Statistical data show that the average yield of cotton per acre throughout the South is 190 pounds, an astonishingly low figure, and, except when high prices rule, below the paying point. Every acre of cotton in the South can and should be made to produce 500 pounds of lint. Should the cotton grower add the trifling increase of five pounds of lint an acre, it would mean for the Cotton States a total increase of 240,000 bales, based on the crop reports for 1902, with a value of nearly $15,000,000, according to the prices realised on the crop of 1903. The experimental station at Tuskegee has appreciated the tremendous possibilities pictured by such statements as these, and the Director, Mr. Carver, has demonstrated the value of scientific cultivation, by raising nearly 500 pounds of cotton on one acre of poor Alabama land. In addition he has taken up the problem of crossing varieties of cotton to increase the quality of the uplands staple. These experiments have been promisingly successful, and already a hybrid cotton has been grown which is vastly superior to that commonly raised in Alabama. In other words, Tuskegee is teaching the farmers how to raise a better grade of cotton and more of it, without increasing the acreage planted.

The subject of soil improvement through natural agencies has been one of much concern to both ancient and modern agriculturists. The ancient Egyptian knew that if he let his land lie idle—"rested," as he termed it—he was able to produce a much better crop, and that crop would be in quantity and quality, all other things being equal, proportionate to the length of time this land had been rested.

At a later period the fertilising value of the legumes (pod-bearing plants) was recognised. But as the population of the world increased and civilisation advanced, it became more imperative that all farming operations should be more intensive and less extensive. Each decade saw the progressive farmer on his journey of progress correcting many mistakes of the past. He then began to see that it was quite possible and practicable to keep his ground covered with some crop; and the soil also became richer and more fertile every year—by reason of this constant tillage—than was possible under the old method of letting the land lie fallow for a few years. As science shed light upon his art, he learned that the crop-yielding capacity of a soil was increased by rotating or changing his farm crops every year upon land not occupied by such crops the year previous.

For seven years Tuskegee has made the subject of crop rotation a special study, and submits the plan illustrated by the accompanying chart as the most simple and satisfactory. This chart and data were worked out by the Director of the Agricultural Department. It was hoped that the experiment would shed some light on the following pertinent questions:

(a) Is it possible to build up the poor upland soils of Alabama?

(b) Can injurious washing away of the soil by rains be overcome?

(c) Are not the fertilisers necessary for the production of a crop on such land far beyond the reach of the average farmer?

(d) Granting it can be built up and made productive, will it not take an average life-time?

The plan for rotation as outlined is for a farm of forty acres, but is perfectly applicable to one of any size, even down to a garden patch. In order that our efforts might be guided with the greatest degree of intelligence, the soil was analysed and found to be seriously deficient in three very important elements of plant food, and in the order named: Nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. In addition to this, it was practically devoid of humus (vegetable matter), and otherwise was in as bad a physical condition as chemical. Our first efforts were directed toward correcting the physical condition by deep plowing, rebuilding terraces and filling in washes. This being done, we are now ready to make definite plans for planting our forty-acre farm. In a farm this size we find it is wise to set aside four acres to be used as indicated:

(1) One acre for the house, lawn, flower garden, nut and ornamental trees. (2) One acre for the garden, orchard and small fruits. Upon this all the vegetables of various kinds, peaches, pears, plums, figs, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, etc., should be raised, not simply to supply the needs of the family, but there should be a surplus to market. (3) One acre for the barn, poultry house, pigsties, and other necessary out-buildings. (4) One acre for a good pasture where cows, horses, hogs, and stock of various kinds might be turned in from time to time. The remaining thirty-six acres should be planted as follows:

First year, sixteen acres of cowpease, eight acres of cotton, two acres of ribbon cane, three acres of corn, one acre of sorghum, one acre of peanuts, three acres of sweet potatoes, one acre of teosinte (a green fodder plant), one acre of pumpkins, cushaws, squash, etc.

The second year it will be observed that the peas change places with the cotton, corn, ribbon cane, sorghum, teosinte, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, except in a few instances—and these are where the soil was: (a) Naturally poor, as indicated by the acre where peanuts and cowpease follow each other the first and second years in order to better fit the land physically and chemically to produce an exhaustive crop like cotton; (b) Sweet potatoes following cotton and ribbon cane. Here bottom land is represented, and is, therefore, quite fertile. The fertilisers necessary to produce a good crop of sugar cane and cotton were quite sufficient to produce a good crop of potatoes with but little additional fertiliser. (c) In this we have a different condition—that of neglected bottom soil, deficient mainly in nitrogen. Here the pea is planted the first year to restore the nitrogen; and this is followed by teosinte and sorghum in one instance and pumpkins and ribbon cane in another; the physical condition of the soil being best suited to these particular crops. With the few exceptions mentioned, the third year is identical with the first.

Such a system of rotation has enabled us in seven years to make a net profit of $96.22 from one acre of this land, when in the beginning we lost $2.40 per acre.

In 1897, cowpease were planted, using $5 worth of kainite and acid phosphate per acre—mixing them together and putting in the drill. The seed, preparation of the land, planting, harvesting the light crop of vines, etc., amounted to $6.50, making a total of $11.50. The crop sold for $9.10, leaving us $2.40 behind.

In 1898, this same acre was planted in sweet potatoes and fertilised with $5 worth of kainite and acid phosphate, the same as recommended for the pease. The after-operation cost $6. Fifty-five bushels of marketable potatoes were harvested and sold for 60c per bushel, equalling $33, and leaving a net balance of $22 on the acre.

In 1899, cowpease were again planted and fertilised exactly the same as in 1897. The returns were fifteen bushels of pease, at 55 cents per bushel, equalling $8.25; also one and one-half tons of cured hay, worth $22.50, giving a total of $30.75. Less the cost—$11.50—equals $19.25 gain.

In 1900, it was planted in sorghum cane, fertilised with $5 worth of kainite and acid phosphate, plus fifteen one-horse wagon-loads of swamp muck and decayed forest leaves, at a cost of $3.75; plus the cost of harvesting, etc., $4.25, making a total of $13. Seven tons of hay were harvested and sold green for $5 a ton, leaving a gain of $22.

In 1901, cowpease were planted and fertilised exactly the same as for the sorghum. Twenty-five bushels of pease were harvested, worth $13.75; two tons of cured hay worth $28, making a total of $41.75; less the cost, equals $28.75 gain.

In 1902, it was planted in garden truck—cabbage, onions, beets, squash, tomatoes, melons, beans, turnips, mustard, kale, kohl rabi, rutabagas, etc. Fertilised the same as for sorghum and pease, except half of the swamp muck was replaced by stable manure. The total operations cost $21; the entire crop sold for $60, leaving a gain of $39.

In 1903, it was again planted in cowpease. Fertilised the same as for the garden. Twenty-seven bushels of pease were harvested, worth $14.85, and three tons of cured hay worth $43, equalling $56.85. Less the cost, gives us a gain of $43.85 per acre.

In this same year, a portion of this field, subject to the same rotation, was planted in white potatoes, using the same amount of muck, kainite and phosphate, at a total cost of $9. Eighty bushels of potatoes were harvested and sold for $1 per bushel, equalling $80. Before the potatoes were dug, cowpease were planted between the rows and yielded $25.22 worth of peas and hay, giving a clear profit of $96.22 per acre.

Another acre subjected to the same treatment was planted in early corn and followed by sweet potatoes, at a cost of $16. It gave a crop as follows: $44.60 in corn and fodder, one hundred and five bushels of marketable potatoes, and $4.05 worth of hay; making in all $111.65. Less $16.90, gives a profit of $94.75.

It is important to note that the data for 1903 represent only one-half of the crop, as the land is now in grain and will be harvested in time for the next crop, or grazed, which, of course, will give a net balance according to the yield of this grain or its value in grazing. We think, therefore, that the foregoing facts answer quite conclusively all the questions in the affirmative, and that it is wise for the Southern farmer to purchase a home even of two acres.

CHAPTER XIV The Eagerness for Learning

Necessity compels most of the coloured youth seeking education to work with their hands and pay as they go. It is better thus, even for those who do not expect to follow trades. I do not believe that any young man who has worked his way through Yale or Harvard regrets the experience. All whom I have met were proud of the achievement, and considered it an important part of the training that was to make them useful and capable men.

Many thousand letters of application for admission to the Tuskegee Institute are on file in my office. Their general trend is one of the strongest arguments for the gospel of hard work with head and hands. These young men and women from nearly every state of the Union and many foreign countries are writing me scores of letters daily, asking for a chance to get an education. With them there is no such thing as taking it for granted that they will be sent to school by somebody else. They have felt the force of newly awakened ambition, and lacking money to support themselves for three, four or five years in school, are eager to work for it. If their parents share this ambition, it is often the case that prayers, and heartfelt wishes, and hopes are all they can give their children to help them along the rough road to freedom.

For lack of room, we are forced to refuse each year thousands of applicants, earnest, pleading candidates, most of them, who are willing to make any sacrifices, to endure any burden of toil, to get the training that is to help them and enable them to help others. Merely to look through these piles of letters as they have accumulated for years would require many days' labour. I have chosen a few of them at random, for they show why Tuskegee students are in earnest from the beginning of their school work to the end, and why they go out to earn a living, armed with sincerity of purpose.

I have taken the liberty of making them easier to read by correcting the crude spelling and expression in some of them.

Dear President: I that delights in education have by recommendation conceived an idea of applying to your worthy school, if possible, for education, provided I am qualified to enter. Believing that your catalogue will give me a thorough understanding of the same, I will hereby [ask] that you send me one of your complete catalogues that I may prepare to enter the ensueing fall. Now, sir, you will please excuse me if I give you knowledge of my disposition. I am full of delight in education. Therefore I will try to be one of the most pious students of the time. This would also cause me to be grateful for the privileges, especially those of labour, for this is my first inquiry whether I might remain in school during vacation and work. In fact, I would have, please, sir, a prompt and continual job in school. Please, sir, to interest yourself in my welfare in this circumstance.

Dear Sir: Wishing to enter the Tuskegee Institute, I hereby write you for information. I wish to enter night school and work in the day as an apprentice in the machine department. My parents are poor and not able so assist me in going to school, so my only chance is to work my way if there be any chance at all. I am now twenty-one years old. I am working with my father on a farm where I have been working ever since I have been large enough. I have been going so school some, but a very little, while I were very small, and I had not been in several years until this Mr. —— came here, and now I am working every day and going to school at night. I am proud to say that he has done me good two ways by telling me of the chances afforded in the Tuskegee Institute for poor boys and girls to educate themselves, and he has enthused my ambition for educating and bettering my condition. Please send me a catalogue of the school, that I may see just how I must start to enter.

Yours truly, desiring an education.

Dear Sir: I have heard so much and read so much of your school, until I am craving to come and take a part with the leading people of my colour. Mr. Washington, I've heard that a poor person who desires to make a mark in the world and haven't the means, you would take them and let them work the first year for two hours lessons at night, and let this help on their expenses for the next year. If this is correct, will you please write me at once, for I am a poor girl, and is so very anxious to learn some good trade, also have good learning in books, and I am too poor to go to school and pay. So if you will let me in, I am willing to work very hard, indeed I am. Please send me a clear understanding of the school, for I am anxious to be a great woman. Please write me at an early date.

Dear Sir: I have read and heard a great deal of your school, and I want to attend it this summer. I would like to know whether I could work all of my way or not, as my parents is not able to send me, and I want to go to school, I want to take a special course in sewing.

Kind Sir: I received your immediate reply, and I was truly glad to hear from you, and to receive your circular of information and its meanings. But there is a few questions of importance I wish to ask. Can I enter the night school at once, or is there any limited time the school closes, and when are the sessions? Now, I hope I can enter at once, and stay the year around, or as long as I can be employed at the place, so that I can pay my board and schooling, as I have no parents and I am trying to make a start for an education. I am a member of the church and a lover of the Sunday School, also I feel that I have a superior calling from on high. Therefore I wish to secure even a good English education. May God provide for your success is the prayer of your humble servant.

Kind Sir: I have thought to write you since your lecture up here in the adjoining county last fall. Mr. Washington, I have a great desire for an education and it seems that I have many besetments in life that prohibits me from saving just the amount of money that I need to educate myself as I desire so do, and I will inquire of you if your college has any way that a young man could work his tuition out. If so, please let me know just what terms I could enter on, as I have fully made up my mind to try to educate myself, provided any school will help me in my struggle. I see the need of an education, and I see that there is fields of work for a young man of my age. Mr. Washington, if you please, give me a chance if you can, I am willing to work my way through at any position you would put me at to pay for my learning. I am not too proud to do any work I can help to educate myself. I want to join that goodly number of Negroes that is making such success at your school. Please pardon such a long letter.

Your humble questioner.

Mr. Washington: I would be more than glad to appreciate your school, inasmuch as to come down and attend about two terms, if you are not filled. I am not able to pay my board in money, and if there is any vacancy in your school where I can work and pay, I would be more than glad. Please let me know immediately, so I will know what to do. Let me know all about your charges per month. Please reply at once, because I want to come as early as possible.

"I received your circular and was carefully reading the terms. There is some few more hints I would like to ask you. If I arrive there with forty dollars, could I attend the whole nine months of a school year? My occupation has been for the last four years cooking. Before then it was farming, but I can do a little laundry work also. In these four years I have attended school two terms in public school. I am very anxious for an industrial education, so therefore I desire to attend your school. The industrial studies I would like to learn are carriage-trimming and laundry work. My studies are United States History, Arithmetic, English, and Geography. If you think I can stay the whole term on forty dollars let me know, and I will be there in August. I am twenty-two years of age."

"Please let me know whether you can furnish girls work enough to support them in school. I see in the 'Voice of Missions' where you will give ministers work to support themselves. Is there any chance for a girl who wants an education? I have read of your school, and would like so well to come there, but I live so far away, until I would not be able to pay my fare from New Orleans and then pay my school expenses. Please let me know the cheapest that I could enter school, also the distance and cost from New Orleans. I would like to enter next season without fail. Please write me by return mail without fail."

Dear Sir: During your recent lecturing tour you stopped here and I was determined to hear you, and when I heard you I was fired with the ambition to go to school. I tried to get an audience with you, but owing to so many others who were as enthusiastic as I, I could only speak a few words with you. Do you remember the young man who spoke to you about going to your school? As I said before, I did not have time to explain it all to you. I am unable to pay my way through your school, but I am more than willing to work my way through. You told me that I could when I spoke to you about it.

Dear Sir: My boy ran away from home during my absence from home in January. After he was gone, I learned from his associates that he said he was going to Tuskegee to school. Please inform me whether he has made his appearance there or not.

Dear Sir: Do you think it best for me to enter as soon as possible, or wait until the next term, but I would rather enter as soon as possible. But will do as you think best. I have a mother and grandmother to support, and if I can get an education I know that I will be better fitted to support them, and I am sure that you will agree with me in the matter. And if you will give me a chance, I will be a man among my people some day.

Dear Sir: I am sorry that I cannot be admitted. In case of a vacancy, will you notify me, or until there is a chance could I come to the school in the summer? I am a poor girl. If I can't come in the summer, I am going to try to earn enough money to come and stay two or three months as soon as you will let me, even if there is no room to live at the school.

"I will write you a few lines to ask if you please to let me enter into your band of coloured scholars. That is, I want to come to your school in the daytime, or at night and work the rest of the time. If there is any way fixed, let me know whether my name can be put in your roll book. I have just left school a few days ago, and I want to get in as soon as possible. I have been striving to come to your school going on three years, and at last I have got to the point that if you will let me in I will be over there the first day of March. Please, sir, let me in, if there is any way that can be fixed to do so. I would be one of the happiest boys in the world if you say I could come. Please write me word just as soon as you read it."

Dear Sir: Having just read again a short biography of your life, and being desirous of obtaining a better education, I thought I would write you and perhaps gain the necessary information. Last year I completed the course in the High School here. When school opened in September, I joined the Normal Training Class here and since then I have been training in for a second and third grade teacher. I have had about eight months of piano music and two of vocal, and one school year in the elements of elocution. I am desirous of becoming a school teacher, and realise how necessary it is to have a better education. I have no support but an aged mother. I had almost given up hope, but when I read of others working their way through college, I am resolved to try. Is there any possible way of earning my schooling at Tuskegee? I thought perhaps I could teach in the primary grades a part of the day to pay for what I should get. Or perhaps I could work in some other way. I am willing to do any honest labour to get an education. You doubtless get letters of this kind daily, but I only ask that you please answer and tell me if there is any chance for a poor girl obtaining knowledge. I am so anxious that I would willingly work during the vacations and holidays. Please answer this, and if I cannot gain entrance at Tuskegee, perhaps you can tell me of some school where I can. If your answer is favorable, I will immediately begin to earn money to pay my way there, for those of us who are in the training class receive no salary.

CHAPTER XV The Value of Small Things

A lifetime of hard work has shown me the value of little things of every day. We preach them at Tuskegee, and try to enforce them in the daily round of sixteen hundred students' lives. We speak of them because they are at the bottom of character-building, and because no person can go on year by year forgetting them, without having his soul warped and made small and weak. We want young men and women to go out, not as slaves of their daily routine, but masters of their circumstances. But the structure must be built a brick at a time, and no act is without its influence. I am in the habit of talking to the student body when it is assembled in the chapel for the first time after the opening of the school year with a good deal of practical exhortation about the "value of little things," unimportant as some of them may seem to the new-comers at Tuskegee. They are told, for example, that among the resolutions which each should abide by through the term, is to keep in close and constant touch with their homes. "You can do this," I have said, "in no better way than by forming the habit of writing a letter home once every week. I fear that this is not always done. I want to see each one of you grow into the habit of writing a letter to your parents or your friends at home, as often as you can find the time. I do not mean by this that you shall get a little piece of waste paper, snatch up a lead pencil, and scribble a hasty note, asking them to send you some money, or to send you a dress, or a hat. I mean for you to select a time—the Sabbath, if you can find no other time—and sit down in your rooms, or go to the library, take plenty of time, get good paper, the best ink, and write your mother and father, your brothers and sisters, a good, encouraging, well-thought-out letter. It will pay you to do that, even if you look at it from a selfish standpoint. Grow into the habit of doing that every week while you are students here.

"It will keep you in touch with your homes, and it always pays to keep under the home influence, no matter how humble that home may be, no matter how much poverty there may be about it, no matter how much ignorance there may be in it—it always pays to keep in close touch with your homes. I want you to do this, not only for your own sake, but more for the sake of your parents, for the sake of those who are trying to keep you at this institution. You can make them feel your appreciation in no better way than by writing them regularly in the manner that I have tried to urge you to do. It will encourage them. It will make them feel that it pays to make the sacrifice for you."

These practical talks on the value of small things are enforced by a corp of inspectors, whose practised eyes are quick to detect the soiled collar, the loose button, the unpolished boot, when the forces assemble for meals and for chapel, and the personal appearance of every student is carefully scrutinised. Nothing is more humiliating to a Tuskegee boy or girl than to be taken out of line as the body marches out of chapel.

It requires care and thought to make a hasty toilet after a ten-hour day on the farm or in the shops, and be ready for supper on the stroke of the bell. And a student late to meals goes without that meal unless he has a good excuse. But out of such a system arises a pride in personal appearance, and a spirit of self-respect that goes far toward making useful men and women. It must be remembered, too, that much of the raw material which is taken in hand at Tuskegee has not had the advantages of any system and order at home, even in the primary qualities of personal cleanliness and neatness.

It sounds like the discipline of a man-of-war to say that one loose or missing button on the clothing of any one of a thousand boys is almost instantly noted and recorded, but the students themselves are proud of the fact that it is seldom that one of them must be called out of line by an inspector. They have responded to the test set for them, and they never forget it. They feel a personal sorrow that the epithet "shiftless" has been used to characterise their race, and they realise that it must be lived down in small things as well as great.

There is a student police force at Tuskegee, the members of which are uniformed and allowed to carry policemen's short "clubs" on their night rounds. A visitor, who was on his way to my house, to dine, met at the gate a young man in uniform, apparently on guard, who saluted with his raised stick. My guest expressed some surprise, saying:

"I did not know that you had to guard against the hostility of the Southern white people of this region. It is shocking to know that race antagonism can be so violent and unreasonable."

I replied: "I have no better friends than the white people of Tuskegee, and there is no need for a body guard, I assure you. That alarming young man was simply a student policeman who saluted you as he is required to do all teachers and visitors. He is allowed to carry a stick, not because he will ever need to use it, but because it is a badge of his authority, an emblem of the responsibility of his position. The officers of our cadet corps carry swords for the same reasons."

The boy policeman and his club typify the worth of little things, indirectly furnishing a help toward the complex structure of character. The young man in uniform, trudging on his night rounds about the school grounds, feels himself more of a man if he is equipped for a man's work. It adds to his self-respect, and it helps him to feel that his duty is an important one.

The Savings Bank Department of the school, which is part of the regularly authorised banking department of the institution, has been, in addition to its education in business methods, a great aid in teaching the students the value of little things. Early in the present year, there were to the credit of the students in the savings fund deposits of more than $14,000. This was largely made up of small accounts. The depositors are allowed to have checkbooks, and to draw on their accounts checks in as small amounts as twenty-five cents. As a result they do not carry their available cash around in their pockets, but hasten to the bank with it, and settle nearly all transactions among themselves by check.

This impresses on their minds the value of saving, for the bank account is in itself a strong incentive. These deposits come from various sources. The work done by the students in the various industrial departments is not paid for in cash, but its value is credited to their accounts with the school for the board, lodging, laundry, etc., furnished them. Their work amounted last year to a cash value of more than $90,000.

For "ready money," however, they must depend on what they receive from home, which is a small proportion of the total bank deposits, and upon what they are able to earn out of working hours. Many of them act as agents on commission for mail-order houses, which supply clothing, shoes, underwear, and a variety of necessaries and a few luxuries. In the summer a large number of young men go from Tuskegee to work in the Southern States, many of them in the Alabama coal fields, to earn money to pay the expenses of their education through the next school year. They save these earnings and bring them back to deposit in the Institute bank.

But these savings are not in dollars for the most part, but in quarters, dimes, and even pennies. In looking over the books of the bank recently, the individual ledger accounts attracted my notice. There was a whole page given the account of one girl, whose individual deposits did not average more than ten cents. There were several of three cents, and one of two cents. It seemed to me that this girl student was worth watching in after life. If she was willing to walk across the grounds and back, a round trip of perhaps half a mile, from her dormitory or work-shop, to make a deposit of three cents in the savings bank, and to continue her deposits, although she was never able to save more than a few cents at a time, she was fast learning the value of small things, and was already far along the path of practical usefulness.

The corps of teachers assembles for meals in another dining-room. They are not needed to preserve order or enforce discipline, as the students have that matter largely in their own hands. Inspectors see that their clothes have been brushed, their faces and hands cleaned of the stains of the farm and work shops, as the army enters the dining-hall. But behaviour takes care of itself. It is not long since I read of riotous scenes in the "commons" of certain Northern universities, in which students were guilty of throwing bread and crockery around the room. This has never happened at Tuskegee, and this kind of disorder in our dining-hall is quite beyond my imagination.

Once in a while, when tired of office work, I walk across the school grounds and drop into one of the dormitories to talk with the boys or girls in their rooms, and see for myself how they are living and what they are doing to make their rooms, not only spotlessly neat, but livable and attractive. Not long ago I went into a room in one of the girls' halls, which was clean but utterly cheerless. She said in explanation that she had been told that, if she could not keep the photographs and all the other bric-a-brac that finds its way into a girl's room dustless and in order, she should store the superfluous articles away. I told her that the result of this misguided endeavour was a room that looked as much like a barn as it did a home. She told me how much she had spent during the term in buying chocolate to make "fudge." For the same outlay she could have had pretty framed prints on her walls, and other simple adornment in good taste and without "clutter." That evening I said, while talking to the students in chapel:

"I was in the rooms of several girls to-day. I had been in these rooms before. Some of the rooms are always clean and attractive. You will find a number of little, delicate, home-like touches about them. You have only to go into another room, and you will feel as if you wanted to go out as soon as possible. This latter room has possibly two or three girls in it, and they are always full of excuses, always explaining. They can stand for five, ten, fifteen minutes, and reel off excuses by the yard. Those girls, unless they change, will never get ahead very far, I fear.

"The habit of making excuses, of giving explanations, instead of achieving results, grows from year to year upon one, until finally it gets such a hold that I think the victim finds himself almost as well satisfied with a good, long-drawn-out excuse, as he does with real tangible achievement. The schoolboy and girl must be taught such lessons in every moment of routine duty, and there are no "little things," to be carelessly overlooked, without danger that repetition will breed bad habit. The student may think these things are little, but permanent injury to character is the price paid for indifference and carelessness. The price is paid in permanent injury to character.

"Every dollar received at Tuskegee comes through hard work on the part of some one. Every dollar is placed with us because the donor feels that perhaps it will accomplish more good here than elsewhere. It is always a question for them to choose between giving a dollar here or to some other institution. The attitude of every student, if he wishes to be honest, must be that he has no right to ask persons to support the school if a dollar goes into the hands of an individual who is not doing his very best to earn the worth of it, every moment of every day, from rising bell to "taps" on the bugle at the boy's hall."

Looking at education from this view-point, every detail of the work and administration of a community of sixteen hundred people, with their great variety of activities, becomes vitally important, a part toward the complete whole.

This doctrine of "small things" finds expression in an infinite number of channels. One of the despised but abundant products of the Southern farms has been the cowpea. It is used extensively as a fodder plant, and as a fertiliser by plowing it under. The cowpea is also one of the most nutritious of foods, when properly cooked, but while it has been growing at their doors the coloured people have neglected it as a part of their diet. The Tuskegee agricultural expert investigated the cowpea. He found that it was as valuable for food as the far-famed "Boston bean," and prepared his table of analyses to prove it. Then he worked out no less than eighteen different appetising recipes for cooking the humble cowpea, and made practical demonstration, in a booth of his own making, during one of the Negro Conference gatherings.

CHAPTER XVI Religious Influences at Tuskegee

In the rapid growth of the institution along academic and industrial lines, the spiritual side of the school has not been neglected. During the last fifteen years a regularly appointed chaplain, an ordained evangelical minister, has been connected with the school, which is non-denominational, but by no means non-religious. It has much of the machinery of most regularly organised churches, although, for good reasons, it has not seemed best, yet, to organise a church in connection with the institution. It has, in fact, a much better equipment than most churches about it, both as to its house of worship and auxiliary services.

First: There is, each Sunday, a regular preaching service, at which teachers and students are expected to be present.

Second: Every Sunday morning, during the months of school, a large and enthusiastic Christian Endeavour Society meets for an hour's appropriate exercises. Teachers and students alike belong to it, serve on its committees, and, in many ways, are very helpful to the religious side of the school. The selections of scripture read or repeated and commented upon, the prayers offered, and the songs contributed by the students, show that they are preparing themselves for leadership in religion as well as for usefulness in shop and class room when they leave Tuskegee.

Third: The students are divided into thirty-six Sunday-school classes, each Sunday, to study the international lesson. There is also a Junior Sunday-school, composed of the children of teachers and of families near the school.

Fourth: A flourishing organisation of the Y. M. C. A., ably officered by students, makes itself felt for good both among the young men students as well as by visits, through committees, to the surrounding country, each Sunday, to look after sick and needy persons, especially the aged poor.

Fifth: The young women students, under the leadership of lady teachers, sustain three societies among themselves, viz.: The One Cent Missionary Society, the oldest in the institution. It is auxiliary to the Woman's Home Missionary Association of Boston, to which it sends $5 annually. The Edna D. Chaney Missionary Club has its own special work, as has also the Y. W. C. T. U. Recently, there has been organised a Y. W. C. A. to reach a younger class of girls. Each of these organisations has proved itself a potent factor for good, not only in the school and its immediate environs, but beyond; for it is the policy of the Tuskegee Institute to spread its various influences to other towns and communities, wherever its graduates and students find work, in whatever capacity.

Sixth: The Humane Society has done much to teach the students the proper care of dumb animals.

Seventh: The Tuskegee Women's Club, a branch of the National Association of Coloured Women, which meets twice a month to discuss such topics as look to the betterment of the women and girls of the Negro race in the United States. Another society, more local, is called Mothers' Council. Here the married women meet to discuss household matters. One of the members of this body, the wife of an instructor, though herself not a teacher, has for several years been conducting a Sunday afternoon meeting for neglected children in one of the tenement sections of the town of Tuskegee. The room in which the meetings are held is rented for this purpose by the students of the Bible School and paid for out of their weekly contributions.

Eighth: Once, daily, at evening (Friday and Saturday excepted), the whole school assembles in the spacious chapel for devotional services, led by the Principal or his representative, before retiring.