re them for the better
things that intelligent effort will surely bring, form a task to which
the wisest of the race are addressing themselves with an eager
enthusiasm which refuses to be chilled by adverse criticism.

Tuskegee emphasizes industrial training for the Negro, not with the
thought that the Negro should be confined to industrialism, the plow, or
the hoe, but because the undeveloped material resources of the South
offer at this time a field peculiarly advantageous to the worker skilled
in agriculture and the industries, and here are found the Negro's most
inviting opportunities for taking on the rudimentary elements that
ultimately make for a permanently progressive civilization.

The Tuskegee Idea is that correct education begins at the bottom, and
expands naturally as the necessities of the people expand. As the race
grows in knowledge, experience, culture, taste, and wealth, its wants
are bound to become more and more diverse; and to satisfy these wants
there will be gradually developed within our own ranks--as has already
been true of the whites--a constantly increasing variety of professional
and business men and women. Their places in the economic world will be
assured and their prosperity guaranteed in proportion to the merit
displayed by them in their several callings, for about them will have
been established the solid bulwark of an industrial mass to which they
may safely look for support. The esthetic demands will be met as the
capacity of the race to procure them is enlarged through the processes
of sane intellectual advancement. In this cumulative way there will be
erected by the Negro, and for the Negro, a complete and indestructible
civilization that will be respected by all whose respect is worth the
having. There should be no limit placed upon the development of any
individual because of color, and let it be understood that no one kind
of training can safely be prescribed for any entire race. Care should be
taken that racial education be not one-sided for lack of adaptation to
personal fitness, nor unwieldy through sheer top-heaviness. Education,
to fulfil its mission for any people anywhere, should be symmetrical and
sensible.

A mastery of the industries taught at Tuskegee presupposes and requires
no small degree of academic study, for competency in agriculture calls
for considerable knowledge of chemistry, and no mechanical pursuit can
be followed satisfactorily without some acquaintance