grounds of not
far from seventeen hundred people.

I have often been asked how we keep so large a body of people together,
and at the same time keep them out of mischief. There are two answers:
that the men and women who come to us for an education are in earnest;
and that everybody is kept busy. The following outline of our daily work
will testify to this:--

5 a.m., rising bell; 5.50 a.m., warning breakfast bell; 6 a.m.,
breakfast bell; 6.20 a.m., breakfast over; 6.20 to 6.50 a.m., rooms
are cleaned; 6.50, work bell; 7.30, morning study hours; 8.20, morning
school bell; 8.25, inspection of young men's toilet in ranks; 8.40,
devotional exercises in chapel; 8.55, "five minutes with the daily
news;" 9 a.m., class work begins; 12, class work closes; 12.15 p.m.,
dinner; 1 p.m., work bell; 1.30 p.m., class work begins; 3.30 p.m.,
class work ends; 5.30 p.m., bell to "knock off" work; 6 p.m., supper;
7.10 p.m., evening prayers; 7.30 p.m., evening study hours; 8.45 p.m.,
evening study hour closes; 9.20 p.m., warning retiring bell; 9.30 p.m.,
retiring bell.

We try to keep constantly in mind the fact that the worth of the school
is to be judged by its graduates. Counting those who have finished
the full course, together with those who have taken enough training to
enable them to do reasonably good work, we can safely say that at least
six thousand men and women from Tuskegee are now at work in different
parts of the South; men and women who, by their own example or by
direct efforts, are showing the masses of our race now to improve their
material, educational, and moral and religious life. What is equally
important, they are exhibiting a degree of common sense and self-control
which is causing better relations to exist between the races, and is
causing the Southern white man to learn to believe in the value of
educating the men and women of my race. Aside from this, there is the
influence that is constantly being exerted through the mothers' meeting
and the plantation work conducted by Mrs. Washington.

Wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in the
buying of land, improving homes, saving money, in education, and in
high moral characters are remarkable. Whole communities are fast being
revolutionized through the instrumentality of these men and women.

Ten years ago I organized at Tuskegee the first Negro Conference. This
is an annual gathering which now brings to the school eight or nine
hundre