The white people charge us with being imitators, incapable of originating anything in the domain of science, art or invention, and to a certain extent I am free to admit that the charge is true, and the reasons are easily explained. Being a new people, as it were, we had not attained to the point of originality, and situated in the midst of white people who had education, refinement of manners, money and the advantage it gives, we are compelled to imitate them. Besides, it was their advice to us to do so if we wished to succeed, and we have, therefore, been imitating them for nearly thirty years, adopting their habits and customs, the good, and, I am sorry to say, the bad as well. Having followed the advice of those white people, who we knew meant well, and whom we knew to be our real friends, as anxious for our success as we were, and who will have our sincere thanks always, for the noble and generous deeds they have done for us; yet we have made mistakes. Whenever we could, we gave our children the same course of study that white children received, often graduating them from the same platform, and then, when able, sent our boys to college to take a professional course, either in law, medicine or the ministry, this being the usual course followed by white parents, and being imitators, could we be expected to adopt any other with our limited means or foresight? I answer, no.

Being a peculiar, or I might say a proscribed people, the same course of study, after leaving the common branches, which was deemed best for the white children, experience has shown us, was not the best suited for the Colored children. Being almost entirely a laboring class of people, we should have used every means in our power to educate our children’s hands as well as their heads by giving them a trade of some kind, by establishing industrial schools as a part of the course of study, so that our boys would have a trade when they reached the age of twenty-one years, and our girls at the same age coming out of the schools, would be trained nurses, cooks or seamstresses, prepared to make an honest living.

I do not want it to be understood that I am opposed to the higher studies or professions; far be it from me. On the contrary, I am proud of every young Colored man who has attained to these honors, and would be glad to see as many more turned out fullfledged every year. In order that they may take our places in the labor world, when we, who have been taught trades by our owners, shall have passed from life to death, we should strive to give our children trades of some kind, and we should commence now. Have we to-day as many shoemakers, carpenters, bricklayers, blacksmiths, stone masons and wagon makers among us as when emancipated? I think not. This presents a very unfortunate condition, if true, and I believe it is. But I am glad to see our people awakening to this neglected duty, and I think no man deserves more credit for this than Booker T. Washington, President of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.

On the fourth of July, 1881, this school began, in an old church building, with one teacher and thirty pupils. Since then its growth has been most remarkable. To-day it owns over 1500 acres of land, nineteen buildings, has more than six hundred students, forty-one teachers, and gives instruction in eighteen industries. Its lands and buildings are worth $185,000. Its industries include farming, brickmaking, sawmill work, planing, carpentry, painting, brickmasonry, plastering, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, chairmaking, mattress-making, printing, bee-culture; and for girls, laundering, general housekeeping, sewing, including cutting and making garments, and cooking lessons for seniors. Eight of the largest buildings have been built wholly or in part by student labor. It has been the aim of the school from the first to combine thorough mental training with industrial work.

No one can visit the school to-day and see what it is doing in the class-room, in the farm, in the carpenter-shop, in the blacksmith-shop, in the sawmill, in the brickyard, in the printing office, in the laundry, in the sewing room, in the literary societies, and in the various religious exercises,—for the development of the head, hand and heart of the young men and women gathered there, without feeling profoundly thankful to God.

There are a few things about this school that are especially worthy of note: 1st. It is a live school. It believes in progress. It has never stood still a day since its organization. Every year it presents new evidences of growth and development. 2nd. It does what it aims to do thoroughly. It employs only well-qualified officers and teachers, and subjects all its pupils to the most rigid examination before sending them forth. 3rd. It is no sham affair, existing on paper only. It is all it represents itself to be, and more; and it does all it professes to do. 4th. Its funds are wisely and economically administered; there is no waste anywhere, everything is utilized, and utilized for the general good. The immediate work to which the school is committed, in its greatness and importance, seems to weigh upon every mind; and how to get the most out of what they have is the one thought. Hence the salaries are small and the working force is cut down to the smallest possible number, thereby increasing the burdens of the officers and teachers, but by them willingly, cheerfully endured, as it helps to keep down expenses; hence, also the buildings, as well as their furnishings, the food, etc., are all of the plainest character. An example of the rigid economy which characterizes everything there, may be found in the fact, that eight dollars will keep a young man there for a month, including everything, board, lodging, washing, mending, fuel and light. 5th. Every officer and teacher in it, from the beginning to the present, has been Colored. Whatever ability has been displayed therefore in the management of its affairs, and in working it up to its present high standard, we may justly claim as our own. In this particular it stands alone among the Colored institutions in our land. Not that there are no other schools that have proved a success under exclusively Colored management and direction, but none of such magnitude, whose success is so unquestioned, and where such large sums of money are expended annually.

The feeling of the whites in the neighborhood is now most friendly to the school, and they frequently employ the students in their different departments of labor. As an illustration of this friendly feeling, a southern lady living near the school has recently given to it an estate valued at $15,000.

At the head of this school, and its animating, controlling spirit, from the very beginning, is Prof. Booker T. Washington, a graduate of Hampton, a quiet, unassuming man, with a wise head and a big heart, and the weight of this race problem resting upon him as upon scarcely any other that I have met. You do not hear very much about him through the columns of the newspapers, or of his addressing great meetings in the various parts of the country; but judged by his work, he is a most remarkable man—a man to be proud of, and to be honored, a modest man, caring nothing about notoriety, content to be unknown, so long as the work goes on, and his people go up; a born leader, with all the elements of leadership, especially for the work in which he is engaged, with a keen intellect, a strong will, courage, perseverance and enthusiasm.

When this great race problem shall be solved; when slavery and all its dreadful consequences shall be a thing of the past, and when we shall stand on the same plane with others in point of wealth, intelligence and culture, which I firmly believe we will, and even the history of the influences by which it has been brought about shall be written, I believe that no man will be assigned a more honorable place than this man, Booker T. Washington.

I have written quite fully of the institution over which Professor Washington presides, to the exclusion of others, not because there were no others worthy of mention, but because I had fuller information of that institution than of any other. But I am reliably informed that there are several such schools established in the South, and that they are doing a good work, but being in their infancy, as it were, are not on a par with the Tuskegee Institute.

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