At the present time the institution
owns twenty-three hundred acres of land, one thousand of which
are under cultivation each year, entirely by student labour.
There are now upon the grounds, counting large and small,
sixty-six buildings; and all except four of these have been
almost wholly erected by the labour of our students. While the
students are at work upon the land and in erecting buildings,
they are taught, by competent instructors, the latest methods of
agriculture and the trades connected with building.
There are in constant operation at the school, in connection with
thorough academic and religious training, thirty industrial
departments. All of these teach industries at which our men and
women can find immediate employment as soon as they leave the
institution. The only difficulty now is that the demand for our
graduates from both white and black people in the South is so
great that we cannot supply more than one-half the persons for
whom applications come to us. Neither have we the buildings nor
the money for current expenses to enable us to admit to the
school more than one-half the young men and women who apply to us
for admission.
In our industrial teaching we keep three things in mind: first,
that the student shall be so educated that he shall be enabled to
meet conditions as they exist now, in the part of the South where
he lives--in a word, to be able to do the thing which the world
wants done; second, that every student who graduates from the
school shall have enough skill, coupled with intelligence and
moral character, to enable him to make a living for himself and
others; third, to send every graduate out feeling and knowing
that labour is dignified and beautiful--to make each one love
labour instead of trying to escape it.
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