is manual, and seems common, you will have all the more chance to be
thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and brings better pay,
and to work out in your minds better and higher duties and
responsibilities for yourselves, and for thinking of ways by which you can
help others as well as yourselves, and bring them up to your own higher
level."

Some years ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our training
at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was almost
impossible to find in the whole country an educated colored man who could
teach the making of clothing. We could find numbers of them who could
teach astronomy, theology, Latin or grammar, but almost none who could
instruct in the making of clothing, something that has to be used by every
one of us every day in the year. How often have I been discouraged as I
have gone through the South, and into the homes of the people of my race,
and have found women who could converse intelligently upon abstruse
subjects, and yet could not tell how to improve the condition of the
poorly cooked and still more poorly served bread and meat which they and
their families were eating three times a day. It is discouraging to find a
girl who can tell you the geographical location of any country on the
globe and who does not know where to place the dishes upon a common dinner
table. It is discouraging to find a woman who knows much about theoretical
chemistry, and who cannot properly wash and iron a shirt.

In what I say here I would not by any means have it understood that I
would limit or circumscribe the mental development of the Negro-student.
No race can be lifted until its mind is awakened and strengthened. By the
side of industrial training should always go mental and moral training,
but the pushing of mere abstract knowledge into the head means little. We
want more than the mere performance of mental gymnastics. Our knowledge