he largest business of its
kind in the town. I remained at Uniontown, working for the firm until
October, when I again returned to Tuskegee. The sum per day I received
was a most flattering tribute to Tuskegee's ability to take a stiff
country lad like myself, and turn him, in a few months, into a workman
commanding decent wages.

What this means to the masses of the students who go to Tuskegee the
general public can have no idea. It is a great thing for a boy who never
earned more than the merest pittance a day to go to a school where he
can secure an education by working for it, and at the same time be
fitted to earn wages, as many of them do, three and even five times as
high as before going there. This accounts, in a large measure I am sure,
for the fact that so large a number refuse to remain and go through the
full courses of academic study.

Many of them, finding themselves able in a few months to earn sums far
beyond any previous hope, decide to take advantage at once of this
increased earning capacity; but since the work is so well graded, no boy
can get his trade without getting, at the same time, academic
instruction, and instruction in those character-forming things all about
the student at Tuskegee.

I began the new term with $50, which sum was to my credit in the school
treasury, having been earned by my labor.

During the summer of 1899 I was again offered work at Uniontown by
Messrs. J. L. Dykes and Company. I remained with them only two months,
however. Afterward I worked at the McKinley Brothers' Wagon Factory at
Demopolis, Ala.; as a journeyman workman at Tuskegee, in the Institute's
Wheelwrighting Shop, and with the Nack Carriage Company at Mobile, Ala.,
the largest shop of its kind in that city and one of the largest in the
whole South, a firm doing strictly high-grade work. In all of these
positions I have every reason to believe that I gave full and complete
satisfaction. While with the last-named company I won the personal favor
and interest of the manager and continued to study. He recommended that
I add to my Tuskegee training by taking the correspondence course of the
Technical School for Carriage Draftsmen and Mechanics, New York. I
remained with this firm until I was offered a position by Mr. R. R.
Taylor, the present director of mechanical industries of the Tuskegee
Institute, three years ago. I was greatly pleased and flattered when I
was called to take charge of the division in which