weeks at a time, because they had so little money with which to pay
their board. Thus another object which made it desirable to get an
industrial system started was in order to make it available as a means
of helping the students to earn money enough so that they might be able
to remain in school during the nine months' session of the school
year. . . .

From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the
students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have
them erect their own building. My plan was to have them, while
performing this service, taught the latest and best methods of labour,
so that the school would not only get the benefit of their efforts, but
the students themselves would be taught to see not only utility in
labour, but beauty and dignity would be taught, in fact, how to lift
labour up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for
its own sake. My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way,
but to show them how to make the forces of nature--air, water, steam,
electricity, horsepower--assist them in their labour. . . .

I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have
excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further
than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be
called National. I refer to the address which I delivered at the
opening of the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition at
Atlanta, Ga., September 18, 1895. . . .

In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram from a prominent citizen in
Atlanta asking me to accompany a committee from that city to Washington
for the purpose of appearing before a committee of Congress in the
interest of securing Government help for the Exposition. The committee