270 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



is going to be moved into Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, 

 after a while. When that is so, how long are our women 

 going to hold on to the industry of washing by the old 

 process? Not long. We have to teach our people to put 

 skill and training and dignity into the common occupations 

 about their doors. In proportion as we teach them those 

 lessons, in the same proportion we find them getting upon 

 their feet, helping themselves, and, what is better than that, 

 getting to the point where they make themselves such an 

 important part of the community that the people will feel 

 that wherever there is a negro, there is a man adding 

 something to the really higher and better life of that com- 

 munity. 



The negro in the south, works, as a race, and especially 

 is that true in the rural districts. You will find a greater 

 proportion of idleness in the cities and towns. In the 

 agricultural districts, in his way, the negro works ; but by 

 reason of his ignorance, his lack of experience, his lack 

 of skill, in too many cases he docs everything in the most 

 costly and most shiftless manner. Do you know, my friends, 

 that in the south the average negro farmer in the cotton belt 

 has to mortgage his crop every year for the food upon which 

 to live ; that he pays, on an average, for the food which he 

 gets in that manner, interest that will range from twenty to 

 forty, and even in some cases fifty per cent ; that the aver- 

 age negro farmer lives in a one-room log cabin, upon rented 

 land, and that he has to rent the mule that he uses. How 

 are we going to change that condition of things ? My friends, 

 we are changing it gradualby, not all at once, but surely that 

 kind of thing is being changed. At Tuskegee, at Hampton, 

 at other institutions in the south, we are educating young 

 men in the industrial and agricultural ideas, sending them 

 out into the rural districts to teach the people how to save 

 the money that is spent for whiskey, snuff and cheap jewelry, 

 and teaching them to buy land and build decent and comfort- 

 able homes ; and gradually we are getting them to the point 

 where they are giving attention to the education of their 

 children, and where they are beginning to become intelli- 

 gent, reliable citizens of the communities where they reside. 



