Working with the hands Author:Booker T. Washington Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A Battle Against Prejudice When the first few students began to come to Tuskegee I faced these questions which were inspired by my personal knowl... more »edge of their lives and surroundings : What can these young men and women find to do when they return to their homes? What are the industries in which they and their parents have been supporting themselves? The answers were not always to my liking, but this was not the point at issue. I had to meet a condition, not a theory. What I might have wanted them to be doing was one thing; what they were actually doing was the bed-rock upon which I hoped to lay the foundation of the work at Tuskegee. It was known that a large majority of the students came from agricultural districts and from homes in which agriculture in some form was the mainstay of the family. I had learned that nearly eighty per cent of the population of what are commonly called the Gulf States are dependent upon agricultural resources, directly or indirectly. These facts made me resolve toattempt in downright earnest to see what the Tus- kegee Institute could do for the people of my race by teaching the intelligent use of hands and brains on the farm, not by theorising, but by practical effort. The methods in vogue for getting enough out of the soil to keep body and soul together were crude in the extreme. The people themselves referred to this heart-breaking effort as "making a living." I wanted to teach them how to make more than a living. I have little respect for the farmer who is satisfied with merely "making a living." It is hardly possible that agricultural life will become attractive and satisfactory to ambitious young men or women in the South until farming can be made as lucrative there as in other parts of the country where the farmer ...« less