Just after the war there was much confusion and doubt about the best plan to follow in educating the negro. The Freedmen’s Bureau brought a large number of teachers from the North to assist in the task, and much valuable work was done in the negro schools by these teachers. The different Southern states also began to make provision for the negro’s education, by organizing schools, building schoolhouses, and making provision for training teachers. There was much difference of opinion as to just what should be taught the negro. As a rule, the plan followed was to teach him just what had been taught in the white schools. This meant that he would study reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar, and later, Latin, Greek, mathematics and literature. So much of this kind of teaching was done, and it was so poorly done, and it was so poorly adapted to the needs of the negro at the time, that a great many people began to doubt the wisdom of trying to educate the negro at all. But Washington insisted that the mistake was made in the kind of education they were trying to give him. In answer to the question, “Does it pay to educate the negro?” Washington often told the story of what had taken place in Macon County, Alabama, the county in which Tuskegee is located. In that county, he and Mr. H. H. Rogers decided to build, with the coöperation of the people themselves, a system of excellent schools, and try out as thoroughly as possible the question of the effect of education upon the negro, under favorable conditions. They put up good schoolhouses, secured good teachers, taught practical subjects, and ran the schools for eight or nine months in the year. What was the result? In a short time people began to come from all parts of the state and outside the state to buy land or to work within reach of these excellent schools. Land advanced in price. Desirable citizens flocked in. Homes were improved. Good roads were built. Better farms appeared. Crime diminished. The sheriff said that he practically had no further use for the jail. Cordial relations existed between the white and negro people. In every way Macon County came to be a better place to live in. The race problem was solved in that county. People were happy and prosperous. They were living clean, wholesome, contented lives. The whole problem of living was, in a large measure, solved. And it was all due to education of the people, and education of the right kind. What was good for Macon County, Alabama, would be good for every county in the country. Washington’s ideas of education were very simple. He had studied carefully the needs of his people. What he wanted was a system of education that would help people directly and immediately; that would enable them to make better crops; build better homes; wear better clothes; eat better food; live cleaner and purer and happier lives. He wanted his people to learn to live; and he believed the school was the place to learn that lesson. [Illustration: