ing homes. A great revolution
is also taking place in Tilden. John Thomas, one of our graduates, Class
of '01, has gone into this place, induced the people to buy thirty acres
of land, on which they have erected a splendid building having two
rooms, and the school is being conducted seven months in the year. Many
farmers in this section are now owning homes, some of them owning as
much as 400 acres of land. This improvement is steadily going on in all
sections where the influence of our school has reached.

Thus it will be seen that the work in the class-room is only a small
part of what we are trying to do for the uplift of the Negro people in
the Black Belt.

In order that this good work may be pushed more rapidly, it is necessary
that we give some time to this particular movement. This can only be
done by our having here a strong and healthy institution with an
endowment sufficiently large to relieve us of our great financial
burden. An adequate endowment would meet this need. While we are anxious
to raise an endowment fund, our burden could be partially relieved by
the school securing possession of a large plantation in the neighborhood
which is now, and has been for three years, offered to us. This
plantation contains between three thousand and four thousand acres of
land, and can be bought for $30,000, and would afford us unbounded
opportunity for the extension of the agricultural features of our work,
which would enable us to raise more, if not all, of our food supplies.

I have tried as simply as possible in this article to state the real
condition of the people in the Black Belt section of this State, and to
tell how we are trying to cope with these conditions. Our constant
feeling is that there is so much to be done, and that so little has been
accomplished.

In closing: The inspiration derived at Tuskegee; the instruction given
in shop, and field, and class-room; the guiding hand of its illustrious
Principal--all of these have had their impress upon me and have urged me
to dedicate myself unreservedly to these people, among whom I was
reared, among whom I shall continue to labor, among whom I shall at the
last be buried.

XI

A DAIRYMAN'S STORY

BY LEWIS A. SMITH

In any attempt to write a story of my life and work, the "work" feature
must predominate.

I was born March 27, 1877, at Louisville, Ky. My father and mother were
slaves of old Georgia stock. My father, after freedom, was for a t