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WORKING WITH THE HANDS
WORKING WITH THE HANDS
MR. WASHINGTON IN HIS OFFICE AT TUSKEGEE WORKING WITH THE HANDS BEING A SEQUEL TO "UP FROM SLAVERY" COVERING THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCES IN INDUSTRIAL TRAINING AT TUSKEGEE By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Illustrated from photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1904 Copyright, 1904, by Doubleday, Page & Company Published, May, 1904...
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INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL SUBSCRIPTION EDITION
INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL SUBSCRIPTION EDITION
There are few subjects that are more important to the people of all sections of the country than emphasising the value of labour with the hands. It has an especial interest for the people who dwell in small towns and in country districts. It has an interest for the farmer, the mechanic, and for the woman who is engaged in domestic work, as well as for those whose occupations are more in the direction of mental work alone. How to dignify all forms of hand-labour, and to make it attractive instead
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PREFACE
PREFACE
For several years I have been receiving requests, from many parts of the United States, and from foreign countries as well, for some detailed information concerning the value of industrial training and the methods employed to develop it. This little volume is the result, in part, of an attempt to answer these queries. Two proven facts need emphasis here: First: Mere hand training, without thorough moral, religious, and mental education, counts for very little. The hands, the head, and the heart
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CHAPTER I Moral Values of Hand Work
CHAPTER I Moral Values of Hand Work
The worth of work with the hands as an uplifting power in real education was first brought home to me with striking emphasis when I was a student at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, which was at that time under the direction of the late General S. C. Armstrong. But I recall with interest an experience, earlier than my Hampton training, along similar lines of enlightenment, which came to me when I was a child. Soon after I was made free by the proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, there
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CHAPTER II Training for Conditions
CHAPTER II Training for Conditions
The preliminary investigation of certain phases of the life of the people of my race led me to make a more thorough study of their needs in order that I might have more light on the problem of what the Tuskegee Institute could do to help them. Before beginning work at Tuskegee I had felt that too often in educational missionary effort the temptation was to try to force each individual into a certain mould, regardless of the condition and needs of the subject or of the ends sought. It seemed to m
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CHAPTER III A Battle Against Prejudice
CHAPTER III A Battle Against Prejudice
When the first few students began to come to Tuskegee I faced these questions which were inspired by my personal knowledge of their lives and surroundings: What can these young men and women find to do when they return to their homes? What are the industries in which they and their parents have been supporting themselves? The answers were not always to my liking, but this was not the point at issue. I had to meet a condition, not a theory. What I might have wanted them to be doing was one thing;
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CHAPTER IV Making Education Pay Its Way
CHAPTER IV Making Education Pay Its Way
I cannot emphasise too often the fact that my experience in building up the Tuskegee Institute has taught me year by year the value of hand work in the building of character. I have frequently found one concrete, definite example illustrating the difference between right and wrong worth more than hours of abstract lecturing on morality. I have told girls many times that a dish is either thoroughly washed and dried or it is not. If a thing is not well done, it is poorly done. Furthermore, I have
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CHAPTER V Building Up a System
CHAPTER V Building Up a System
The system we decided to use at Tuskegee divided the school into two classes of students: those who worked with their hands two days in the week, and spent four days in the class room; and the night students, who, through the first year of their course, worked all day with their hands and spent their evenings in the class rooms. Of course, the student who worked ten hours each day was paid more than the one who laboured only two days in the week. The night-school students were to earn, not only
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CHAPTER VI Welding Theory and Practice
CHAPTER VI Welding Theory and Practice
Broom-making has been recently included among the industries for girls at Tuskegee. Hundreds of brooms were being worn out every year in sweeping the floors of more than seventy buildings; and I venture to say that more brooms were used up for the same amount of floor space than at almost any other institution of the kind. Wherever you may go in the shops, or halls, you will find some one busy with a broom most of the time. The litter in the carpenter shop or the mattress-making room is not allo
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CHAPTER VII Head and Hands Together
CHAPTER VII Head and Hands Together
That the distinctive feature of Tuskegee Institute—ample provision for industrial training—has received in the public prints almost exclusive attention is not strange. But it is well to remember that Tuskegee Institute stands for education as well as for training, for men and women as well as for bricks and mortar. Of course, the distinction involved in the words, "education" and "training," is largely theoretical. My experience convinces me that training to some productive trade, be it wagon-bu
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CHAPTER VIII Lessons in Home-Making
CHAPTER VIII Lessons in Home-Making
While the men must work to get and keep the home, the wives and daughters must, in a great measure, supply and guard the health, strength, morals, and happiness of the family. Their responsibility is great in all that makes for the development of the individual and the community. The home is built on an ancient foundation among the white population of this country, especially in the rural communities. The Negro has had to learn the meaning of home since he learned the meaning of freedom. All wor
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CHAPTER IX Outdoor Work for Women
CHAPTER IX Outdoor Work for Women
Seven years ago I became impressed with the idea that there was a wider range of industrial work for our girls. The idea grew upon me that it was unwise in a climate like ours in the South to narrow the work of our girls, and confine them to indoor occupations. If one makes a close study of economic conditions in the South, he will soon be convinced that one of the weak points is the want of occupations for women. This lack of opportunity grows largely out of traditional prejudice and because of
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CHAPTER X Helping the Mothers
CHAPTER X Helping the Mothers
Something about the Woman's Meeting, organised and conducted in the town of Tuskegee by Mrs. Washington, seems not out of place in this book. It is her work, and she has kindly supplied the following outline of the aims and results of this attempt to better the conditions and lives of the people living in this typical Alabama community: In the spring of '92, the first Negro Conference for farmers was held at Tuskegee. The purpose of this conference was to inspire the masses of coloured people to
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CHAPTER XI The Tillers of the Ground
CHAPTER XI The Tillers of the Ground
There is held at the Tuskegee Institute every year a remarkable conference of Negro workers, mostly farmers, who are to work out their salvation by the sweat of their brows in tilling the soil of the South. The purpose of these gatherings is severely practical—to encourage those who have not had the advantages of training and instruction, and to give them a chance to learn from the success of others as handicapped as they what are their own possibilities. As I have said many times, it is my conv
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CHAPTER XII Pleasure and Profit of Work in the Soil
CHAPTER XII Pleasure and Profit of Work in the Soil
I have always been intensely fond of outdoor life. Perhaps the explanation for this lies partly in the fact that I was born nearly out-of-doors. I have also, from my earliest childhood, been very fond of animals and fowls. When I was but a child, and a slave, I had many close and interesting acquaintances with animals. During my childhood days, as a slave, I did not see very much of my mother, as she was obliged to leave her children very early in the morning to begin her day's work. Her early d
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CHAPTER XIII On the Experimental Farm
CHAPTER XIII On the Experimental Farm
The purpose most eagerly sought by the Agricultural Department of the Tuskegee Institute is to demonstrate to the farmers of Alabama, first of all, that with right methods their acres can be made to yield unfailing profit, and that they can win in the fight against the deadly mortgage system. In many of the Western and Northwestern States cheese-making has led the one-crop, wheat-growing farmers to independence. The South has felt that this industry was beyond its reach, and has set small store
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CHAPTER XIV The Eagerness for Learning
CHAPTER XIV The Eagerness for Learning
Necessity compels most of the coloured youth seeking education to work with their hands and pay as they go. It is better thus, even for those who do not expect to follow trades. I do not believe that any young man who has worked his way through Yale or Harvard regrets the experience. All whom I have met were proud of the achievement, and considered it an important part of the training that was to make them useful and capable men. Many thousand letters of application for admission to the Tuskegee
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CHAPTER XV The Value of Small Things
CHAPTER XV The Value of Small Things
A lifetime of hard work has shown me the value of little things of every day. We preach them at Tuskegee, and try to enforce them in the daily round of sixteen hundred students' lives. We speak of them because they are at the bottom of character-building, and because no person can go on year by year forgetting them, without having his soul warped and made small and weak. We want young men and women to go out, not as slaves of their daily routine, but masters of their circumstances. But the struc
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CHAPTER XVI Religious Influences at Tuskegee
CHAPTER XVI Religious Influences at Tuskegee
In the rapid growth of the institution along academic and industrial lines, the spiritual side of the school has not been neglected. During the last fifteen years a regularly appointed chaplain, an ordained evangelical minister, has been connected with the school, which is non-denominational, but by no means non-religious. It has much of the machinery of most regularly organised churches, although, for good reasons, it has not seemed best, yet, to organise a church in connection with the institu
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CHAPTER XVII Some Tangible Results
CHAPTER XVII Some Tangible Results
Since the founding of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, in 1881, the total enrollment of young men and women who have remained long enough to be helped, in any degree, is about six thousand. From the beginning, the school has sought to find out the chief occupations by which our people earn their living, and to train men and women to be of service in these callings. Those who go out follow the industries they have learned, or teach in public or private schools, teaching part of the y
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CHAPTER XVIII Spreading the Tuskegee Spirit
CHAPTER XVIII Spreading the Tuskegee Spirit
One of the questions most frequently asked me is, To what extent are Tuskegee graduates able to reproduce the work of the parent institution? Just as the Tuskegee Institute is an outgrowth of the Hampton Institute, so other smaller schools have grown out of the Tuskegee Institute in various parts of the country. There are at present sixteen schools of some size which have grown out of the Tuskegee Institute or have been organised by Tuskegee men and women. In all instances, these schools have be
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CHAPTER XIX Negro Education Not a Failure
CHAPTER XIX Negro Education Not a Failure
Several persons holding high official position have said recently that it does not pay, from any point of view, to educate the Negro; and that all attempts at his education have so far failed to accomplish any good results. The Southern States, which out of their poverty are contributing rather liberally for the education of all the people, as does individual and organised philanthropy throughout the country, have a right to know whether the Negro is responding to the efforts they have made to p
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