Part 19 (1/2)

Previous to this he had written Mr. Lee the following letter relative to the general problem of the teaching efficiency in his department:

_November 24, 1914._

_Mr. Lee, Director Academic Department:_

When you return, I want to urge that you give careful but serious attention to the following suggestions:

First, I am convinced that we must arrange to give more systematic and constant attention to the individual teachers in your department in the way of seeing that they follow your wishes and policy regarding the dovetailing of the academic work into the industrial work.

I am quite convinced that the matter is taken up in rather a spasmodic way; that is, so long as you are on hand and can give the matter personal attention, it is followed, but when you cease to give personal attention to it or are away, matters go back to the old rut, or nearly so.

In some way we must all get together and help you to organize your department so that this will not be true.

There are two elements of weakness in the academic work: First, I very much fear that we take into it every year too many green teachers, who know nothing about your methods.

This pulls the whole tone of the academic work down before you can train them into your methods. I am quite sure that though you might not get teachers who have had so much book training, that it would be worth your considering to employ a larger number of Hampton graduates or Tuskegee graduates, who have had in a measure the methods which you believe in instilled into them.

In my opinion, the time has come when you must consider seriously the getting rid of, or s.h.i.+fting, some of your older teachers. You have teachers in your department who have been here a good many years, and experience proves that they do not adapt themselves readily and systematically to your methods. I think it would be far better for the school to find employment for them outside of the Academic Department, or to let them take some clerical work in your department, than for them to occupy positions of importance and influence, which they are not filling satisfactorily and where they have an influence in hurting the character of the whole teaching.

All these matters I hope you will consider very carefully.

I am sure that the time has come when definite and serious action is needed.

BOOKER T. WAs.h.i.+NGTON, Princ.i.p.al.

First and last on these apparently aimless strolls with a stenographer he visited not only the cla.s.srooms and shops but every corner of the great inst.i.tution. He would return to his office with a notebook full of memoranda of matters to be followed up or changed, and of people to be commended or censured for their efficient or inefficient handling of this, that, or the other piece of work. Once after writing a series of letters calling attention to ragged tablecloths, unclean napkins, and uncleanliness in other forms in kitchens, bakery, and dining-rooms without the desired result, he personally took charge of the situation, organized a squad of workers, put things in proper condition, and then insisted that they be kept in such condition.

His pa.s.sion to utilize every fraction of time to its maximum advantage led him even to smuggle a stenographer into the formal annual exercises of the Bible Training School so that he might during the exercises clandestinely dictate notes for the head of the Bible school as to those features in which the program was weak, failed ”to get across,” did not hold the interest of the people, seemed to be over their heads, or whatever might be his diagnosis of the difficulty. He was not interested in the program for and of itself, but was keenly interested in its effect upon the people. If it interested and helped them, it was a good program; if it did not, it was a poor program and no amount of learning or technical perfection could redeem it. He sometimes reduced his more scholarly teachers to the verge of despair by his insistence that there should be nothing on the program at any exercise to which the public was invited which the every-day man and woman could not understand and appreciate.

In opening the chapter we mentioned Booker Was.h.i.+ngton's faculty for giving attention to apparently trivial details without losing sight of his large policies and purposes. This was part of his habit of taking nothing for granted. He never a.s.sumed that people would do or had done what they should do or should have done any more than he a.s.sumed they would not or had not done what they should. He neither trusted nor distrusted them. He kept himself constantly informed. Every person employed by the inst.i.tution from the most important department heads down to the men who removed ashes and garbage were under the stimulating apprehension that his eye might be upon them at any moment. He hara.s.sed his subordinates by continually asking them if this or that matter had been attended to. He would sometimes ask three different people to do the same thing. This resulted in wasted effort on somebody's part, but it always accomplished the result, which was all that interested him. He took nothing for granted himself and he insisted that his subordinates take nothing for granted. He was a task master and a ”driver” but he taxed himself more heavily and drove himself harder than he did any one else. Like other strong men, he had the weaknesses of his strength, and probably his most serious weakness was driving himself and his subordinates beyond his and their strength.

His eye was daily upon every part of the great machine which he had built up through an exhaustive system of daily reports. These reports were placed on his desk each morning when at the Inst.i.tute and mailed to him each morning when away. They showed him the number of students in the hospital with the name, diagnosis, and progress of each case.

From the poultry yard came reports giving the number of eggs in the incubators, the number hatched since the day before, the number of chickens which had died, the number of eggs and chickens sold, etc.

Similarly daily reports came from the swine herd, the dairy herd, and all the other groups of live stock.

He received also each morning a report from the savings department giving the number of new depositors, the amounts of money deposited and withdrawn, and the condition of the bank at the close of the previous day. There was, too, a list of the requisitions approved by the Business Committee the previous day giving articles, prices, divisions, or departments in which each was to be used and totals for different cla.s.ses of requisitions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton was a great believer in the sweet potato. He personally supervised the work of preparing for sweet potato planting.]

The Boarding Department head would report just what had been served the students at the three meals of the day before. In running over these menus he would give a contemptuous snort if he came upon any instance of what he called ”feeding the students out of the barrel.”

By this he meant buying food which could as well or better have been raised on the Inst.i.tute farms. He objected to this practice not only because it was more expensive, but because it eliminated the work of raising, preparing, and serving the foods which he regarded as a valuable exercise in civilization. He also insisted that everything raised on the farms should in one way or another be used by the students. Besides serving to the students every variety of Southern vegetable from the Inst.i.tute's extensive truck gardens, he always insisted that their own corn be ground into meal and that they make their own preserves out of their own peaches, blackberries, and other fruits. In other words, he made the community feed itself just as far as possible. And this he did quite as much because of the knowledge of the processes of right living which it imparted as for the money which it saved.

The Treasurer also submitted a daily report of contributions and other receipts of the previous day with the name and address of each contributor. Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton arranged to receive and look over these daily reports even when travelling. Hence, in a sense, he was never absent. Only very rarely and under most unusual circ.u.mstances did he cut this means of daily contact with the multifold activities of the inst.i.tution.

Although a task master, a driver, and a relentless critic, he was just in his dealings with his subordinates and his students, very appreciative of kindness or thoughtfulness, and generous in his approbation of tasks well done. Three of the younger children of officers of the school, while out walking with one of their teachers, discovered a fire in the woods near the Inst.i.tute one day. After notifying the men working nearby, the children hurried home and wrote Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton a letter telling him about the fire. They had heard him warn people against the danger of forest fires and of the great harm they did. This letter the three children excitedly took to the Princ.i.p.al's home themselves, as it was on Sunday. He was not in, but the first letter he dictated on arriving at his office the next morning was this:

_March 24, 1915._

_Miss Beatrice Taylor, Miss Louise Logan, Miss Lenora Scott:_

I have received your kind and thoughtful letter of yesterday regarding the forest fire and am very grateful to you for the information which it contains. It is very kind and thoughtful of you to write me. I shall pa.s.s your letter to Mr. Bridgeforth, the Head of the Department, and ask him to look after the matter.

[Signed] BOOKER T. WAs.h.i.+NGTON, Princ.i.p.al.