282 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
therefore there must be an element of uncertainty as to the exact proportion of white influence.
That Tuskegee is the pride of all those colored people who have come into any contact with it is evident. The middle-aged negro with whom I rode over from Che- haw related with pride the story of the growth of the little school started by Mr. Washington seventeen years ago. He had seen its whole material growth from the little wooden shanty to the forty-five buildings of the present plant ; but the fact that he himself had helped to make the brick for some of the buildings was related with a minuteness of detail which indicated a pride and importance as great as could be dis- covered in one who had negotiated a treaty between powerful nations. He lived next door to one of the professors ; he was acquainted with every member of the faculty; etc., etc., etc. This may serve to indicate the pride in the institution, taken not only by the colored people of the neighborhood, but by the white people of the vicinity.
It was after dark when I was driven to the gate of Mr. Emmett J. Scott, Princi- pal Washington's secretary. I was received by him, and later by other officers of the institution, with an ease of manner and a cordial hospitality which I have never seen surpassed by people in any position. There was nothing to suggest an exaggeration or copying of others' manners, but a grace and quiet ease absolutely inseparable from true culture and good breeding. This was true of every individual officer and teacher that I met. The effect of this example on the students is everywhere apparent. No teacher or officer is ever "off duty," in the sense that he adopts manners or indulges in recreations which it might be better for the students not to see.
Mr. Washington in his public addresses and his published articles has again and again called attention to the necessity for industrial education for negroes. His argument is sound, and to carry into practice his theory he has adopted methods about which I am not aware that he has ever written or spoken, but which seem to me to be the real foundation of the remarkable success of the institution. Two short quotations from an article by Mr. Washington in the New York Independent will, with a few comments, serve to illustrate my meaning : " For nearly twenty years after the war, except in one or two cases, the value of the industrial training given by the negroes' former masters on the plantations and elsewhere was overlooked. Negro men and women were educated in literature, mathematics, and the sciences, with no thought of what had taken place on these plantations for two and a half centuries. After twenty years those who were trained as mechanics, etc., during slavery began to disappear by death, and gradually we awoke to the fact that we had no one to take their places. We had trained scores of young men in Greek, but few in carpentry or mechanical or architectural drawing; we had trained many in Latin, but almost none as engineers, bridge-builders, and machinists."
The making, then, of these carpenters, machinists, printers, farmers, etc., is the announced program of the Tuskegee school, but in the following quotation there is a hint of the method used in arriving at this worthy result, and in this method I see what I call the "Spirit of Tuskegee," the real foundation of the school's success:
" Only a few days ago I saw a colored minister preparing his Sunday sermon, just as the New England minister prepares his sermon. But this colored minister was in a broken-down, leaky, rented log-cabin, with weeds in the yard, surrounded by evidences of poverty, filth, and want of thrift. This minister had spent some time in school studying theology. How much better would it have been had this minister taught the dignity of labor, theoretical and practical farming, in connection with his theology, so that he could have added to his meager salary and set an example to his people in the matter of living in a decent house and correct farming in a word, this minister should have been taught that his condition and that of his people was not that of a New England community, and he should have been so trained as to meet the actual needs and conditions of the colored people in the community."
The public sees and reads about Mr. Washington, talks about and points at the 2,300 acres and forty-five buildings, the shops, forges, dairies, mills, and trades which make the school a wonder, but the way it has become so is by dealing first with the " broken-down, leaky, rented log-cabin," " the weeds in the yard," the evidences of " poverty and filth and want of thrift."
These once dealt with and eradicated, the acres, buildings, and trades cease to be a wonder and become a natural result. If the right view of these matters be held
