604 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and dining rooms, learn plain and fancy cooking, candy-making, 

 millinery, dressmaking, and all the most modern methods of laun- 

 dry work. One class learns nursing, under the direction of a ca- 

 pable trained nurse. 



In speaking of the trades taught at Tuskegee, it should be re- 

 membered that agriculture is reckoned among them, and one of 



THE START FROM THE BARN. " FAKSI STUDENTS." 



the most important. A very large percentage of the negroes of 

 the South must continue to live upon the plantations and gain a 

 living by tilling the soil. As a general thing their knowledge of 

 how to best do this is lamentably deficient, and they labor under 

 great disadvantages. They do not own their land, but rent it at 

 ruinous rates. They mortgage their crops and eat them up before 

 they are harvested. They plant nothing but cotton, because that 

 is about the only crop that can be mortgaged, and are therefore 

 obliged to buy food at any exorbitant prices which the dealers may 

 demand. Tuskegee tries to remedy these evils by teaching the 

 young men who come there the best methods of modern farming. 

 If the farmers' sons can remain only a short time they carry back 

 to the home plantations some new ideas to put in practice there; 

 if they can remain for the full term of three or four years, they are 

 fitted to take full charge of the work on any large plantation. The 

 institute has a farm on which are raised the crops best adapted 

 to the soil and climate of that part of the South. The men who 

 have charge of this work are among the most able in the entire 

 force of instructors. Mr. C. W. Green, the farm superintendent, 

 has no superior in the South as a practical farmer. Mr. George 

 W. Carver, the head of the agricultural department, is a graduate 

 of the Iowa State College. To my mind, no more valuable text- 

 book for Southern scholars could be furnished than a little pam- 

 phlet which this man has recently issued, telling how he raised be- 



