once that, if we
were to make any permanent impression upon those who had come to us
for training we must do something besides teach them mere books. The
students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities for
lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies. With few
exceptions, the homes in Tuskegee in which the students boarded were
but little improvement upon those from which they had come. We wanted
to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for their teeth and
clothing. We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it
properly, and how to care for their rooms. Aside from this, we wanted to
give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together with
the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be sure of
knowing how to make a living after they had left us. We wanted to teach
them to study actual things instead of mere books alone.

We found that the most of our students came from the country districts,
where agriculture in some form or other was the main dependence of
the people. We learned that about eighty-five per cent of the coloured
people in the Gulf states depended upon agriculture for their living.
Since this was true, we wanted to be careful not to educate our students
out of sympathy with agricultural life, so that they would be attracted
from the country to the cities, and yield to the temptation of trying
to live by their wits. We wanted to give them such an education as would
fit a large proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time
cause them to return to the plantation districts and show the people
there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into
the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people.

All these ideas and needs crowded themselves upon us with a seriousness
that seemed well-nigh overwhelming. What were we to do? We had only
the little old shanty and the abandoned church which the good
coloured people of the town of Tuskegee had kindly loaned us for the
accommodation of the classes. The number of students was increasing
daily. The more we saw of them, and the more we travelled through the
country districts, the more we saw that our efforts were reaching, to
only a partial degree, the actual needs of the people whom we wanted to
lift up through the medium of the students whom we should education and
send out as leaders.

The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us