Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 133
the farmers from the surrounding territory and many from a distance. Each one
of this great throng was given a pine torch and all these torches were
simultaneously lighted as Secretary Wilson entered the school grounds. The
Secretary and Doctor Curry, preceded by the Institute Band, rode between these
two great masses of cheering people and flaming torches.
Page 179
The next day the dedication exercises were held on a specially constructed
platform piled high with the finest specimens of every product known to that
section of the South. On this platform, with the Secretary and Doctor Curry,
were the State Commissioner of Agriculture and several other high State
officials and many other prominent white citizens. This was the formal
launching of the Agricultural Department of the school. George W. Carver, the
full-blooded African and eminent agricultural scientist, of whom mention has
already been made, had recently been placed in charge of this department. He
had come from the Agricultural Department of Iowa State College, of which
Secretary Wilson had been the head.
The annual budget of this department alone is now nearly fifty thousand dollars
a year, and more than a thousand acres of land are cultivated under the
supervision of the agricultural staff. The modest building which Secretary
Wilson helped to dedicate has long since been outgrown and the department is
now housed in a large, impressive brick building known as the Millbank
Agricultural Building.
Under the provisions of the Smith-Lever Act, passed by Congress in 1914 for
the purpose of aiding the States in Agricultural Extension Work, Booker
Washington secured for Tuskegee a portion of the funds allotted to the State of
Alabama for such work. With the aid of these funds Agricultural Extension
Schools have been organized. These schools are conducted in coÖperation with
the
Page 180
Agricultural Department of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute and the farm
demonstration work of the United States Department of Agriculture. They are
really a two days' Short Course in Agriculture carried out to the farmers on their
own farms. These schools have the advantage over the Short Course given to
the farmers on the Institute grounds in that they have the farmers' problems right
24.03.2006