There was no
brickyard in the town, and in addition to our own needs there was
a demand for bricks in the general market.
I had always sympathized with the "Children of Israel," in their
task of "making bricks without straw," but ours was the task of
making bricks with no money and no experience.
In the first place, the work was hard and dirty, and it was
difficult to get the students to help. When it came to
brickmaking, their distaste for manual labour in connection with
book education became especially manifest. It was not a pleasant
task for one to stand in the mud-pit for hours, with the mud up
to his knees. More than one man became disgusted and left the
school.
We tried several locations before we opened up a pit that
furnished brick clay. I had always supposed that brickmaking was
very simple, but I soon found out by bitter experience that it
required special skill and knowledge, particularly in the burning
of the bricks. After a good deal of effort we moulded about
twenty-five thousand bricks, and put them into a kiln to be
burned. This kiln turned out to be a failure, because it was not
properly constructed or properly burned. We began at once,
however, on a second kiln. This, for some reason, also proved a
failure. The failure of this kiln made it still more difficult to
get the students to take part in the work.
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