of the officers of the company regarding my work,
published in one of the leading daily newspapers of Rockford, and the
fact that I am now receiving double my initial wages.

I have a record not surpassed by any other employee of this company.
Between June 24, 1901, following a wedding-trip to Tuskegee, and August
15, 1904, when we visited the St. Louis Exposition, I have worked each
day at the Creamery, including Sundays and holidays, my work requiring
that I do so. These 1,155 consecutive days of labor were made possible
by a total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors and tobacco. My
success here can be credited to the efficient training I received at
Tuskegee.

"It is not well for man to live alone." Following this injunction I have
taken unto myself a helpmeet, who is all that the word implies, loving,
economical, and well trained in domestic arts. Shortly after our
marriage we began paying for a home of eleven rooms located in a good
residence portion of the city. The lower part of the house, containing
six rooms, we occupy, and have comfortably furnished; the up-stairs
portion, containing five rooms, we rent to a family of white people; the
rent we receive equals the interest on the investment.

We have one child, a little girl two years old, who furnishes sunshine
to an already happy home.

Our house is surrounded by a lawn with shade- and fruit-trees, and many
flower-beds. The back yard contains a garden with berry plants, a
well-built and well-arranged poultry-house, a yard containing a flock of
pure-bred fowls, the nucleus of a future enterprise, and a barn with a
good horse, a buggy, etc., for our pleasure and convenience.

My ambition when leaving school was first to endeavor to become
independent financially, so that I might enjoy my old age; then, if it
were possible, to gain that independence early in life by economy, by
earning for myself what I earn for my employer; to try to make it
possible for the Negro farmer to sell his produce to the Negro gin, the
Negro cotton-mill, or creamery, as the case might be; my idea being, by
this community of interest, to help the Negro people about me to help
themselves and their fellows. I believe, in the words of the motto of
the Class of '98--my class--that "we rise upon the structure we
ourselves have builded." I have tried to live with this thought ever
before me.

XII

THE STORY OF A WHEELWRIGHT

BY EDWARD LOMAX

I was born in the small to