s, master builders and contractors, a dairyman,
and a blacksmith. No element contributing to the racial uplift is
overlooked. The scenes of their labors are scattered over a vast area,
showing convincingly the diffusive character as well as the rich harvest
garnered through the Tuskegee Idea. These rough-hewn sketches of a
sturdy pioneer band in staking out a larger life and a wider horizon for
later generations are worthy of the most careful perusal.
The immeasurable advancement of the Negro, manifested in character,
courage, and cash, vitalized by valiant service to the republic in
education, commerce, and religion, and crowned by an enlightened,
vigorously efficient, sensibly ambitious, and law-abiding citizenship,
is "confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ" that the gospel of
industry, as exemplified by Tuskegee and its helpers, has exerted a
leavening influence upon civilization wherever it has been brought
within the reach of those who are struggling toward the heights. Under
this new dispensation of mind, morals, and muscle, with the best whites
and best blacks in sympathetic cooperation, and justice meaning the same
to the weak as to the strong, the South will no longer be vexed by a
"race problem." Peace and prosperity for all will come with the strength
to rise above the baser self. Civic righteousness is the South's
speediest thoroughfare to economic greatness.
A book that opens the inner chambers of a people's heart, and sheds a
light that may guide the footsteps of both races along the upward way,
should meet with a hearty welcome at the hands of all lovers of
mankind.
_PART I_
_THE SCHOOL AND ITS PURPOSES_
I
PRESENT ACHIEVEMENTS AND GOVERNING IDEALS
BY EMMETT J. SCOTT
So much has been said about Tuskegee Institute as a training-school in
which to prepare young colored men and women for earning a living in the
world of trade and business, that the ideals and spirit behind all this
training are to a very large extent lost sight of.
Tuskegee, with its hundreds of acres of farm-land under intelligent
cultivation, with its ever-increasing number of well-appointed buildings
and its equipment, and the many things on the grounds included in the
name of handicrafts, is always in the public eye, and continually
appeals to the interest of those who are deeply concerned in the
well-being and progress of the Negro people.
Yet behind all of these more tangible manifestations of w
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