WORKING WITH THE HANDS
OTHER BOOKS
BY
THE SAME AUTHOR
CHARACTER BUILDING
UP FROM SLAVERY
[Illustration: 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_
[Illustration: Logo]
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1904
Copyright, 1904, by Doubleday, Page & Company Published, May, 1904
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 of repulsive, is a question that vitally
concerns every family. It is my earnest desire that what I have said
in the following pages may reach that class of people in our country,
especially those who are struggling with the hands to reach a higher
and more useful plane of life. It is my further wish that many youths
who may read what I have said may have their ambition quickened and
their courage strengthened for the battle of life.
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 proved 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 together should be so correlated that one may be made to help the
others. At the Tuskegee Institute we find constantly that we can make
our industrial work assist in the academic training, and _vice versa_.
Second: The effort to make an industry profitable should not be the aim
of first importance. The teaching should be most emphasised. Our policy
at Tuskegee is to make an industry pay its way if possible, but at the
same time not to sacrifice the training to mere economic gain. Those
who undertake such an endeavour, with the expectation to getting much
money out of an industry, will find themselves disappointed, unless
they realise that the institution must be, all the time, working upon
new material. At Tuskegee, for example, when a student is trained to
the point of efficiency where he can construct a first-class wagon, we
do not keep him there to build more vehicles, but send him out into the
world to exert his trained influence and capabilities in lifting others
to his level; and we begin our work with the raw material all over
again.
I shall be more than repaid if these chapters serve the purpose of
helping forward the cause of education, even though their aid be remote
and indirect.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
July 22, 1904,
South Weymouth, Mass.
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 together, as the essential elements of educational need,
should be so correlated that one may be made to help the others. At the
Tuskegee Institute we find constantly that we can make our industrial
work assist in the academic training, and _vice versa_.
Second: The effort to make an industry pay its way should not be made
the aim of first importance. The teaching should be most emphasised.
Our policy at Tuskegee is to make an industry pay its way if possible,
but at the same time not to sacrifice the training to mere economic
gain. Those who undertake such endeavour with the expectation
of getting much money out of an industry, will find themselves
disappointed, unless they realise that the institution must be, all
the time, working upon raw material. At Tuskegee, for example, when a
student is trained to the point of efficiency where he can construct
a first-class wagon, we do not keep him there to build more vehicles,
but send him out into the world to exert his trained influence and
capabilities in lifting others to his level, and we begin our work with
the raw material all over again.
I shall be more than repaid if these chapters will serve the purpose of
helping forward the cause of education, even though their aid be remote
and indirect.
CONTENTS
I. Moral Values of Hand Work 3
II. Training for Conditions 15
III. A Battle Against Prejudice 31
IV. Making Education Pay Its Way 43
V. Building Up a System 55
VI. Welding Theory and Practice 67
VII. Head and Hands Together 82
VIII. Lessons in Home-Making 98
IX. Outdoor Work for Women 107
X. Helping the Mothers 119
XI. The Tillers of the Ground 135
XII. Pleasure and Profit of Work in the Soil 151
XIII. On the Experimental Farm 163
XIV. The Eagerness for Learning 173
XV. The Value of Small Things 181
XVI. Religious Influences at Tuskegee 192
XVII. Some Tangible Results 200
XVIII. Spreading the Tuskegee Spirit 219
XIX. Negro Education Not a Failure 231
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Mr. Washington in his office at Tuskegee _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
First building erected on School grounds 12
Breaking up new ground with an eight-ox team 16
Cutting sugar-cane on the School's farm 26
Grinding sugar-cane at the School's sugar-mill 32
The repair shop 42
In the Agricultural Laboratory 46
Road-building by Tuskegee students 50
Building a new dormitory 56
Digging foundation for a new building on the
Institute grounds 58
Selecting fruit for canning 60
At work in the School's brick-yard 62
Shoe-shop--making and repairing 66
Mattress-making 68
Basket-making 70
In the School's sawmill 72
In the machine-shop 74
Students at work in the School's foundry 76
Class in mechanical drawing 78
The blacksmith shop 80
Class in outdoor geometry 82
Students framing the roof of a large building 84
Class in language 86
Class in outdoor nature study 88
Wood-turning machinery 90
Class in outdoor arithmetic 92
Chemical Laboratory 94
Class in physiology 96
Dorothy Hall, in which most of the industries
for girls are taught 98
Learning dressmaking 100
Barrel furniture 102
Class in cooking 104
An out-of-door class in laundry work 106
Outdoor work for girls 108
Home-made furniture 130
Class in nature study 152
"When at Tuskegee, I find a way, by rising early
in the morning, to spend half an hour in my
garden or with the live stock" 154
Hogs as object-lessons 156
"The Children's House": Class in nature study 158
"Teach the child something about real country
life" 160
Cultivating a patch of cassava on the agricultural
experiment plot 164
Carnegie Library. Built by Institute students 174
The tailor shop 176
In the model dining-room 186
The paint shop 190
Institute Chapel. Most imposing building on
School grounds built by students 194
Taking an agricultural class into the field 204
A furniture and repair shop at Snow Hill 222
A Sewing-class at Snow Hill 224
Typesetting--printing-office 234
Bird's-eye view of grounds and buildings of
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute,
Tuskegee, Alabama 244
WORKING WITH THE HANDS
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 came the new opportunity to attend a public
school at my home town in West Virginia. When the teacher said that the
chief purpose of education was to enable one to speak and write the
English language correctly, the statement found lodgment in my mind and
stayed there. While at the time I could not put my thoughts into words
clearly enough to express instinctive disagreement with my teacher,
this definition did not seem adequate, it grated harshly upon my young
ears, and I had reasons for feeling that education ought to do more for
a boy than merely to teach him to read and write. While this scheme of
education was being held up before me, my mother was living in abject
poverty, lacking the commonest necessaries of life, and working day and
night to give me a chance to go to school for two or three months of
the year. And my foremost aim in going to school was to learn ways and
means by which I might make life more endurable, and if possible even
attractive, for my mother.
There were several boys of our neighbourhood who had superior school
advantages, and who, in more than one instance, had reached the point
where they were called "educated," which meant that they could write
and talk correctly. But their parents were not far removed from
the conditions in which my mother was living, and I could not help
wondering whether this kind of education alone was fitted to help me
in the immediate needs of relieving the hard times at home. This idea,
however, ran counter to the current of widespread opinion among my
people. Young as I was, I had come to have the feeling that to be a
free boy meant, to a considerable extent, freedom from work with the
hands, and that this new status applied especially to the educated boy.
Just after the Civil War the Negro lad was strongly influenced by two
beliefs; one, that freedom from slavery brought with it freedom from
hard work, the other that education of the head would bring even more
sweeping emancipation from work with the hands. It is fair to add that
the Negro was not directly responsible for either of these ideas, but
they warped his views nevertheless, and held sway over the masses
of the young generation. I had felt and observed these things, and
further, as a child in Virginia, had naturally noted that young white
boys whose fathers held slaves did not often work with their hands.
Not long after I had begun to think of these new conditions and their
results, viewing them as seriously as could be expected of an ignorant
boy, an event of my working life left important influences in its wake.
There lived a little way from my mother's cabin a woman of wealth,
who had lived many years in the South, although she had been born and
educated in Vermont. She had a high respect for manual labour, showing
actively her appreciation of the dignity of honest work well done,
and, notwithstanding her own position and culture, she was not ashamed
to use her hands. In the neighbourhood, this lady was reputed to be
exceedingly hard to please in the performance of any sort of work on
her place, and among the village boys she was called a "hard person to
get along with."
As I remember, at least half a dozen boys had been successively chosen
to live with her, but their residence in service had been consistently
short-lived. I think a week was about the average period, in spite
of the widely advertised fact that the household had the redeeming
reputation of always providing good things to eat. In addition to pies
and cakes, which boys in a community like ours seldom saw in their own
cabin homes, the orchards around the house bore heavy yields of the
finest fruits, yet such extraordinary inducements as these could not
hold the boys, who one by one returned to the village with the same
story, that the lady of the mansion was too strict and too hard to
please.
After a long record of these mutual disappointments, my mother told me
that my turn had come, as the rich and exacting personage had sent to
ask me to come and live with her, with the promise of five dollars a
month in wages. After a long and serious talk with my mother I decided
to make the effort to serve this woman, although the tidings of so many
failures filled me with foreboding. A few days later, with my clothes
made as presentable as possible, and with my heart thumping in fear and
anxiety, I reported for duty.
I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner, her wealth, her fine house, and
her luxurious surroundings, overshadowed by her appalling severity and
exacting discipline, that I trembled with a terror which I shall not
try to describe at the thought of facing her. My life had been lived
in a cabin, and I was now to try to toil in what looked to me like a
grand mansion, an enchanted palace filled with alarms. But I got a grip
on all the courage in my scanty stock, and braced myself to endure the
ordeal with all possible fortitude.
The meeting was not at all what I had expected. Mrs. Ruffner talked to
me in the kindliest way, and her frank and positive manner was tempered
with a rehearsal of the difficulties encountered with the boys who
had preceded me, how and why they had failed to please, and what was
expected of them and of me. I saw that it would be my fault if I failed
to understand my duties, as she explained them in detail. I would be
expected to keep my body clean and my clothes neat, and cleanliness was
to be the motto in all my work. She said that all things could be done
best by system, and she expected it of me, and that the exact truth at
all times, regardless of consequences, was one of the first laws of her
household--a law whose violation could never be overlooked.
I remember, too, that she placed special emphasis upon the law of
promptness, and said that excuses and explanations could never be taken
in the place of results. At the time, this seemed to me a pretty stern
program to live up to, and I was fighting a sense of discouragement
when, toward the end of the interview, she told me that if I were able
to please her she would permit me to attend school at night during
the winter. This suggestion so stimulated my ambition that it went a
long way toward clinching the decision to make the effort of my life to
satisfy my employer and to break all records for length of service in
her household.
My first task, as I remember it, was to cut the grass around the house,
and then to give the grounds a thorough "cleaning up." In those days
there were no lawn-mowers, and I had to go down on my knees and cut
much of the grass with a little hand-scythe. I soon found that my
employer not only wished the grass cut, but also demanded that it be
trimmed smooth and even. Any one who has tried to mow a lawn with a
dull hand-scythe or sickle can realise the difficulties which beset
this labour. I am not ashamed to say that I did not succeed in giving
satisfaction the first, or even the second or third time, but at last
I made the turf in that yard look as smooth and velvety as if I had
been over it with the most improved pattern of lawn-mower. With this
achievement my sense of pride and satisfaction began to stir itself and
to become a perceptible incentive. I found, however, that cutting the
grass was not the whole task. Every weed, tuft of dead grass, bit of
paper, or scrap of dirt of any kind must be removed, nor did I succeed
at the first attempt in pleasing my employer. Many times, when tired
and hot with trying to put this yard in order, I was heartsick and
discouraged and almost determined to run away and go home to my mother.
But I kept at it, and after a few days, as the result of my efforts
under the strict oversight of my mistress, we could take pleasure in
looking upon a yard where the grass was green, and almost perfect in
its smoothness, where the flower beds were trimly kept, the edges
of the walks clean cut, and where there was nothing to mar the
well-ordered appearance.
When I saw and realised that all this was a creation of my own
hands, my whole nature began to change. I felt a self-respect, an
encouragement, and a satisfaction that I had never before enjoyed or
thought possible. Above all else, I had acquired a new confidence in my
ability actually to do things and to do them well. And more than this,
I found myself, through this experience, getting rid of the idea which
had gradually become a part of me, that the head meant everything and
the hands little in working endeavour, and that only to labour with the
mind was honourable while to toil with the hands was unworthy and even
disgraceful. With this vital growth of realisation there came the warm
and hearty commendation of the good woman who had given me what I now
consider my first chance to get in touch with the real things of life.
When I recall this experience, I know that then and there my mind
was awakened and strengthened. As I began to reap satisfaction from
the works of my hands, I found myself planning over night how to gain
success in the next day's efforts. I would try to picture the yard as I
meant it to look when completed, and laid awake nights trying to decide
upon the prettiest curves for the flower beds and the proper width of
the walks. I was soon far more absorbed in this work than in filling in
my leisure time seeking mischief with the village boys.
I remained in this family for several years, and the longer I was
employed there the more satisfaction I got out of my work. Instead
of fearing the woman whom the other boys had found so formidable, I
learned to think of her and to regard her now (for she still lives)
as one of my greatest teachers. Later, whether working in the coal
mines or at the salt furnaces, I learned to find the same kind of
satisfaction in everything I did for a livelihood. If while sweeping
or dusting a room, or weeding a bed of flowers or vegetables, there
remained the least imperfection, I was unhappy, and felt that I was
guilty of dishonesty until the flaw in my work had been removed.
While I have never wished to underestimate the awakening power of
purely mental training, I believe that this visible, tangible contact
with nature gave me inspirations and ambitions which could not have
come in any other way. I favour the most thorough mental training and
the highest development of mind, but I want to see these linked with
the common things of the universal life about our doors.
It was this experience in using my hands that led me, in spite of all
the difficulties in the way, to go to the Hampton Institute, where
I had learned that pupils could have not only their minds educated,
but their hands trained. When I entered the Hampton Institute few
industries were taught there, but these had to do with the fundamentals
of every-day life. The hand work began with the duties which lay
directly in the path of the student. We were taught to make our own
beds, to clean our rooms, to take care of the recitation rooms, and to
keep the grounds in order. Then came lessons in raising our food on the
farm and the proper methods of cooking and serving it in the school.
The instruction in iron and wood-work in the earlier years of the
institution was mostly in making and repairing the farming implements
and in helping to maintain the buildings.
While much of this work may seem rudimentary, it had great educational
value. How well I remember the feeling of stimulus and satisfaction
inspired by the sight of a perfectly made bed, the pillows placed
always at the right angle, and the edges of the sheets turned over
according to rules of neatness and system. The work of the farm
had a similar kind of influence upon my views of relative values in
education. I soon learned that there was a great difference between
studying about things and studying the things themselves, between book
instruction and the illumination of practical experience.
This chain of experiences, whose links I have tried to indicate, served
as a preparation for the work of training the head, the heart, and
the hands which I was to undertake later at the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute in Alabama. When I went to Alabama to begin this
work, I spent some time in visiting towns and country districts in
order to learn the real conditions and needs of the people. It was my
ambition to make the little school which I was about to found a real
service in enriching the life of the most lowly and unfortunate. With
this end in view, I not only visited the schools, churches, and farms
of the people, but slept in their one-roomed cabins and ate at their
tables their fare of corn-bread and fried pork.
[Illustration: FIRST BUILDING ERECTED ON SCHOOL GROUNDS]
Often while making these visits, both in the towns and in the
plantation districts, I found young men and women who had acquired
considerable education, but it seemed to be limited to memorising
certain rules in grammar and arithmetic. Some of them had studied both
the classic and modern languages, and I discovered students who could
solve problems in arithmetic and algebra which I could not master. Yet
I could not escape the conviction that the more abstract these problems
were, and the further they were removed from the life the people were
then living, or were to live, the more stress seemed to be placed upon
them. One of the saddest features was to find here and there instances
of those who had studied what was called "art" or "instrumental music,"
in other words "the elegant accomplishments," but who were living in
houses where there was no sign of beauty or system. There was not the
slightest indication that this art or these accomplishments had had
or ever would have any influence upon the life in the homes of these
people.
Indeed, it did not seem to have occurred to them that such things ought
to have any relation to their every-day life. I found young men who
could wrestle successfully with the toughest problems in "compound
interest or banking" or "foreign exchange," but who had never thought
of trying to figure out why their fathers lost money on every bale of
cotton raised, and why they were continually mortgaging their crops
and falling deeper into debt. I talked with girls who could locate on
the map accurately the Alps and the Andes, but who had no idea of the
proper position of the knives and forks on the dinner table. I found
those who remembered that bananas were grown in certain South and
Central American countries, but to whom it had never occurred that they
might be a nourishing and appetising food for their breakfast tables.
In a country where pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, berries, peaches,
plums, vegetables, nuts, and other wholesome foods could be produced
with little effort, school teachers were eating salt pork from Chicago
and canned chicken and tomatoes sent from Omaha. While the countryside
abounded in all manner of beautiful shrubbery and fragrant flowers,
few of these ever found their way into the houses or upon the dinner
tables. While in many instances the people had always lived in the
country, and would continue to do so, what few text-books I saw in
their cabins were full of pictures and reading matter relating to city
life. In these text-books I saw pictures of great office buildings,
ships, street-cars, warehouses, but not a single picture of a farm
scene, a spreading apple-tree, a field of grass or corn, a flock of
sheep, or a herd of cows.