ontrast to the poor environment to which many of the students have been
accustomed; especially is this contrast heightened when these same
students have, under competent direction, installed the plants which
yield these comforts. Thus it is that in dormitory, recitation-room,
shop, dining-hall, library, chapel, and landscape, the idea that only
the best is worth having and striving for is emphasized as an
object-lesson and principle with such insistence that it becomes an
actual part of a student's training and life.

The student at Tuskegee is constantly being trained to look up and
forward. He learns how the idea of beauty can be actualized in home and
social life; how faithful performance of every duty means nobility of
character; how the value of achievement is determined by the motive
behind it. But besides these, the one aim, thought, or anxiety around
which all others revolve is the high honorableness of all kinds of work
intelligently done.

In a section where those who work with their hands are marked off by the
inexorable line of caste from those who work with their brains or not at
all, this idea of making intelligent work more honorable than
intelligent idleness is of constructive value in race development. The
problem that the Tuskegee Institute is helping to solve is not only that
the colored people shall do their proportionate share of the work, but
that they shall do it in such a way that the benefits will remain with
those who do the work. Who can measure the transforming effect and
influence when it can be said that the "best mechanics" and the "best
agriculturists" in the South are Negroes? Certainly, if such a time ever
comes, there will be no such painful thing as a race problem, as Negroes
now see it and feel it.

[Illustration: THE COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL BUILDING.]

This is one of Tuskegee's largest ideals; not that Tuskegee alone can
bring about a "consummation so devoutly to be wished," but it is
ambitious to be a potent factor in all the tendencies that make for such
a condition of life in the heart of the South. So important is this aim
and idea of Tuskegee, that it allows no criticism to affect, interfere,
or obscure its vision. Tuskegee says to the world that it is determined
not only to be a school, but an agent of civilization, a missionary for
a better life, that shall stand for a kindlier relationship between the
races.

The school enthusiastically seeks to live up to the