The age-herald., 1900-11-10
TO TEACH THE ART
 OF COTTON RAISING
TuSkegee Graduates Leave New
 York for Africa
BOUND FOR HE WEST COAST
Pupils from Booker T. Washington's Famous School Engaged by the German Government to In
 struct Natives-Plans
om the New York Evening Post.

| From the New York Evening Post.
 Sailing from New York today on the
 Hamburg-American Line steamer Graf
 Waldersee were four young colored men
 from Booker T. Washington's school at l Tuskegee, Ala, who go to the west coast
 of Africa under the auspices of the Ger
 man government to teach cotton raising
 and general agriculture to the natives in l the German colony there They take with l them ten bushels of cotton seed of the
 most approved varieties, a cotton gin, probably the first ever seen in that part of
 Africa eff there has ever been one in the
 continent at alp, lumber wagons, full
 outfit of agricultural tools in general and
 a stock of vegetable seeds.
 | This expedition has been referred to as
 the most important step in the develop ment of the cotton industry since Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Cotton
 has been raised for generations-centurles,
 in fact-in Africa. The natives have raised
 the crop, in a poor way, in the very part l of the continent to which the expedition
 goes, but they have not understood how to cultivate 1t properly, and the crop has
 been small in quantity and poor in quality. l Every portion of the work has been done 1 in the most primitive way Even the pick | ing of the seeds from the staple has been | done by hand. Last year about thirty acres 1 of cotton were planted in this colony under | government. supervision and better culti- | vated. This year the government proposes l to begin the cultivation of the crop on | still broader and more systematic basis With a view to doing this the representa- tives of the German government arranged l with the Tuskegee Institute To send four | men who are skilled In the best methods | of the cultivation of the crop. These men l are hired by the government, which pays | them salary and their travelling expenses. l From Hamburg they are to go by coasting | steamer 10 the seaport of Lome, and from | there inland. Three of the men are grad uates of the institute. Two come from the agricultural department and have had years of training on the schools planta- | tion The third man is a graduate of the mechanical department of the school. He | goes to look after repairs to the machinery 1 and tools which they take with them, and | is also capable of building many utensils l which may be needed. The lumber wagon taken, for instance, was built In the shop | of the Tuskegee Institute in which a class | of students are all the time learning the wheelwrlghts trade. These three men look l forward to spending years, If not all of | their lives, in Africa, although they hope | to return to this country at more or less frequent intervals As of them said, l in speaking of the work which they go to do, "I feel a if l was going back to my l old home to carry back there some part | of what I have learned in this country l This mans ancestors came from the same | part of Africa few generations ago.
 The fourth member of the party is J. N. | Galloway, a colored man, who has been the l manager of the schools farm for several l years This farm is a plantation of sev- eral hundred acres, a large part of which is cultivated by the students each year | under his supervision. MT. Galloway eX- l poets to remain in Africa for year or l more to get the enterprise well establish | ed there. It is interesting fact that his grandfather, who was formerly a l slave in Tennessee, went to this same part | of Africa, and died there not so very | many years ago. This man bought his free
 dom a few years before the civil war. Ac- l cording to the law at that time a slave l who had freed himself in this way | obliged to have some white man vouch for l him, MT. Galloway says, and this fact led | his grandfather eventually to leave this l country and go back to the land from | which his people had come
 1 The colony to which these men go Is call
 ed Togo. It is on the west coast, north l of the Gulf of Guinea, and lies between Da- | honey and Ashantee. This is the part of l Africa from which the greatest number of | slaves were brought. The ultimate desti- | nation of the party Is a settlement sixty l miles inland called Misahohe. Togo Is | about half as large the State of Ala
 bama; that means thatit has an area of | about 30,000 square miles. The native pop | ulation is estimated to be about 1000 900. | The three who are to remain there | represent three different states in the | South and will, threfore, have the advant- | age of understanding the cultivation of cot | ton in various soils and under varying con- | ditions One of them John Robinson, comes | from Bennettsvlle, s. C.; another, Allen | Burks, is from Tallassee, Ala, while the l third, Shepard Harris, is from Macon,f Ga. | They never had been in New York be- | fore or in any very large city, until they | started North this trip, and they were | intensely interested in what they saw here. | Wall street was one of the places which | they asked to be directed to. When asked | how they felt about going so far away from ] home they looked a little homesck
 | The machinery and tools which the men | carry are of the best patterns. The cot ] ton-gin has a condenser and feeder. The
 ploughs which they take have an assort- | ment of adjustable points, to be used al
 different stages of the crop. They carry
 three different kinds of cotton seed. One
 of these is called the "Peterkin:" this is
 a favorte variety over a large section of
 the South; the other two which they will
 try are the Russell Big Bale' and the
 Fruit" There has been some question as
 to whether the seed of cotton which four
 ishes in this country will do we'll in Af-
 rica. It has been said that the eseed of the | Egyptian cotton does not do well in this 1 country. They will also experiment with
 the native seed and see if this cannot be
 improved by careful cultivation
 For a Cold in the Head