"We can eat chicken every day if we want it," she replied. When she had finished Mr. Washington explained that all this had been done on 178 acres of the poorest land in Macon County. In his opening address at this conference Mr. Washington denounced "petty thieving, pistol-toting, crap-shooting, the patronizing of 'blind tigers,' and unnecessary lawsuits" as some of the weights and encumbrances which are keeping the Negro from running well the race which is set before him. These are some of the basic questions which Booker Washington placed before the conference for discussion: "How and why am I so hard hit by the present hard times?" "What am I doing to meet present conditions?" "How may I, after all, get some real benefit from present difficulties?" The most spectacular feature of the exercises was the parade. It extended for almost a mile and included a score or more of floats, hundreds of men and women in appropriate costumes, and dozens of horses, mules, and other live stock. There were a large number of colored preachers in attendance who showed that they had adopted the Washington slogan of trying to make a heaven on earth and whose testimony showed that they were now giving as much time to soil salvation as to soul salvation. One of them told of a flourishing Pig Club which he had organized among his parishioners after reading Mr. Washington's open letter, "Pigs and Education; Pigs and Debts," the circulating of which will be later described. [Illustration: This old woman was a regular attendant at the Tuskegee Negro Conference and idolizingly watched Mr. Washington during the whole four hours that he would preside over one of the Conference sessions.] After the awarding of prizes for the best floats the declarations of the conference were read by Major R.R. Moton of Hampton Institute, who then little realized that before the year was out he was to be chosen to succeed the leader of his race as the Principal of Tuskegee Institute. The following were the especially significant paragraphs of these declarations: "It is found that for every dollar's worth of cotton we grow, we raise only forty-nine cents' worth of all other crops. An investigation has shown that there are 20,000 farms of Negroes on which there are no cattle of any kind; 270,000 on which there are no hogs; 200,000 on which no poultry is raised; 140,000 on which no corn is grown; on 750,000 farms of Negroes no oats are grown; on 550,000 farms no sweet potatoes are grown, and on 320,000 farms of Negroes there are no gardens of any sort. These hundreds of thousands of farms without cattle, grain, or gardens are for the most part operated by tenants. In their behalf, the Tuskegee Negro Conference respectfully requests of the planters, bankers, and other representatives of the financial interests of the South that more opportunities be given Negro tenants on plantations to grow crops other than cotton."