ease the quantity of
Tuskegee's output as well as to maintain the quality. He brought
Tuskegee to the point where it reached through all its courses
including its summer courses, short courses, and extension courses,
more than 4,000 people in a single year, not counting the well-nigh
innumerable hosts he counseled with on his State educational tours. In
short, Booker Washington's task at Tuskegee was not only to turn out
good leaders for his people, but to turn them out wholesale and as
fast as possible. He was, as it were, running a race with the powers
of ignorance, poverty, and vice. This in part accounted for the sense
of terrific pressure which one felt at Tuskegee, particularly when he
was present and personally driving forward his great educational
machine. This also may have accounted for the seeming lack of finesse
in small matters which occasionally annoyed critical visitors who did
not understand that the great institution was racing under the spur of
its indomitable master, and that just as in any race all but
essentials must be thrown aside.

Long before the University of Wisconsin had, through its extension
courses, extended its opportunities in greater or less degree to the
citizens of the entire State, Booker Washington, through similar
means, had extended the advantages of Tuskegee throughout Macon County
in particular and the State of Alabama and neighboring States in
general.

The extension work of Tuskegee began in a small way over twenty years
ago. It preceded even the work of the demonstration agents of the
United States Department of Agriculture. There was first only one man
who in his spare time went out among the farming people and tried to
arouse enthusiasm for better methods of farming, better schools, and
better homes. He was followed by a committee of three members of the
Tuskegee faculty, which committee still directs the work. One of the
first efforts of this committee was to get the farmers to adopt deep
plowing. There was not a two-horse plow to be found. There was a
strong prejudice against deep plowing which was thus expressed by a
Negro preacher farmer whom one of the committee tried to persuade: "We
don't want deep plowing. You're fixin' for us to have no soil. If we
plow deep it will all wash away and in a year or two we will have to
clear new ground." Not long after this a member of the committee with
a two-horse plow was practising what he had been preaching when a
white plante