In this time forty buildings, counting small and
large, have been built, and all except four are almost wholly the
product of student labour. As an additional result, hundreds of
men are now scattered throughout the South who received their
knowledge of mechanics while being taught how to erect these
buildings. Skill and knowledge are now handed down from one set
of students to another in this way, until at the present time a
building of any description or size can be constructed wholly by
our instructors and students, from the drawing of the plans to
the putting in of the electric fixtures, without going off the
grounds for a single workman.
Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the
temptation of marring the looks of some building by leadpencil
marks or by the cuts of a jack-knife, I have heard an old student
remind him: "Don't do that. That is our building. I helped put it
up."
In the early days of the school I think my most trying experience
was in the matter of brickmaking. As soon as we got the farm work
reasonably well started, we directed our next efforts toward the
industry of making bricks. We needed these for use in connection
with the erection of our own buildings; but there was also
another reason for establishing this industry.
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