cal work, something of the
chemistry of the soil, the best methods of drainage, dairying,
cultivation of fruit, the care of live-stock and tools, and scores of
other lessons needed by people whose main dependence is on
agriculture.

Friends some time ago provided means for the erection of a large new
chapel at Tuskegee. Our students made the bricks for this chapel. A
large part of the timber was sawed by the students at our saw-mill,
the plans were drawn by our teacher of architectural and mechanical
drawing, and students did the brick-masonry, the plastering, the
painting, the carpentry work, the tinning, the slating, and made most
of the furniture. Practically, the whole chapel was built and
furnished by student labour. Now the school has this building for
permanent use, and the students have a knowledge of the trades
employed in its construction.

While the young men do the kinds of work I have mentioned, young women
to a large extent make, mend, and laundry the clothing of the young
men. They also receive instruction in dairying, horticulture, and
other valuable 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 worked on when in slavery. This is far from being the
object at Tuskegee. At the head of each of the twenty-six industrial
divisions 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, while at the same time
much of the toil is eliminated and labour is dignified. In a word, the
constant aim is to show the student how to put brains into every
process of labour, how to bring his knowledge of mathematics and the
sciences in farming, carpentry, forging, foundry work, how to dispense
as soon as possible with the old form of _ante-bellum_ labour. In the
erection of the chapel referred to, instead of letting the money which
was given to us go into outside hands, we made it accomplis