course. For example, a boy comes to Tuskegee Institute, as has often happened, from a district where he has been earning fifty cents a day. At Tuskegee he works at the brickmason's trade for nine months. He cannot master the trade during this time, but he gets a start in it. At the end of the nine-months' session, if he returns home, this student finds himself in demand in the community, at wages which range from one dollar and a half to two dollars a day. Unless he is a man of extraordinarily strong character, he will be likely to yield to the temptation to remain at home, and become a rather commonplace mason, instead of returning and finishing his trade, in order that he may become a master workman. So far I have been unable to discover any remedy that will completely offset this tendency. The most effective cure for it, so far as my experience is concerned, is an appeal to the pride of the student.

Another question often asked me is, how long it will take an industrial school to become self-supporting. To this question I always reply that I know of no industrial school that is self-supporting, nor do I believe that any school which performs its highest functions as an industrial school will become so. I believe that it is the duty of all such schools to make the most of the economic element—to make each industry pay in dollars and cents just as far as is possible—but the element of teaching should be made the first consideration, and the element of production secondary. Very often at the Tuskegee Institute it would pay the institution better to keep a boy away from the farm than to have him spend a day at work on it; but the farm is for the boy, and not the boy for the farm.

An industrial school is continually at work on raw material. When a student gets to the point where he can build a first-class wagon or buggy, he is not retained at the school to build these vehicles merely for their economic value, but is sent out into the world to begin his life's work; and another student is taken in his place to begin the work afresh. The cost of teaching the new student and the waste of material weigh heavily against the cost of production. Hence, it can easily be seen that it is an almost impossible task to make money out of an industrial school, or to make it self-supporting. The moment the idea of "making it pay" is placed uppermost, the institution becomes a factory, and not a school for training head and hand and heart.

One of the advantages of the night school at Tuskegee is in the sifting-out process of the student body. Unless a student has real grit in him and means business, he will not continue very long to work with his hands ten hours a day for the privilege of studying two hours at night. Though much of the work done by students at an industrial school like Tuskegee does not pay, the mere effort at self-help on the part of the student is of the greatest value in character building.

Most races have come up through contact with the soil, either directly or indirectly. There is something about the smell of the soil—a contact with a reality that gives one a strength and development that can be gained in no other way. In advocating industrial training for backward or weak races or individuals, I have always kept in mind the strengthening influence of contact with a real thing, rather than with a third-rate imitation of a thing.

The great lesson which the race needs to learn in freedom is to work willingly, cheerfully and efficiently. In laying special stress upon hand training for a large proportion of my race, I ask no peculiar education for the Negro, because he is a Negro, but I would advocate the same training for the German, the Jew, or the Frenchman, were he in the same relative stage of racial development as the masses of the Negroes. While insisting upon thorough and high-grade industrial education for a large proportion of my race, I have always had the greatest sympathy with first-class college training and have recognised the fact that the Negro race, like other races, must have thoroughly trained college men and women. There is a place and a work for such, just as there is a place and a work for those thoroughly trained with their hands.

I shall never forget a remark I once heard made by a lady of foreign birth. She had recently arrived in America, and by chance had landed in one of our largest American cities. As she was a woman of considerable importance, she received lavish social attention. For weeks her life was spent in a round of fashionable dressing, dining, automobiling, balls, theaters, art museums, card parties, and what not. When she was quite worn out, a friend took her to visit the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. There she saw students and teachers at work in the soil, in wood, in metal, in leather, at work cooking, sewing, laundering. She saw a company of the most devoted men and women in the world giving their lives in the most unselfish manner, that they might help to put a race on its feet. It was then that she exclaimed in my presence: "What a relief! Here I have found a reality; and I am so glad that I did not leave America before I saw it."

I think I was able to understand something of her feeling. In the history of the Negro race since freedom, one of the most difficult tasks has been to teach the teachers and leaders to exercise enough patience and foresight to keep the race down to a reality, instead of yielding to the temptations to grasp after shadows and superficialities. But the race itself is learning the lesson very fast. Indeed, the rank and file learn faster than some of the teachers and leaders.

CHAPTER VI Welding Theory and Practice

Broom-making has been recently included among the industries for girls at Tuskegee. Hundreds of brooms were being worn out every year in sweeping the floors of more than seventy buildings; and I venture to say that more brooms were used up for the same amount of floor space than at almost any other institution of the kind. Wherever you may go in the shops, or halls, you will find some one busy with a broom most of the time. The litter in the carpenter shop or the mattress-making room is not allowed to accumulate until the end of the day, but is swept up so often that visitors sometimes ask me whether there is a moment of the working day when some one is not wielding a busy broom somewhere in the institution.

It was this reason that inspired the home manufacture of the needed supply of brooms. It had been found possible to supply most of the needs of the school by student labour, and after establishing a summer canning factory, which Chaplain Penney directs while the Bible School is not in session, making brooms seemed a natural evolution of supply and demand. But investigation showed that none of the instructors knew anything about making brooms, and that the Experimental Farm had not yet taken up the task of raising broom-corn. These obstacles were not serious in comparison with many others which had been attacked in the industrial school.

A way was found to make the first sample broom, and gradually the needed machinery was installed. Then the director of the Agricultural Department discovered that broom-corn could be raised on the farm, and now students can be equipped to take the industrial knowledge home with them, and also to grow the crop on their own farms. This department keeps the school supplied with good brooms at small cost, and out of a minor need grew another useful industry. The lesson in this little story is that finding a way to solve the problems closest at home helps to build up the community at large. It was found, also, that the work of the class room could be correlated even with broom-making, and made to harmonise with the Tuskegee theory of education of head and hands together. The girls were asked to write compositions descriptive of their work in this industry, and some of these efforts have been very creditable.

"BROOM-MAKING"

"I am a nice large broom just made Tuesday by Harriet McCray. Before I was made into a broom, I grew over in a large farm with a great many others of my sisters. One day I was cut down and brought up to the broom-making department, and was carefully picked to pieces to get the best straw. I was put in a machine called the winder. Here I was wound very tightly, and then put in another machine called the press. I was pressed out flat and sewed tightly. Out of the press I was carried to the clipper, and all of my seed and long ends were cut off. From the cutter I was carried to the threshing machine and combed out thoroughly, and put in the barrel for sale. I was sold to the school for thirty-five cents. He will use me very roughly in doors, and when I begin to get old, I shall be used in sweeping the yards. When I am worn completely out, I shall be pulled to pieces to get my handle, which will be used again to make a fresh, new broom."

Class-room work is also made a part of the training in this varied catalogue of industries in successful operation at Tuskegee: Agriculture, basketry, blacksmithing, bee-keeping, brick-masonry, plastering, brick-making, carpentry, carriage trimming, cooking, dairying, architectural, free-hand and mechanical drawing, plain sewing, dress-making, electrical and steam engineering, founding, harness-making, house-keeping, horticulture, canning, laundering, machinery, mattress making, millinery, nurses' training, painting, saw-milling, shoe-making, printing, stock-raising, tailoring, tinning, and wheelwrighting.

It will be seen that the school is a community unto itself, in which buildings can be erected, finished, and furnished, the table supplied the year round, and economic independence achieved in a large measure. But this work is for the benefit of the student, not to make the school self-supporting. Therefore, no one side of his education must be neglected in order that he may be for the time a more productive labourer in his department of industry. It would be wronging both him and the system to keep him at the work-bench all the working hours in order that he might turn out the greatest possible number of shoes, or window sashes, or fruit cans in a week.

For example, if you should chance to visit the carpenter shop, you would find a score of young men turning out the finished material for some new building in process of erection, or at the lathes turning out the interior finishings. But in a small room in one corner, having a hard time to be heard above the din of the steam saws, is an instructor with a class of students, who are learning to draw up contracts for jobs in carpentry or building. They are not going out with the expectation of always being carpenters at day wages. They should know how to make contracts as "boss carpenters," to build houses, or repair them, or how to hire other men to build houses for them. Therefore, they learn to draw up specifications in both legal and practical form, so that when the occasion arises they will know how to work with intelligence.

Their class-room work in spelling, mathematics, grammar, and English composition comes effectively into play. They find out that a carpenter has small chance of getting ahead unless he can use his head intelligently. He writes out a contract, for example, to put up a four-room house, on a basis of three cash payments—when he takes the job; when the roof is on; and when the house is turned over to the owner. This contract is read aloud by the instructor, who asks the other members of the class to criticise it. One of them points out a flaw which would allow the owner to "crawl out" of his bargain on a technicality. Another is pleased to discover that the arithmetic is so faulty that the estimates of the cost of material would land the contractor in the poor-house. Then the student begins to see that his so-called academic teaching is as important in his calling as his skill with the plane, the saw and the miter-box, and that he cannot hope to become a good carpenter unless he is also a diligent scholar.

In the winter an instructor in the Agricultural Classes may teach his students to familiarise themselves, through books, with insect pests which infest the peach tree. They are asked to give their own ideas of the "borer," or the "scale," but this information is not allowed to be packed away in the attic of memory, to be forgotten like so much useless lumber. The real examination comes in the spring, not in written papers, but in the school orchard. The same instructor takes the class among the peach trees, and, with branches in their hands, they are required to identify the "borer," and apply to the trees the remedies laid down in their books and lectures.

When a new building is to be erected, the school industries join their activities in a common cause. The project sets in motion, first, the wagons to be used in removing the excavated material. The young men in the wheelwright, blacksmithing, and harness-making rooms see their work tested, for they have made and equipped all the heavy farm wagons needed for this hauling. Along with their daily work with the hands, the patterns and instructions had been given them on blackboards and in lectures. They have trained their minds, they have learned handicraft, and the combined results are applied. Their wagons and harness are not to be sent away or put on exhibition. They must stand the strain at home, and if they are faulty it cannot be hidden.

"Names of machines and their uses. Care of machines. Defects of timber trees. Felling timber trees and loading logs on wagon. Measuring lumber and wood. Industrial classes. Drawing. Scaling logs to find their contents in board measure. Grading lumber. Running planer and other machines. Care of belts. Saw filing and caring for saws. Designing and making cutters for mouldings. Calculating speed of pulleys. Arrangement of machines in a planing and saw mill, etc."

Theory and practice in this department are dovetailed in the finished work in the interior of such a structure as the Carnegie Library, or the new Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building, where the wood work, handsomely finished in Southern pine, is the product of the school saw-mill and planer, the carpenter shops and the paint-shop.

The equipment of the machinery, engineering, and foundry department and the courses of study offered are designed to give students a thorough training in their various branches. The machine shop is equipped with the latest machine tools, driven by power from an Atlas engine. All the repair work on the mechanical equipment of the school, including steam pumps, steam engines, woodworking machines, printing presses, metal working machines, is done in this shop. About fifty different machines outside of this department, including the complete steam laundry, the agricultural and dairy machinery, are in daily operation, furnishing the best possible demonstration of the theory taught in the classes. In the course for steam engineers, the young men are able to study the working of eleven different steam engines, seven steam pumps, twelve steam boilers, and a complete water-works system, with miles of piping, valves, gauges, recording apparatus, etc. The instructors lay out the courses in theory and written work, and the mathematical studies are applied in work on blue-print drawings and free-hand sketches.

A foundry is in daily operation, and here the castings used in repair work for the school are made. When the Tuskegee cotton-raising party went to Africa, the castings for the cotton press sent with them were made in the school foundry. In the plumbing and steam-fitting division, the tools and shop equipment are ample for training in lead and iron work, for water and steam piping systems in buildings of various kinds. The plumbing and steam fitting in nearly all the buildings of the Institute were done by the classes of this division. This work includes sinks, bath-tubs, steam radiators, lavatories and sanitary closets. More than eight miles of piping of various sizes, for steam and water, are in use on the school grounds, with all the necessary valves, expansion joints, unions and fittings. The tinsmithing shop turns out nearly every kind of tin work from covering a house to making a pepper-box. The apprentice becomes a first-class tinsmith in two years' training. More than two thousand one-gallon fruit cans were made by the students last year in addition to many other useful articles.

The object of the course in electrical engineering is to give the student a foundation upon which he may build along any special line he may choose later. Arc and incandescent lighting is in use at the school, and there is a complete telephone service connecting most of the buildings and offices through a central station. The students learn not only how to install these systems, but to maintain them in the highest state of efficiency. The dynamos and other electrical machinery of a complete powerhouse are in operation for lighting the school buildings and grounds, so that the student finds practical work at every turn in his course.

He has learned how to build and equip a building. He is taught also how to design it in all its parts. All students in the day and night schools who are in the Mechanical Department are required to take instruction in mechanical drawing. The work of the first year is largely preparatory. It begins with simple geometrical drawing, to accustom the student to the use of instruments and to teach him accuracy and neatness. This is followed by work in projection, which finds application in scale-drawing of simple objects. As soon as a fair knowledge of the instruments has been attained, with a thorough drill in free-hand sketching, the study of design is carried far enough to secure an understanding of the principles, and facility and accuracy in the construction of drawing plans. Strictly speaking, mechanical drawing begins with the second year of trade work, with the study of materials and working drawings. During the last quarter of the third year the student learns how to make blue, solar, and black prints. During the fourth year several excursions are made by the class to the shops, the buildings under construction, the brick-yard, etc. In such excursions detailed notes must be taken and a satisfactory report submitted upon the things seen and examined.

The course of architectural drawing covers three years, and aims to give thorough instruction in drawing, building construction and design. In all cases, the general mechanical and artistic training is supplemented by the course of study in the Academic Department. On entering the third year of the architectural course, the student, in addition to his regular work, is given actual practice in office training and general superintendence. The student visits also the trade shops, and is required to attend classes in heating, electrical lighting, and plumbing. Many of the most satisfactory and imposing buildings of the school were designed in our architectural department.

It will be seen from the foregoing survey that the students are able to build and equip a large building from top to bottom, inside and out, and these object lessons of their own handiwork stand clustered over many acres, a city in itself built by young coloured men, most of whom were wholly ignorant of systematic mental or manual training when they asked to be admitted to Tuskegee.

They maintain also what may be called the running machinery of the institution. The carpenters learn wood-turning and cabinet-making. They make the furniture used in the class rooms and dormitories. Their regular division has been so crowded in recent years that it was found necessary to organise an auxiliary division, called the "Repair Shop." Here all the school's repairs in wood work are done, and the training has proved so valuable that it has been made a separate course of study extending over three years. In the blacksmith shop is performed the ironing of carriages, buggies, and wagons, of which a hundred are used by the school, in addition to making all kinds of implements and the shoeing of horses. Hundreds of farm implements are repaired here. The student blacksmith is not a mere labourer. He is taught how to run a shop of his own. He learns how to make out bills for material, how to keep shop supplies, and a part of his time is devoted to mechanical drawing and class room work.

The division of wheelwrighting is fitted for work in all details of the trade. The students have constantly on hand new work, such as the building of wagons, drays, horse and hand carts, wheel-barrows, buggies and road carts. A great deal of repair work must be done to keep the farm equipment in first-class shape, and the shop is constantly patronised for this kind of work by the farmers of the town and neighbourhood. The school has a standing order for farm wagons from merchants in Tuskegee and Montgomery. These are turned out complete, and have proved serviceable and popular. All of the harness used by the school, and a large quantity sold outside, is made in the harness-making department. All the vehicles turned out by the blacksmith and wheelwrighting divisions are finished by the students in the carriage-trimming shop.

The visitor, therefore, who wishes to inspect the Tuskegee Institute, is met at the station by a carriage built by the students, pulled by horses raised on the school farms, whose harness was made in a school shop. The driver wears a trim, blue uniform made in the school tailor-shop, and shoes made by student class work. The visitor is assigned to a guest room in a dormitory designed, built, and furnished by the students. His bathroom plumbing, the steam heat in his room, and the electric lighting were installed by students. The oak furniture of his room came from the shops. The young woman who takes care of his room is a student working her way through the Institute. After supper, she will change her wearing apparel to a blue uniform dress and a neat straw hat, all made in the school. The steam laundry sends over to know if the visitor wishes some washing done, and girl students send it back, proud of the snowy polish of shirts and collars. The visitor is asked to be a guest in the teachers' dining-hall. The bill of fare may read as follows:

BREAKFAST:

Breakfast food, ham, fried cakes, bread, syrup, coffee, tea, butter, fruit.

DINNER:

Roast beef, tomatoes, rice, corn-bread, sweet potatoes, buttermilk, snap beans, dessert.

SUPPER:

Cold ham, tea, bread, syrup, butter, milk, fried potatoes, coffee.

In looking over this program, the guest will discover that the ham, roast beef, vegetables, cornbread, syrup, butter, milk, and potatoes are products of the school farms, raised, cared for and produced by student labour.

Throughout these varied fields of industrial and productive activity, the following objects are kept constantly in view, and their relative importance is in the order of their enumeration:

To teach the dignity of labour.

To teach the trades, thoroughly and effectively.

To supply the demand for trained industrial leaders.

To assist the students in paying all, or a part, of their expenses.

CHAPTER VII Head and Hands Together

That the distinctive feature of Tuskegee Institute—ample provision for industrial training—has received in the public prints almost exclusive attention is not strange. But it is well to remember that Tuskegee Institute stands for education as well as for training, for men and women as well as for bricks and mortar.

Of course, the distinction involved in the words, "education" and "training," is largely theoretical. My experience convinces me that training to some productive trade, be it wagon-building or farming, educates. For example, one of our students is foreman on the large and beautifully planned Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building, now in process of construction; that young man is notable for a simple honesty, an unobtrusive confidence and self-reliance, that abundantly testify to his manliness. That this manliness is in large degree directly traceable to his skill and his experience in bearing industrial responsibility—in short, to his training—is beyond peradventure. Indeed, in running over the long list of students who, for one reason or another—lack of money or lack of taste for books—have left Tuskegee without completing the prescribed course in the Academic Department, I have been forcibly impressed with the fact that training to productive industry directly tends to develop sound judgment and manly independence—those qualities of the mind and heart that collectively constitute the character of the educated man.

It is obvious that a man cannot build wagons or run a farm with continuous success who is unable to read, write, and cipher. But, far deeper than the mere commercial advantage of academic studies, is the fact that they afford incentives to good conduct and high thinking. To make a boy an efficient mechanic is good, for it enables him to earn a living and to add his mite to the productiveness of society; but a school must do more—must create in him abiding interests in the intellectual achievements of mankind in art and literature, and must stimulate his spiritual nature. And so Tuskegee has always maintained an Academic Department, at present housed mainly in four buildings. The most important of these are Porter Hall, a three-story frame building, the first building erected after the opening of the Institute, though poor in appointments, yet rich in traditions; Thrasher Hall, a handsome three-story brick building with well-equipped physical and chemical laboratories; and the Carnegie Library, a beautifully proportioned brick structure, which is the center of Academic interests. The collection of books is well selected, and the generosity of Tuskegee's friends keeps it constantly growing. The admirable Collis P. Huntington Memorial Building will be the largest building on the grounds, and is to be used exclusively for academic purposes.

On the faculty of the Academic Department are twenty-eight men and women of Negro blood with degrees from Michigan, Nebraska, Oberlin, Amherst, Cornell, Columbia, and Harvard. In order to display the character of work done in the Department, it may be well for me to explain the course of study in some special branches.

The aim of the work in English in the preparatory classes is to bring about familiarity with the mother tongue, and correctness and ease in its use. From contact with good models of spoken or written discourse the pupil learns to appreciate and interpret thought well expressed. From the careful attention given his own language, he learns to feel the correctness or incorrectness of an expression, without slavish reliance upon rules. In other words, in these classes language is taught as an art; the necessary rules and definitions, when they occur, are treated as working principles, and abundant practice in applying them is given. In the advanced years of the course, technical grammar is taught because at this stage the pupil has already become familiar with good usage, and has attained a certain facility in employing the mother tongue. He should now be taught more thoroughly the fundamental principles governing the correct or incorrect use of an expression, while in the preparatory classes, oral exercises in narration, description and reproduction predominate. The pupil is encouraged to talk simply and naturally about something he has seen or heard or read. He is taught to exercise care for unity, logical sequence of ideas, and smoothness of transition. To the narration and description of the lower grades, argumentation and exposition are added in the advanced work, these subjects being expanded to form the basis of a course in public speaking.

The pupil obtains material for themes and debates from his experience in shop and field and from literature technical to the subject. The themes are submitted for correction and in due course committed, and, after preliminary training, delivered at the monthly public rhetoricals of the class. Except for the written brief required of each disputant, debates are extemporaneous. In the preparation of a program like the following, considerable experience and research must necessarily be involved.

Literature in the preparatory classes is taught under the head of reading. The physical requisites to effective expression receive due attention, but great stress is laid upon reading as a means by which the mind is furnished with knowledge. Literature is taught by reading and language teachers, the former dealing with the subject-matter for literary values, the latter having an eye to construction. The course is of twofold importance; contact with finished style gives to the pupil a sense of what is most fitting and beautiful in expression, thus proving an invaluable aid to his own oral and written diction. The work of the Senior class in English literature and composition aims to develop in the pupil power to think clearly and logically, and ability to appreciate thought expressed by others; to teach clearness and correctness of expression together with facility and power in the use of language; to produce an appreciation of good books by contact with classic authors; and to give, by an outline study of the history of English literature, a proper setting for the authors read. To supplement the class-room work in literature, a course in home reading has been arranged. It is the aim of the division of English to make the home reading as much like play as possible, a relaxation from sterner requirements of the curriculum, an occupation for idle hours. By persuading the most stupid pupil to read books which appeal to him, the teacher can lead him gradually to more solid literature.

As personal achievements appeal to the undeveloped mind more strongly than the chronicles of conflicts and political changes, the first course in history deals with biography. The student is given facts in the lives of men, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and is made to feel that these men actually lived, that they are not mere abstract influences. At the very beginning their lives are studied in the light of character building. After the first ideas of character building have been presented, the next step is to awaken the power of the observation, to quicken the imagination. The elementary course in English history is adapted to this purpose.

The course in advanced American History is for developing judgment and discrimination. Little attention is given to the periods of discovery and of colonisation, except to show the student how the American people, as is true of all great nations, began as cultivators of the soil.

The peculiar position of the Negro in American History, from the earliest days of the slave trade, through the wars with England and the Civil War, to the present time, is given due importance, not by isolating it, but by introducing it in its proper place with other events.

In the Senior year, a course is given in the State History of Alabama, for the benefit of those who wish to fit themselves as teachers in that State. The object is to acquaint the Normal student with the important facts in the settlement of Alabama, its entrance into the Union, and its present industrial and political status.

During the first three years, the course in Geography is taught with Nature Study. In the last year, Geography is combined with History. The purpose of this arrangement is obvious. Geography is really a broad phase of Nature Study. Questions regarding natural features, the sun, moon, planets, water-courses, physical points, etc., are explained in the course in Nature Study. Hence the pupil appreciates all the more what is said about them when he comes to them again in his Geography. The same intimacy is found in the study of plant and animal life, minerals, and rock formation.

Tuskegee is admirably fitted for the study of Geography, and every effort is made to make the teaching easily grasped. The industrial shops are always open to academic teachers and students. When the student takes up the subject of lumber, for example, he is able, by going to the shops, to understand the various stages through which the rough, uncut log must pass in order to make suitable building material. Then, too, the school grounds are put to excellent use. Various kinds of plant-life are studied; hills, valleys, small water-courses, examples of erosion, different kinds of soil, are seen on every hand. In connection with Nature Study and Geography, the pupils are urged to be on the alert to detect something new, something which they have seen often, but can afterward view in a new light because of the information obtained.