The pumpkin, potatoes, corn, cotton, and other agricultural products predominate, because agriculture is the chief industry at Tuskegee, just as it is among the negro people of the South. [Illustration: DOMESTIC SCIENCE CLASS AT TUSKEGEE ] “This form of commencement exercise is one of Booker Washington’s contributions to education which has been widely copied by schools for whites as well as blacks. That it appeals to his own people is eloquently attested by the people themselves, who come in ever-greater numbers as the commencement days recur. At three o’clock in the morning of this great day, vehicles of every description, each loaded to capacity with men, women, and children, begin to roll in, in an unbroken line which sometimes extends along the road for three miles. Some of the teachers at times objected to turning a large area of the Institute grounds into a hitching-post station for the horses and mules of this great multitude, but to all such objections Mr. Washington replied, ‘This place belongs to the people and not to us.’ Less than a third of these eight or nine thousand people are able to crowd into the chapel to see the actual graduation exercises; but all can see the graduation procession as it marches through the grounds to the chapel, and all are shown through the shops and over the farm and through the special agricultural exhibits, and even through the offices, including that of the principal. It is significant of the respect in which people hold the Institute, and in which they held Booker Washington, that in all these years there has never been on these occasions a single instance of drunkenness or disorderly conduct.”[27]