The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1913-03-01
WHAT BOOKER 7. Is.
Doing FOR NEGRO.
FAMOUS PRINCIPAL OF TuskE-
GEE INSTITUTE WHO WILL
SPEAK AT GRAND THEATRE TO-
MORROW EVENING is DOING A
NOBLE WORK.

The Tuskegee institute, Alabama, is
the largest and best known negro in
stitute in the world. A few months
ago there was an international confer
ence on the negro, which brought to-
gether white and negro students, mis-
s~lonaries and colonial officials from
every part of Africa as well as the
West Indies and South America.
A recent article in The Chicago Rec
ord Herald, Arthur M. Evans, gives a
birds-eye view of the institution. He
says:
Booker T. Washington and the Tus-
kegee institute are doing for the negro
people what the University of Wiscon-
sin is doing for it's state. Public serv-
Ice is the fundamental idea that makes
the Institutions at Tuskegee and at
Madison similar in purpose and accom-
plishments. Both are striving to get
into close touch with the people and to
exert an influence on the affairs of
every day life; to teach the farmer how
to raise larger crops and better herds;
to Instruct the housewife in domestic
arts; to improve the home: to raise
the standard of living; to develop day
labor into skilled labor; in short. to
improve conditions of society in the
mass. Where the University of Wis
conSin, which of all universities in the
land is the finest embodiment of the
extension idea in education, is work.
ing for the people of one common
wealth, Tuskegee has a far wider range
it is working to change conditions
among the masses Of a whole ace, and,
at that, a race handicapped by the
years of slavery.
TuSkegee is not a school, in the ordi-
nary sense of the word. It's a city in
itself, a community that all
its own products, that erects it's own
buildings (first making it's own bricks),
that grows its own food, makes its own
clothes, writes and prints it's own text
books, all by way of education.
1t is a mammoth laboratory in which
a race problem is being worked out.
The object Of Tuskegee is to train it's
students to serve society by doing some
useful thing with skill, to give them a
three phased education of the head,
the heart and hand" to use the allitera-
tive phrase of the Tuskegee teachers,
and then to send them out to teach to
others what they have learned-educa-
ton by the endless chain system.
Thirty-one years ago, when the in
stitute was first opened, July 4, 1881,
the school was housed in a rented
shanty church. Out of this small be-
ginning the genius of Booker T. Wash
ington a developed an educational
oil NlAC loi VI VI
of and and 103 buildings, used for dor
mitories, recitation halls, shops, barns,
hospitals. dining hall, chapel n Ii
brary.
The educational plant, including land,
buildings, equipment stock and person
al property, is $1,279, 248.45, exclusive
Of 1870 acres of land remaining I'M
sold from a land grant of 25,500 acres
from congress, valued at 100000, and
the endowment fund of $1,401, 1851 10
The population of the Tuskegee COM
munity is nearly 1000, of which 1902
students, however, constitute less than
one-half of these who are given the
benefit of Tuskegee teaching, for in ad-
dition to the regular enrolment there
were last year 207 teachers in the sum-
mer course, 1900 in the short course"
in agriculture, and enough in other
courses to bring the total lumber of
those instructed during the year to A.
1S4. These figures indicate the proper
tons of Tuskegee.
The operating expenses of this large
establishment aggregate about $780,
900 a year, a small amount compared
with the yearly expenditures of many
northern educational institutions.
The University of Chicago spends
more on it's school publications alone
than Tuskegee institute does on it's
whole school, while the University of
Wisconsin expends on its great extern
sion work more than Tuskegee does on
all it's branches. Tuskegee, of course,
is not a university, but to the masses
of the colored race in the south which
it is reaching. this industrial and nor
NAL school stands on a plane advanced
as the university does to the whites"
Mr.. washington will speak at the
Grand theatre tomorrow evening at
ES:15 o'clock in the regular Sunday
evening lecture.