have been erected.
While the young men do the kinds of work I have mentioned, the young
women to a large extent make, mend, and launder the clothing of the
young men, and thus are taught important industries.

One of the objections sometimes urged against industrial education for
the negro is that it aims merely to teach him to work on the same plan
that he was made to follow when in slavery. This is far from being the
object at Tuskegee. At the head of each of the twenty-five industrial
departments we have an intelligent and competent instructor, just as
we have in our history classes, so that the student is taught not only
practical brick-masonry, for example, but also the underlying principles
of that industry, the mathematics and the mechanical and architectural
drawing. Or he is taught how to become master of the forces of nature
so that, instead of cultivating corn in the old way, he can use a corn
cultivator, that lays off the furrows, drops the corn into them, and
covers it, and in this way he can do more work than three men by the
old process of corn-planting; at the same time much of the toil is
eliminated and labor is dignified. In a word, the constant aim is to
show the student how to put brains into every process of labor; how
to bring his knowledge of mathematics and the sciences into farming,
carpentry, forging, foundry work; how to dispense as soon as possible
with the old form of ante-bellum labor. In the erection of the chapel
just referred to, instead of letting the money which was given us go
into outside hands, we make it accomplish three objects: first, it
provides the chapel; second, it gives the students a chance to get a
practical knowledge of the trades connected with building; and third,
it enables them to earn something toward the payment of board while
receiving academic and industrial training.

Having been fortified at Tuskegee by education of mind, skill of hand,
Christian character, ideas of thrift, economy, and push, and a spirit
of independence, the student is sent out to become a centre of influence
and light in showing the masses of our people in the Black Belt of the
South how to lift themselves up. How can this be done? I give but one
or two examples. Ten years ago a young colored man came to the institute
from one of the large plantation districts; he studied in the class-room
a portion of the time, and received practical and theoretical training
on the farm the remainder of the