ment has
gone on, until now these people have every year an eight months' school.

I wish my readers could have the chance that I have had of going into
this community. I wish they could look into the faces of the people and
see them beaming with hope and delight. I wish they could see the two
or three room cottages that have taken the place of the usual one-room
cabin, the well-cultivated farms, and the religious life of the people
that now means something more than the name. The teacher has a good
cottage and a well-kept farm that serve as models. In a word, a
complete revolution has been wrought in the industrial, educational, and
religious life of this whole community by reason of the fact that they
have had this leader, this guide and object-lesson, to show them how to
take the money and effort that had hitherto been scattered to the wind
in mortgages and high rents, in whiskey and gewgaws, and concentrate
them in the direction of their own uplifting. One community on its
feet presents an object-lesson for the adjoining communities, and soon
improvements show themselves in other places.

Another student who received academic and industrial training at
Tuskegee established himself, three years ago, as a blacksmith and
wheelwright in a community, and, in addition to the influence of his
successful business enterprise, he is fast making the same kind of
changes in the life of the people about him that I have just recounted.
It would be easy for me to fill many pages describing the influence of
the Tuskegee graduates in every part of the South. We keep it constantly
in the minds of our students and graduates that the industrial or
material condition of the masses of our people must be improved, as well
as the intellectual, before there can be any permanent change in their
moral and religious life. We find it a pretty hard thing to make a good
Christian of a hungry man. No matter how much our people "get happy" and
"shout" in church, if they go home at night from church hungry, they are
tempted to find something before morning. This is a principle of human
nature, and is not confined to the negro.

The negro has within him immense power for self-uplifting, but for years
it will be necessary to guide and stimulate him. The recognition of
this power led us to organize, five years ago, what is now known as the
Tuskegee Negro Conference,--a gathering that meets every February, and
is composed of about eight hundred repres