to lend a helping
hand to other worthy young people.

ENLARGEMENT AND PERMANENT IMPROVEMENT

The zealous interest of the superintendent in this self-help industrial
department appears in the broad foundation he had hoped to lay for it in
the purchase of so many acres for the Oak Hill farm.

There were other good motives that prompted the purchase of land, when
the opportunity was afforded to do so at it which price in 1908 such as
provision for future supplies of wood as a cheap fuel, about twenty-five
cords a year being needed, and ample pastures for the herds of cattle
and hogs, that are easily and profitably raised and greatly needed, but
the most urgent motive was the earnest desire to provide an agricultural
base large enough to enable the self-help department of the academy to
become in time self-supporting.

"Enlargement" and "permanent improvement" became the watchwords while
laying the foundation for this department.

The manifest need of it had been deeply and indelibly impressed. The
conviction also prevailed that, when properly organized and developed,
so as to meet their most urgent needs, the self-help department in an
educational institution works like a live magnet in attracting the
patronage of many worthy young people.

Permanent improvement year after year by self-supporting students,
seeking training is an arrangement that has in it the germ of expansion,
that means enlargement and growth with passing years. This was the ideal
towards which we were moving with might and main. We wanted to plant the
live magnet, that would make Oak Hill an attractive and pre-eminently
useful educational center for all the Choctaw Freedmen.

There are no annual taxes on lands used for public or mission school
purposes, and all the annual income tends to lessen to the Board, the
local expenses of the teachers and students. The net income from the
farm is the surplus that remains after deducting the cost of management
from the gross receipts.

Whenever this net income is more than sufficient to cover the local
support of the teachers, it goes toward the support of the
self-supporting students; whenever it is sufficient to cover all of
their monthly allowances, this self-help department is self-supporting;
and special remittances from the Board will not then be needed for the
worthy, industrious and ambitious young people, in that department. The
attainment of this object is worthy of noble and constant endeavo