Part 2 (2/2)
In 1901, with $2,000 given by Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw, of Boston, and $100 contributed by graduates of the Inst.i.tute as a nucleus, the Children's House was built. This is a one-story frame building of good proportions, in which the primary school of the town is taught. It is the practise-school for students of the Inst.i.tute who mean to teach. A kindergarten has also been established.
Mr. Rockefeller has given a dormitory for boys, which was completed and occupied last year. The lack of adequate sleeping quarters for young men, from which the school has suffered from the beginning, was very materially supplied in Rockefeller Hall, which is a three-story brick structure, furnis.h.i.+ng accommodations for 150 students. This need for dormitories has been still further met through the gift of three brick cottages by Miss Julia Emery, an American now living in London. Two of these buildings were finished last year, and young men are now living in them. The third is nearing completion. All are two stories high, with a hall running through the middle, and contain 40 rooms of good size.
Until last year the offices of the Inst.i.tute were scattered over the grounds wherever room could be found. A New York friend, who does not permit the use of his name, seeing the need of the school for a building in which the offices might be concentrated, thus greatly increasing the efficiency of its administrative work, gave $19,000 for this purpose.
The Office Building, completed in the latter part of 1903, is the result of this benefaction. It is two-and-a-half stories high, and contains the offices of the Princ.i.p.al, the Princ.i.p.al's Secretary, Treasurer, Auditor, Business Agent, Commandant, Registrar, and the Post-Office and Savings Department.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OFFICE BUILDING IN PROCESS OF ERECTION.
Student carpenters shown at work.]
The most pretentious building owned by the Inst.i.tute is the Collis P.
Huntington Memorial Building, the new home of the Academic Department, which is the gift of Mrs. Huntington as a memorial to her husband, who was one of Tuskegee's stanchest supporters. It is built near the site of the original building, Porter Hall, which it displaces as the center of the academic work of the school. The outside dimensions are 183 feet by 103 feet. It is four stories in height. Besides recitation-rooms for all the cla.s.ses, it contains a gymnasium in the bas.e.m.e.nt for young women, and an a.s.sembly-room on the top floor capable of seating 800 persons.
The finis.h.i.+ng is in yellow pine. The buildings of the Inst.i.tute show a steady progression in quality of workmans.h.i.+p, materials, and architectural design and efficiency, from the rather rough, wooden Porter Hall erected by hired workmen in 1882 to the stately Huntington Hall built by students in 1904.
Located at different points on the grounds and on lots detached are cottages occupied as residences by teachers and officers of the Inst.i.tute.
The furnis.h.i.+ngs for all the buildings, as well as the buildings themselves, have been made by the students in the various shops, who at the same time were learning trades and creating articles of use.
The annual cost of conducting the inst.i.tution is, in round numbers, $150,000. This may seem high, but when certain facts in regard to the work are borne in mind it will not appear exorbitant. In the first place, there are really three schools at Tuskegee--a day-school, a night-school, and a trade-school. Such a system makes necessary the employment of a larger number of teachers than would be needed in a purely academic inst.i.tution holding only one session a day. Teachers in the trade-school, with special technical training, can be obtained only by paying them higher salaries than are paid to those who simply teach in the cla.s.s-rooms.
Secondly, and princ.i.p.ally, it is expensive to employ student labor to do the work of the school. By the time students become fairly proficient in their trades and reach the point where their services begin to be profitable, their time at the inst.i.tution has expired, and a new, untrained set take their places, so that the school is constantly working on new material or raw recruits. Then, too, Tuskegee is still in the formative period of its growth as to buildings, laying-out and improvement of grounds, and equipment of its various departments. When the school's needs in these directions shall have been met, and the Negro parent shall become able to pay a larger share of the cost of educating his children, the expenses to the public of running the school may be materially reduced.
Money for the support of the school is derived princ.i.p.ally from the following sources, viz.: The State of Alabama, $4,500; the John F.
Slater Fund, $10,000; the General Education Board, $10,000; the Peabody Fund, $1,500; the Inst.i.tute's Endowment Fund, $40,000; contributions of persons and charitable organizations, $84,000; a total of $150,000. The individual contributions are, for the most part, small, and come from persons of moderate means. Yet the inst.i.tution annually receives some large gifts toward its expenses from those who are blessed with wealth.
Especial appeals are made by the inst.i.tution for scholars.h.i.+ps of $50 each, in order to pay the tuition of students who provide for their other expenses themselves largely by their work for the school, but who are unable to contribute anything toward the item of teaching. These scholars.h.i.+ps are not turned over to the students, but are held by the inst.i.tution and a.s.signed for their benefit, the aim being to do nothing for students which they can do for themselves, and thus help to develop in them a spirit of manly and womanly self-reliance.
The majority of the large donations, aside from those for endowment, have been for buildings and the purchase of additional farm-lands made necessary by the enlargement of the school's agricultural work.
What may be regarded as the greatest need of the inst.i.tution is an adequate endowment which will put it upon a permanent basis and make its future certain.
A gratifying beginning in the building up of an endowment has already been made. It is a fact, still well remembered by the public, that Mr.
Andrew Carnegie has given to the endowment fund the princely sum of $600,000. Before that time $400,000 had been collected from other sources for the same purpose, the largest single contribution toward this amount being $50,000 from the late Collis P. Huntington.
As already stated, the income from the present endowment is $40,000, out of which several annuities are paid. This is only a little more than one-fourth of the amount that must be had each year to pay the expenses of the school. It will require an endowment of at least $3,000,000 to yield an income adequate to the present needs of the inst.i.tution alone.
III
THE ACADEMIC AIMS
BY ROSCOE CONKLING BRUCE
The Negro needs industrial training in eminent degree, because the capacity for continuous labor is a requisite of civilized living; because, indeed, the very first step in social advance must be economic; because the industrial monopoly with which slavery encompa.s.sed black men has fallen shattered before the trumpet-blast of white labor and eager compet.i.tion; and, finally, because no instrument of moral education is more effective upon the ma.s.s of mankind than cheerful and intelligent work. These ideas powerfully voiced, together with an unusually magnanimous att.i.tude toward the white South, have set the man who toiled doggedly up from slavery, upon a hill apart. These things are distinctive of this man; they suggest his temper, his spirit, his point of view; but they do not exhaust his interests. Similarly, the distinctive feature of Tuskegee--adequate provision for industrial training--sets it upon a hill apart, but by a whimsical perversity this major feature is in some quarters a.s.sumed to be the whole school. A moment's reflection shows such a view to be mistaken.
<script>