Farmers^ Week in Agricultural College. 81 



by a man and a woman who understood how to train children, and they 

 trained that colored boy so that he knew how to work, how to use 

 his hands. They trained him to be honest and faithful to his employ- 

 ers, and made of him an honest, useful citizen. I have seen negroes 

 in the same neighborhood who are not honest and my poultry yards have 

 suffered thereby. I have seen them going up and down doing nothing, 

 when the farmers needed help and would have paid good wages could 

 they have obtained their help. Those negroes had not been trained; 

 they had been left to grow up in idleness, living like animals, learning 

 to steal when necessary to get food. They were perfect nuisances and 

 likely to become criminals. The reason why those colored men are 

 criminals today, or useless individuals, is that the white man has neg- 

 lected his burden. They are children and need training and don't 

 know how to train themselves. The white man does know how to train 

 them. Almost the only salvation for those colored people, I believe, 

 is in industrial schools. I would not have such schools at Hampton and 

 Tuskogee alone. I would have one in eveiy section of the South, and 

 I would put manual training in every colored school in the South. 

 When these colored boys and girls are trained to use their hands they 

 will work. They are easily trained, are faithful w^orkers, and good 

 servants. The white man is now suffering evil consequences, in many 

 instances, because he neglected his duty to the colored man. 



I will give you one more illustration of the teaching of agriculture 

 and why it is necessary in the public schools. I was told that you 

 wanted me to tell the story of my School of Agriculture, but that is a 

 broad subject. South Dakota is a new state and the public schools are 

 not as good as yours in Missouri. Oftentimes in the country districts 

 we cannot get teachers to fill positions, and in many localities we can 

 only keep the school open four or five months in the year. Under those 

 conditions the farmer boy does not have a fair chance to get an educa- 

 tion ; and so it was planned that we should have a School of Agriculture 

 at the State College to instruct some of these boys and girls. It is hard 

 for some of the boys to get away from home to go to school, because the 

 farms there are larger than here — some 800 acres, some 1,600, some 

 4,000. Many a farmer has four sections, of 160 acres each, and cannot 

 get sufficient help to run the farm. He has to call on the boys and 

 girls to do the farming. They all take hold and help to get the plant- 

 ing done in the spring time so they have little time to go to school ; 

 and when harvest time comes they have to be called on again. I had 

 a letter from a boy in November. I had asked him if he was coming 

 back to school, and he wrote that they had 125 acres of corn to take 

 care of, and he would have to stay at home and help husk it. I say 



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