are exhibited for sale in the show-cases in the millinery room, and
in those of the dressmaking room hang pretty dresses and
tea gowns.  In the plain sewing department are made all kinds of
underwear, bedding, etc.  The young bricklayers (who have pre-
viously worked in the extensive brickyards of the school) receive
their instruction upon the buildings going up.  The young farm-
ers work the school land, serve in the dairy and care for the horses,
the mules and the stock. The 210 cows are Holsteins and Jerseys.
The stables are kept delightfully clean, and a resinous smell from
the bedding of pine  needles makes the air almost sweet.  The
stock food used is a mixture of cotton seed, corn and, when it can
be had, hay.  Other young men are learning the tailor's trade.
and in their closing months they do really fine work, even to the
making of a dress suit.  All the uniforms worn by the men stu-
dents are made in the tailoring department.  Girls are busy in the
diet or cooking kitchen and in the hospital and  where, perhaps,
the hardest work of the school is done in the laundry.
    It is a temptation to describe in detail each department. The
machinery of a school is always attractive, and when that school
lies in the heart of the Black Belt of the South,  unique in kind and
in location, the usual interest is vastly intensified.
    Mr. Washington is mcuh criticised by Southern educators of
the old regime, both white and colored, for the method of solving
the Negro problem, but secure in himself he does not wait for
their approval.  His principle that the way to make prejudice dis-
appear is to prepare to be ready to supply something that the
world needs; because, in his own words.  "There is not an ounce
of prejudice in the American dollar," he knows will do more to
solve the great problem, through the Tuskegee  School, than any
amount of instruction in Greek and Latin.  The teaching of trades
also  enables poor students  to work  their way to the ordinary
school education.  While working during the day they can study
in the night school, and after six months in the shops they will
have  earned enough to enter the regular school for a while.
The so-called "higher education," so strongly advocated by Mr.
Washington's critics, is by no means neglected.  He believes the
education of the brain and  hand should go together.   But the
characteristic quality of his educational work is its effort to equip
young men and young women with something that will make them
wanted. They are to do some one thing so well that when they
are ready to battle with the world, they will not be pushed to the
wall.  And with their success they are to help make a new repu-




			

OHS Archives/Library Pamphlet Collection

Description of the Work at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee Alabama, A