The age-herald., 1899-03-31

the teaching of industry, and there is positive enthusiasm over it, in fact the public sentiment among the students Is so strong that 1t would not permit a student to remain on the grounds who was unwill- ing to labor.
 Growth of School
 "Starting in 1881 in a little house with one teacher and 30 students the institution at Tuskegee has gradually grown in the num- Der of students until we have at present 1,O47 students, two-thirds of them being young men and the remaining number girls. The average age of these students is eighteen and one-half years. None are admitted until they are fourteen years of age. These. students come from twenty four states and territories and from three foreign countries. The average attendance this year is about 900. All except a small number board and sleep upon the school grounds. In all of the departments-acad- emic. industrial and religious-eigthy-ei eight officers and teachers are employed Count ing students, teachers and families, there is population upon the school grounds at all times of about 200 persons.
 "Twenty-six different industries are in constant operation in connection with our | students academic training, and each stu | dent is taught some trade or industry | These are all industries at which the stu dents can find immediate employment as soon as they finish our course of training In fact we have many times more applica- tions for our graduates each year than we can possibly fill. The demand this year for students to take charge of dairlss and (nx s, been very great
 When we started we had absolutely nothing in the way of property except an appropriation of $2.000. since increased to $500, from the state of Alabama, to be used In the payment of teachers. Since 1881, while friends in different parts of the country have given money to help pay the teachers and to buy material which we could not produce, still very largely by the labor of the students themselves we have gradually built up property that is now valued at $300, 900. In all we have 2,267 acres of land. Counting large and small. there are forty-two buildings upon the grounds, and all of these buildings except four have been almost wholly built by the labor of the students. There is no mortgage upon any of this property. The annual expense of carrying on this work is now about s75,000. About 2,000 of our graduates and ex- students are now at work in every southern state mainly in Alabama, as school teach CTS, farmers, mechanics. housekeepers and leaders along other lines.
 Instruction in Cooking
 Ut has been surprising to me how the negros education has been overlooked in the very matters that any individual should know most about. Let us take the matter of intelligent, cleanly, healthy cooking. Here is something that directly concerns the whole race three times day every day in the year. Cooking not only concerns the whole coored race in this state. but the health and happiness of the white race. for you will agree with me that large pro- portion of you depend upon the negro for the preparation of your food.
 How often has my heart been made to sink as have gone through the south and into the homes of the people and found women who could converse inteligently on Grecian history, who had studied geometry, could analyze the most complex sentences in grammar, and yet know nothing of the composition and proper proportion of the pOOrly COOkeu anu Stlil IIiole poOiAy oCiNSN corn bread and fat meat that they and their families were eating three times day. It is little trouble to find girls who can locate Pekin or the Desert of Sahara on an artificial globe. but it is hard to find girls who can find on the dinner table the proper place for the carving knife and fork, or the meat and vegetables.
 Solution of Choa p Cotton
 ''It will pay the white people of the south, if for no other reason than to increase their own material wealth. to take the deepest interest in the negros education. We hear prolonged moan going up from all DOT tions of the south because of cents and cents cotton. The explanation of this low price of cotton, think all will agree, is to be found largely in over-production. Eff forts are made each year to reduce the ! acreage In cotton. and year by year the amount produced increases. Is not the ex- planation to be found in the fact that the black man produces the larger proportion of the cotton? As rule the black man is ignorant and knows not how to produce anything else except cotton. Is it not true that in all the history of the world an ig norant farming class produces but a sin ble crop? Is it not true that you can only have diversified crop where you have an intelligent farming class? The only way for the south to save itself from the de- pressing influence of the low price of cot top-of one-crop system in farming-is in part to educate the black man so as to make him intelligent in all matters of ag- riculture. When the black man prospers as farmer the white man prospers It is impossible for a black man to be worth twenty thousand dollars without all his k kneighbors sharing in the benefits of that twenty thousand dollars.
 "In the economy of God there Is but one standard by which an individual can sue ceed-there is but one standard for race. This country requires that every race shall measure itself by the American standard. By 1t race must rise or fall. succeed or fail. and in the last analysis mere senti- ment counts for little. During the next half century and more my race must con | tinue passing through the severe American