He and his teachers then began to go out on Sundays and give the people homely talks on how to improve their living conditions. They encouraged the farmers to come to the school farm and learn how to grow a variety of crops to supplement the cotton crop which was their sole reliance. They relieved the distress of individual families. Mrs. Washington gathered together in an old loft the farmers' wives and daughters who were in the habit of loafing about the village of Tuskegee on Saturday afternoons and formed them into a woman's club for the improvement of the living conditions in their homes and communities. Mr. Washington and his teachers went right on to the farms and into the homes, and into the churches and the schools, and everywhere showed, for the most part by concrete object-lessons, how they could make their farms more productive, their homes more comfortable, their schools more useful, and their church services more inspiring. All this was done not with an idea of starting an extension department or a social service department, but merely because these people needed help, and Mr. Washington knew that both teachers and students would help themselves in helping them. Finally, chiefly through the efforts of Mrs. Washington, a model country school was established in the district adjoining the Institute's property. This school is a farm home where the young teacher and his wife, both graduates of Tuskegee, teach the boys and girls who come to them each day how to live on a farm--teach them by practice and object-lesson as well as by precept. They follow the ordinary country school curriculum, but that is a small and relatively unimportant part of what this school gives its pupils. Then, too, the teachers of Tuskegee early started campaigns looking to the extending of the school terms throughout Macon County and the adjoining counties from three to five months, as was customary, to nine months. And this work of Tuskegee beyond its own borders grew as constantly in volume and extent as the work within its borders, so that Tuskegee soon became the vital force--the yeast that was raising the level of life and well-being throughout, first, the town and neighborhood of Tuskegee, then the County of Macon, then the surrounding counties and the State of Alabama; and finally, in conjunction with its mother, Hampton, and its children situated at strategic points throughout the South, the entire Negro people of the South, and indirectly the whole nation. And as the school grew, so grew the man whose life was its embodiment. It is impossible to think of Booker Washington and Tuskegee separately. Just as he typified Tuskegee, so Tuskegee typified him. Just as he made the school, so the school made him. His influence, like that of his school, was at first community wide, then county wide, then State wide, and finally nation wide. CHAPTER TWO LEADER OF HIS RACE