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 structure must be built a brick at a time, and
no act is without its influence. I am in the habit of talking to the
student body when it is assembled in the chapel for the first time
after the opening of the school year with a good deal of practical
exhortation about the "value of little things," unimportant as some
of them may seem to the new-comers at Tuskegee. They are told, for
example, that among the resolutions which each should abide by through
the term, is to keep in close and constant touch with their homes.
"You can do this," I have said, "in no better way than by forming
the habit of writing a letter home once every week. I fear that this
is not always done. I want to see each one of you grow into the habit
of writing a letter to your parents or your friends at home, as often
as you can find the time. I do not mean by this that you shall get a
little piece of waste paper, snatch up a lead pencil, and scribble a
hasty note, asking them to send you some money, or to send you a dress,
or a hat. I mean for you to select a time--the Sabbath, if you can
find no other time--and sit down in your rooms, or go to the library,
take plenty of time, get good paper, the best ink, and write your
mother and father, your brothers and sisters, a good, encouraging,
well-thought-out letter. It will pay you to do that, even if you look
at it from a selfish standpoint. Grow into the habit of doing that
every week while you are students here.
"It will keep you in touch with your homes, and it always pays to
keep under the home influence, no matter how humble that home may be,
no matter how much poverty there may be about it, no matter how much
ignorance there may be in it--it always pays to keep in close touch
with your homes. I want you to do this, not only for your own sake,
but more for the sake of your parents, for the sake of those who are
trying to keep you at this institution. You can make them feel your
appreciation in no better way than by writing them regularly in the
manner that I have tried to urge you to do. It will encourage them. It
will make them feel that it pays to make the sacrifice for you."
These practical talks on the value of small things are enforced by a
corp of inspectors, whose practised eyes are quick to detect the soiled
collar, the loose button, the unpolished boot, when the forces assemble
for meals and for chapel, and the personal appearance of every student
is carefully scrutinised. Nothing is more humiliating to a Tuskegee boy
or girl than to be taken out of line as the body marches out of chapel.
It requires care and thought to make a hasty toilet after a ten-hour
day on the farm or in the shops, and be ready for supper on the stroke
of the bell. And a student late to meals goes without that meal unless
he has a good excuse. But out of such a system arises a pride in
personal appearance, and a spirit of self-respect that goes far toward
making useful men and women. It must be remembered, too, that much
of the raw material which is taken in hand at Tuskegee has not had
the advantages of any system and order at home, even in the primary
qualities of personal cleanliness and neatness.
It sounds like the discipline of a man-of-war to say that one loose or
missing button on the clothing of any one of a thousand boys is almost
instantly noted and recorded, but the students themselves are proud
of the fact that it is seldom that one of them must be called out of
line by an inspector. They have responded to the test set for them,
and they never forget it. They feel a personal sorrow that the epithet
"shiftless" has been used to characterise their race, and they realise
that it must be lived down in small things as well as great.
There is a student police force at Tuskegee, the members of which are
uniformed and allowed to carry policemen's short "clubs" on their night
rounds. A visitor, who was on his way to my house, to dine, met at the
gate a young man in uniform, apparently on guard, who saluted with his
raised stick. My guest expressed some surprise, saying:
"I did not know that you had to guard against the hostility of the
Southern white people of this region. It is shocking to know that race
antagonism can be so violent and unreasonable."
I replied: "I have no better friends than the white people of Tuskegee,
and there is no need for a body guard, I assure you. That alarming
young man was simply a student policeman who saluted you as he is
required to do all teachers and visitors. He is allowed to carry a
stick, not because he will ever need to use it, but because it is
a badge of his authority, an emblem of the responsibility of his
position. The officers of our cadet corps carry swords for the same
reasons."
The boy policeman and his club typify the worth of little things,
indirectly furnishing a help toward the complex structure of
character. The young man in uniform, trudging on his night rounds about
the school grounds, feels himself more of a man if he is equipped for a
man's work. It adds to his self-respect, and it helps him to feel that
his duty is an important one.
The Savings Bank Department of the school, which is part of the
regularly authorised banking department of the institution, has
been, in addition to its education in business methods, a great aid
in teaching the students the value of little things. Early in the
present year, there were to the credit of the students in the savings
fund deposits of more than $14,000. This was largely made up of small
accounts. The depositors are allowed to have checkbooks, and to draw on
their accounts checks in as small amounts as twenty-five cents. As a
result they do not carry their available cash around in their pockets,
but hasten to the bank with it, and settle nearly all transactions
among themselves by check.
This impresses on their minds the value of saving, for the bank account
is in itself a strong incentive. These deposits come from various
sources. The work done by the students in the various industrial
departments is not paid for in cash, but its value is credited to
their accounts with the school for the board, lodging, laundry, etc.,
furnished them. Their work amounted last year to a cash value of more
than $90,000.
For "ready money," however, they must depend on what they receive from
home, which is a small proportion of the total bank deposits, and upon
what they are able to earn out of working hours. Many of them act as
agents on commission for mail-order houses, which supply clothing,
shoes, underwear, and a variety of necessaries and a few luxuries. In
the summer a large number of young men go from Tuskegee to work in
the Southern States, many of them in the Alabama coal fields, to earn
money to pay the expenses of their education through the next school
year. They save these earnings and bring them back to deposit in the
Institute bank.
But these savings are not in dollars for the most part, but in
quarters, dimes, and even pennies. In looking over the books of the
bank recently, the individual ledger accounts attracted my notice.
There was a whole page given the account of one girl, whose individual
deposits did not average more than ten cents. There were several of
three cents, and one of two cents. It seemed to me that this girl
student was worth watching in after life. If she was willing to walk
across the grounds and back, a round trip of perhaps half a mile, from
her dormitory or work-shop, to make a deposit of three cents in the
savings bank, and to continue her deposits, although she was never able
to save more than a few cents at a time, she was fast learning the
value of small things, and was already far along the path of practical
usefulness.
[Illustration: IN THE MODEL DINING-ROOM]
One thousand students assemble three times a day in the main
dining-hall. They take their seats without confusion or noise. A line
of young men and women face each other at each table, and over them
presides a student host and a hostess. The young women are seated
first, and then the young men march in. But no conversation is allowed
until all are seated, and until after a simple grace is chanted by this
chorus of a thousand voices.
The meal is something more than a necessary consumption of food. The
deference which a young man should always pay to woman is taught,
without demonstration, by the manner of assembling. Self-restraint
is taught the girls by waiting five minutes in their seats before
they begin to eat and to talk. Their meeting at table inculcates good
manners. The boys are on their mettle to act like gentlemen, and the
host and hostess feel a personal responsibility for enforcing the
little details of courtesy and good breeding.
The corps of teachers assembles for meals in another dining-room. They
are not needed to preserve order or enforce discipline, as the students
have that matter largely in their own hands. Inspectors see that their
clothes have been brushed, their faces and hands cleaned of the stains
of the farm and work shops, as the army enters the dining-hall. But
behaviour takes care of itself. It is not long since I read of riotous
scenes in the "commons" of certain Northern universities, in which
students were guilty of throwing bread and crockery around the room.
This has never happened at Tuskegee, and this kind of disorder in our
dining-hall is quite beyond my imagination.
Once in a while, when tired of office work, I walk across the school
grounds and drop into one of the dormitories to talk with the boys
or girls in their rooms, and see for myself how they are living and
what they are doing to make their rooms, not only spotlessly neat,
but livable and attractive. Not long ago I went into a room in one of
the girls' halls, which was clean but utterly cheerless. She said in
explanation that she had been told that, if she could not keep the
photographs and all the other bric-a-brac that finds its way into a
girl's room dustless and in order, she should store the superfluous
articles away. I told her that the result of this misguided endeavour
was a room that looked as much like a barn as it did a home. She told
me how much she had spent during the term in buying chocolate to make
"fudge." For the same outlay she could have had pretty framed prints
on her walls, and other simple adornment in good taste and without
"clutter." That evening I said, while talking to the students in chapel:
"I was in the rooms of several girls to-day. I had been in these
rooms before. Some of the rooms are always clean and attractive. You
will find a number of little, delicate, home-like touches about them.
You have only to go into another room, and you will feel as if you
wanted to go out as soon as possible. This latter room has possibly
two or three girls in it, and they are always full of excuses, always
explaining. They can stand for five, ten, fifteen minutes, and reel off
excuses by the yard. Those girls, unless they change, will never get
ahead very far, I fear.
"The habit of making excuses, of giving explanations, instead of
achieving results, grows from year to year upon one, until finally
it gets such a hold that I think the victim finds himself almost as
well satisfied with a good, long-drawn-out excuse, as he does with
real tangible achievement. The schoolboy and girl must be taught such
lessons in every moment of routine duty, and there are no "little
things," to be carelessly overlooked, without danger that repetition
will breed bad habit. The student may think these things are little,
but permanent injury to character is the price paid for indifference
and carelessness. The price is paid in permanent injury to character.
"Every dollar received at Tuskegee comes through hard work on the part
of some one. Every dollar is placed with us because the donor feels
that perhaps it will accomplish more good here than elsewhere. It is
always a question for them to choose between giving a dollar here or
to some other institution. The attitude of every student, if he wishes
to be honest, must be that he has no right to ask persons to support
the school if a dollar goes into the hands of an individual who is not
doing his very best to earn the worth of it, every moment of every day,
from rising bell to "taps" on the bugle at the boy's hall."
Looking at education from this view-point, every detail of the work and
administration of a community of sixteen hundred people, with their
great variety of activities, becomes vitally important, a part toward
the complete whole.
This doctrine of "small things" finds expression in an infinite number
of channels. One of the despised but abundant products of the Southern
farms has been the cowpea. It is used extensively as a fodder plant,
and as a fertiliser by plowing it under. The cowpea is also one of
the most nutritious of foods, when properly cooked, but while it has
been growing at their doors the coloured people have neglected it as
a part of their diet. The Tuskegee agricultural expert investigated
the cowpea. He found that it was as valuable for food as the far-famed
"Boston bean," and prepared his table of analyses to prove it. Then
he worked out no less than eighteen different appetising recipes for
cooking the humble cowpea, and made practical demonstration, in a
booth of his own making, during one of the Negro Conference gatherings.
[Illustration: THE PAINT SHOP]
These recipes he had printed for distribution in a neat and attractive
pamphlet, and in this way he opened in defense of the cowpea a
successful crusade, which has had direct results. It was a small thing,
but it was not too small to be overlooked in the effort to make the
best of the resources close at hand.