tudent
with the essential unity of Tuskegee's endeavor to equip men and women
for life. The crude, stumbling, sightless plantation-boy who lives in
the environment of Tuskegee for three or four years, departs with an
address, an alertness, a resourcefulness, and above all a spirit of
service, that announce the educated man.

[Illustration: ANOTHER PORTION OF THE SCHOOL GROUNDS.]

IV

WHAT GIRLS ARE TAUGHT, AND HOW

BY MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

"We wants our baby gal, Mary Lou, to come up to Tuskegee to git
eddicated and learn seamstress; kase we doesn't want her to work lak we
is," says the farmer. "I wish to help you plant this new industry,
broom-making," writes Miss Susan B. Anthony, "because you are trying so
earnestly to teach your girls other means of livelihood besides sewing,
housework, and cooking." This is the problem we have been trying to
solve at Tuskegee for over twenty years: What handiwork can we give our
girls with their academic training that will better fit them to meet the
demand for skilled teachers in the various avenues of the industrial and
academic world now opening so rapidly to women?

[Illustration: MRS. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.

Director of Industries for Girls.]

Learning to sew, with the ultimate end of becoming a full-fledged
dressmaker, has been the height of ambition with the major part of our
girls when brought to the institution by their horny-handed fathers and
mothers fresh from the soil of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, or Florida.
After the last gripless hand-shake, with the tremulous, "Take care of
yourself, honey," the hard-working father and mother have turned their
faces homeward, visibly affected by the separation, but resolved to
shoulder the sacrifice of the daughter's much-needed help on the
plantation, which oftentimes is all that they are able to contribute
toward her education.

Not infrequently the girl has begun in the lowest class in night-school.
Her parents send her articles of clothing now and then on Christmas; but
the largest contributions to her wardrobe come from the boxes and
barrels sent to the institution by Northern friends. She has remained in
school during the summer vacation, and within two years has entered
day-school with enough to her credit to finish her education. When the
happy parents return to see their daughter graduated, after six or seven
long years, their faces are radiant because of their realized hopes.
When they see