students at Tuskegee is now so strong for industrial training that it
would hardly permit a student to remain on the grounds who was unwilling
to labor.

It seems to me that too often mere book education leaves the Negro young
man or woman in a weak position. For example, I have seen a Negro girl
taught by her mother to help her in doing laundry work at home. Later,
when this same girl was graduated from the public schools or a high school
and returned home she finds herself educated out of sympathy with laundry
work, and yet not able to find anything to do which seems in keeping with
the cost and character of her education. Under these circumstances we
cannot be surprised if she does not fulfill the expectations made for her.
What should have been done for her, it seems to me, was to give her along
with her academic education thorough training in the latest and best
methods of laundry work, so that she could have put so much skill and
intelligence into it that the work would have been lifted out from the
plane of drudgery[A]. The home which she would then have been able to
found by the results of her work would have enabled her to help her
children to take a still more responsible position in life.

Almost from the first Tuskegee has kept in mind--and this I think should
be the policy of all industrial schools--fitting students for occupations
which would be open to them in their home communities. Some years ago we
noted the fact that there was beginning to be a demand in the South for
men to operate dairies in a skillful, modern manner. We opened a dairy
department in connection with the school, where a number of young men
could have instruction in the latest and most scientific methods of dairy
work. At present we have calls--mainly from Southern white men--for twice
as many dairymen as we are able to supply. What is equally satisfactory,
the reports which come to us indicate that our young men are giving the