298 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



States. Quite a part of the annual out- 

 lay of the nation, the Transcript says, is 

 an investment rather than an expenditure. 

 Public buildings are direct investments, 

 obvious to everybody, because they save 

 rental to the government In the case of 

 certain other appropriations, the invest- 

 ment aspect, while just as genuine is so 

 indirect as to escape attention. An ap- 

 propriation for the improvement of Boston 

 Harbor would be an indirect investment . 

 The cost of transportation is one of the 

 great public charges, the rates of which 

 bear directly upon the fortunes of every- 

 body. A deep channel to Boston makes 

 possible large ships and low freight rates, 

 It is the same story, continues the Tran- 

 script, with all the worthy river and har- 

 bor improvements ; they are national in- 

 vestments. Irrigation expenses, in so far 

 as they provide for permanent works, come 

 under the same head. National expendi- 

 tures of the investment sort should be en- 

 couraged, especially when the country is 

 so prosperous that it can bear its burden 

 well as against the time of greater strin- 

 gency. 



It takes but slight study to see that an 

 irrigation appropriation applied to any one 

 section woiild almost immediately help 

 o'ther sections. If the West were fully 

 developed, the East would necessarily 

 benefit thereby for western money would 

 flow eastward to purchase those things 

 which the East alone supplies and so 

 through the prosperity of the irrigated 

 West the manufacturing East would in- 

 directly benefit by the opening of great 

 additional markets Nat. Ir. Ass'n. 



To say that the Indian, 

 negro and reformatory 

 schools furnish better ad- 

 vantages than those offered to our ordi- 

 nary school children is to make a strong 

 assertion, and to say that the same advan- 

 tages could not be obtained for $10,000 

 a year, is still stronger. Yet this asser- 

 tion has been made and well sustained by 

 Albert Shaw in writing about the indus- 

 trial school at Hampton, Va. A recent 



"Learning 



By 

 Dot tin." 



issue of the American Review of Reviews 

 contained an article by Mr. Shaw entitled. 

 " Learning by Doing at Hamptom," illus- 

 trated with forty half-tones from actual 

 photographs taken at the school. It is in 

 this interesting and instructive article that 

 Mr. Shaw says: " Better than at almost 

 any other place in this country, have they 

 at Hampton grasped the conception of 

 what we may call integral education. 

 Some day the people of this country in- 

 cluding the wise and the prudent and 

 some of the eductional leaders will more 

 or less suddenly wake up to the realiza- 

 tion of a very curious fact. This fact is 

 that by all odds the finest, soundest, and 

 most effective educational methods in use 

 in the United States are to be found in 

 certain schools for negroes and Indians, 

 and in others for young criminals in re- 

 formatory prisons. If I paid $10,000 a 

 year for it I could not possibly give my 

 own small boy anywhere in or about New 

 York city the advantages of as good a. 

 school as the raggedest little negro child 

 of Phoebus, Va., freely enjoys, whose edu- 

 cation is under the care of the Hampton. 

 Institute." In this school the pupils are 

 taught domestic science, farming, dress- 

 making, carpentering, in fact almost 

 every branch of common work and " learii 

 by doing," so that the children grow up 

 with the idea that it is just as important 

 to be able to wash and iron as it is to read 

 and write, and thus they are much more 

 apt to be contented in their various occu- 

 pations than if they were taught that 

 " book-larnin " was the all important 

 thing. Booker T. Washington, that great 

 worker for the colored race, whose name 

 is inseparably associated with the Tuske- 

 gee Institute, was educated at Hampton, 

 and the Tuskegee Institute is founded on 

 similar lines-- is, in fact, a child of Hamp- 

 ton. The writer says " A large part of the 

 secret of the future unlocking of the 

 South's vast possibilites of wealth and 

 culture and happiness lies in the thorough 

 and contented acceptance of agriculture 

 by the colored race. * * * * A large 





