More than 6000 students have passed through it, counting only those who have remained long enough to benefit appreciably by their course. Of these 6000 Mr. Washington declares that, after diligent inquiry (and every effort is made to keep in touch with former students), he cannot find a dozen who are not usefully employed; nor has one Tuskegee graduate been convicted of crime.

Instruction is given in thirty-seven industries, from agriculture and stock-breeding to printing 110and electrical engineering. Mr. Stevenson took me through the machine-room, the blacksmithing and carpentering, carriage-building, harness-making, tailoring, and shoemaking departments, the departments of agricultural chemistry, and of mechanical and architectural drawing. Mrs. Washington herself was good enough to be my guide through the women’s building (known as Dorothy Hall), with its departments of plain sewing, dressmaking and millinery, mattress-making, broom-making, basket-weaving, laundry-work, and cookery, and its model dining-rooms and parlours, furnished, arranged, and decorated by the students themselves. Everywhere I saw earnest work in progress, everywhere order, discipline, and thorough scientific method. All this had been made possible, no doubt, by white money; but the whole organization and conduct of the Institute is the work of black brains alone.

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Externally, Tuskegee has none of the orderly design which one finds in the “campus” of a Northern University. It is evidently a place that has “growed.” Buildings are dotted here and there over the somewhat rugged site, with small eye to picturesqueness or dignity of general effect. Except the Carnegie Library, with its well-proportioned portico, there is no building of much architectural ambition; but the chapel or general assembly hall of the Institute struck me as showing real originality of design. I was 111extremely sorry not to hear one of Mr. Washington’s Sunday evening “talks” to the students in this fine hall. I had not time even to see an assembly of the whole school, in its neat blue uniform, nor to hear its singing of old negro melodies, which is said to be remarkable.

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In speaking of Tuskegee architecture, one must not omit to mention that nearly all the buildings of the Institute are built by the students themselves, of bricks burnt in their own brickyard. All furniture and fittings, too, are made and repaired within the Institute. I went through one or two of the students’ dormitories; the little cubicles were simple, neat, clean, fairly comfortable, but entirely 

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