Working with the Hands quotes

… this scheme of education was being held up before me, my mother was living in abject poverty, lacking the commonest necessaries of life, and working day and night to give me a chance to go to school for two or three months of the year.

And my foremost aim in going to school was to learn ways and means by which I might make life more endurable, and if possible even attractive, for my mother.

There were several boys of our neighbourhood who had superior school advantages, and who, in more than one instance, had reached the point where they were called "educated," which meant that they could write and talk correctly.

I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner, her wealth, her fine house, and her luxurious surroundings, overshadowed by her appalling severity and exacting discipline, that I trembled with a terror which I shall not try to describe at the thought of facing her.

My life had been lived in a cabin, and I was now to try to toil in what looked to me like a grand mansion, an enchanted palace filled with alarms.

But I got a grip on all the courage in my scanty stock, and braced myself to endure the ordeal with all possible fortitude.

… mistress, we could take pleasure in looking upon a yard where the grass was green, and almost perfect in its smoothness, where the flower beds were trimly kept, the edges of the walks clean cut, and where there was nothing to mar the well-ordered appearance.

When I saw and realised that all this was a creation of my own hands, my whole nature began to change.

I felt a self-respect, an encouragement, and a satisfaction that I had never before enjoyed or thought possible. Above all else, I had acquired a new confidence in my ability actually to do things and to do them well.

When I saw and realised that all this was a creation of my own hands, my whole nature began to change.

I felt a self-respect, an encouragement, and a satisfaction that I had never before enjoyed or thought possible.

Above all else, I had acquired a new confidence in my ability actually to do things and to do them well.

The work of the farm had a similar kind of influence upon my views of relative values in education.

I soon learned that there was a great difference between studying about things and studying the things themselves, between book instruction and the illumination of practical experience.

This chain of experiences, whose links I have tried to indicate, served as a preparation for the work of training the head, the heart, and the hands which I was to undertake later at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama.

We said that as a slave the Negro was worked; as a freeman he must learn to work.

There is a vast difference between working and being worked. Being worked means degradation; working means civilisation.

This was the difference which our institution wished chiefly to emphasise. We argued that during the days of slavery labour was forced out of the Negro, and he had acquired, for this reason, a dislike for work.

Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through swamps, up through forests, up through the streams and rocks; up through commerce, education, and religion!

In my opinion we cannot begin at the top to build a race, any more than we can begin at the top to build a house.

If we try to do this, we shall reap in the end the fruits of our folly.

The answers were not always to my liking, but this was not the point at issue.

I had to meet a condition, not a theory.

What I might have wanted them to be doing was one thing; what they were actually doing was the bed-rock upon which I hoped to lay the foundation of the work at Tuskegee.

The methods in vogue for getting enough out of the soil to keep body and soul together were crude in the extreme. The people themselves referred to this heart-breaking effort as "making a living."

I wanted to teach them how to make more than a living.

I have little respect for the farmer who is satisfied with merely "making a living."

I have frequently found one concrete, definite example illustrating the difference between right and wrong worth more than hours of abstract lecturing on morality. I have told girls many times that a dish is either thoroughly washed and dried or it is not.

If a thing is not well done, it is poorly done.

Furthermore, I have taught our girls from the beginning of this school that a student who receives pay for properly attending to dishes, and does her work poorly, is guilty of two wrongs.

It is true that the work at first was crude, but it should be remembered that in the earlier years the whole school was crude.

All work in laying the foundation for a race is crude.

The economic value of hand work at the Tuskegee Institute can be illustrated in no better way than by data of the construction of our buildings.

… with his hands ten hours during the day, naturally covers less ground in the text-books than the day student, yet in real sound growth and the making of manhood, I question whether the day student has much advantage over the student in the night school.

There is an indescribable something about work with the hands that tends to develop a student's mind.

The night-school students take up their studies with a degree of enthusiasm and alertness that is not equalled in the day classes. I have known instances where a student seemed so dull or stupid that he made practically no progress in the study of books.

at the end of a few months he has returned to the class room, and it has been surprising to note how much more easily he could master the text-books than before.

There is something, I think, in the handling of a tool that has the same relation to close, accurate thinking that writing with a pen has in the preparation of a manuscript.

Nearly all persons who write much will agree, I think, that one can produce much more satisfactory work by using the pen than by dictation.

For this reason the students who have attended the night school at Tuskegee have, as a rule, mastered the principles and practice of agriculture, or have been taught a trade by means of which we felt sure they could earn a living.

With the question of shelter, food and clothing settled, there is a basis for what are considered the higher and more important things.

We have, therefore, emphasised the earning value of education rather than the finished manual training, being careful at the same time to lay the foundations of thorough moral, mental and religious instruction.

… is the duty of all such schools to make the most of the economic element—to make each industry pay in dollars and cents just as far as is possible—but the element of teaching should be made the first consideration, and the element of production secondary.

Very often at the Tuskegee Institute it would pay the institution better to keep a boy away from the farm than to have him spend a day at work on it; but the farm is for the boy, and not the boy for the farm.

An industrial school is continually at work on raw material.

The cost of teaching the new student and the waste of material weigh heavily against the cost of production. Hence, it can easily be seen that it is an almost impossible task to make money out of an industrial school, or to make it self-supporting.

The moment the idea of "making it pay" is placed uppermost, the institution becomes a factory, and not a school for training head and hand and heart.

One of the advantages of the night school at Tuskegee is in the sifting-out process of the student body.

Most races have come up through contact with the soil, either directly or indirectly.

There is something about the smell of the soil—a contact with a reality that gives one a strength and development that can be gained in no other way.

In advocating industrial training for backward or weak races or individuals, I have always kept in mind the strengthening influence of contact with a real thing, rather than with a third-rate imitation of a thing.

This department keeps the school supplied with good brooms at small cost, and out of a minor need grew another useful industry.

The lesson in this little story is that finding a way to solve the problems closest at home helps to build up the community at large.

It was found, also, that the work of the class room could be correlated even with broom-making, and made to harmonise with the Tuskegee theory of education of head and hands together.

Along with their daily work with the hands, the patterns and instructions had been given them on blackboards and in lectures. They have trained their minds, they have learned handicraft, and the combined results are applied.

Their wagons and harness are not to be sent away or put on exhibition. They must stand the strain at home, and if they are faulty it cannot be hidden.

Then come the brick-makers, turning out 20,000 bricks a day in the school kilns. They know whether they have made good bricks when they see them handled, and put into the walls by the student masons.

For example, the carpenter must get the greatest common length of board from several different lengths without any waste: the dressmaker must find and use the smallest number of yards of cloth that suffice for the making of dresses of different sizes.

Mathematics is shown to be an instrument of economy.

In fractions, estimates are made of the cost of bales of cotton at prevailing prices. The student is often required to weigh out in each case the amounts of various articles which can be purchased for given amounts of money.

They felt ashamed to have any one see them at work in the garden or orchard. The young men and some of the women were inclined to ridicule those who were bold enough to lead off. Not a few became discouraged and stopped.

There is nothing harder to overcome than an unreasonable prejudice against an occupation or a race. The more unreasonable it is, the harder it is to conquer.

Mrs. Washington made a careful study of the girls and discovered the social leaders of a certain group.

Perhaps they did not dream that they would some day have a vital part in the uplifting of our people. This thought would not be stilled:

What can these poor farmers do with the new ideas, new hopes, new aspirations, unless the women can be equally inspired and interested in conferences of their own?

Not many days passed before there was a fixed purpose in my mind that these women in the homes represented by the farmers should be reached. How to reach and help them was the question.

Many of the talks were grouped in a little book for women who could not reach the conferences. These books contain also little recipes which any woman may need in her country home, especially when there is sickness in the family.

Work for the masses is always more difficult than for the individual, but it is work which must be done.

Eighty per cent. of our women have their homes in the country or on the plantations, they live in the old-time log cabins, but they have hearts, they have aspirations for the future.

Find out by judicious visiting whether any advancement is made.

Do not expect too much in a short time, and, above all, do not be dictatorial while visiting, or personal in meetings when you wish to deal with mistakes that you have seen in the homes visited.

How to keep home neat and tidy.

They have found that their money is not wasted, for they learn much by seeing what has been done at the school, from the advice of experts, but more especially by the exchange of opinions and by comparing experiences in their own field of work.

These meetings are not for whining or complaints. Their keynote is hopeful courage.

To look up and not down, forward and not backward, to be cheerful and mutually helpful, is the golden rule of the conference.

These meetings are not for whining or complaints. Their keynote is hopeful courage.

To look up and not down, forward and not backward, to be cheerful and mutually helpful, is the golden rule of the conference.

It was decided from the first to confine the proceedings to matters which the race had closely within its own control, and to positive, aggressive effort, rather than to mere negative criticisms and recitations of wrongs.

I save about a hundred dollars a year. I give no mortgages. I plant everything that a farmer can plant. I raise my own syrup, meat, pease, corn, and everything we need to eat. I have three cows.

You have got to go low down to get up high.

I traded a little puppy with my brother for a pig. From this one pig I raised eight pigs, and for seven years I have not bought a pound of meat. I am living on the strength of that little puppy yet.

"Yet the farmer must have clothing. He must have plows, hoes, wagons, etc.

No man who tills the soil should have to suffer for something to eat.

Perhaps no one will question the farmer's right to make the crop mortgage. He must and ought to have plenty of good, wholesome food to make it possible for him to do his work well.

One man tries by main strength to lift a large load. He fails and gives up in despair. Another man gets a long pole, or lever, and with the greatest ease raises and places the load where it is wanted.

The first uses only muscle, while the last mixes muscle with brains.

"Could we not say the same thing of the unsuccessful and the successful mortgage lifter?

And then, though the garden may be small, if the flowers and vegetables prosper, there springs up a feeling of kinship between the man and his plants, as he tends and watches the growth of each individual fruition from day to day.

Every morning brings some fresh development, born of the rain, the dew, and the sunshine.

The letter or the address you began writing the day before never grows until you return and take up the work where it was left off; not so with the plant.

When some of the first little chickens came out of their shells, they began almost immediately to help others, not so forward, to break their way out.

It was delightful to me to hear that the chickens raised at the school had, so early in life, caught the Tuskegee spirit of helpfulness toward others.

When at Tuskegee I Find a Way by Rising Early in the Morning to Spend Half an Hour in My Garden or with the Live Stock

After I have gathered my eggs, and have at least said "Good morning" to my pigs, cows, and horse, the next morning duty—no, I will not say duty, but delight—is to gather the vegetables for the family dinner.

No pease, no turnips, radishes nor salads taste so good as those which one has raised and gathered with his own hands in his own garden.

In comparison with these all the high-sounding dishes found in the most expensive restaurants seem flavourless. One feels, when eating his own fresh vegetables, that he is getting near to the heart of nature; not a second-hand stale imitation, but the genuine thing.

No pease, no turnips, radishes nor salads taste so good as those which one has raised and gathered with his own hands in his own garden. In comparison with these all the high-sounding dishes found in the most expensive restaurants seem flavourless.

One feels, when eating his own fresh vegetables, that he is getting near to the heart of nature; not a second-hand stale imitation, but the genuine thing.

How delightful the change, after one has spent weeks eating in restaurants or hotels, and has had a bill of fare pushed before his eyes three times a day, or has heard the familiar sound for a month from a waiter's lips:

During the three or four years that the minister has spent in the theological class room, scarcely a single subject that concerns the every-day life of his future people has been discussed.

He is taught more about the soil of the valley of the Nile, or of the valley of the river Jordan, than about the soil of the State in which the people of his church are to live and to work.

What I urge is that the Negro minister should be taught something about the outdoor life of the people whom he is to lead.

If your answer is favorable, I will immediately begin to earn money to pay my way there, for those of us who are in the training class receive no salary.

A lifetime of hard work has shown me the value of little things of every day.

We preach them at Tuskegee, and try to enforce them in the daily round of sixteen hundred students' lives.

We want young men and women to go out, not as slaves of their daily routine, but masters of their circumstances.

But the structure must be built a brick at a time, and no act is without its influence.

I am in the habit of talking to the student body when it is assembled in the chapel for the first time after the opening of the school year with a good deal of practical exhortation about the "value of little things," unimportant as some …

"

The habit of making excuses, of giving explanations, instead of achieving results, grows from year to year upon one, until finally it gets such a hold that I think the victim finds himself almost as well satisfied with a good, long-drawn-out excuse, as he does with real tangible achievement.

The schoolboy and girl must be taught such lessons in every moment of routine duty, and there are no "little things," to be carelessly overlooked, without danger that repetition will breed bad habit.

As a rule, people who make these sweeping assertions against the Negro are blinded by prejudice.

The judgment of any man, black or white, who is controlled by race prejudice is not to be trusted.

With one exception, I did not know of the farming operations of these men before the drive referred to;

These families are being given the opportunity to buy their homes through their own labour and under the guidance of Mr. Chambliss. Mr. Chambliss does not use the hoe himself, for he finds it more economical to utilise his time directing the work.

When the world wants cotton or corn, it cares little whether the man uses his pen or his hoe.

What it desires are results. Some men have the ability to produce fifty times as much cotton with the pen as with the hoe. Another example will show how our students succeed when working directly under others. The letter which follows is to the point:

Does the American Negro take advantage of opportunities to secure education? Practically no schoolhouse has been opened for the Negro since the war that has not been filled.

Often hungry and in rags, making heroic sacrifices, the Negro youth has been determined to annihilate his mental darkness.

With all his disadvantages, the Negro, according to official records, has blotted out 55.5 per cent. of his illiteracy since he became a free man, while practically 95 per cent. of the native Africans are illiterate.

Years ago some one asked an eminent clergyman in Boston if Christianity is a failure. The Reverend doctor replied that it had never been tried.

When people are bold enough to suggest that the education of the Negro is a failure, I reply that it has never been tried.

The fact is that 44.5 per cent. of the coloured people of this country to-day are illiterate. A very large proportion of those classed as educated have the merest smattering of knowledge, which means practically no education.

… by artificial and superficial efforts rather than by the slower but surer process which means one step at a time through all the constructive grades of industrial, mental, moral, and social development which all races have had to follow that have become independent and strong.

I would counsel: We must be sure that we shall make our greatest progress by keeping our feet on the earth, and by remembering that an inch of progress is worth a yard of complaint.

For the white race, the danger is that in its prosperity and power it may forget the claims of a weaker people;