The emotional church life of the people no longer prevails hereabouts, and the minister preaches forty minutes, instead of two hours as formerly. Many farmers are out of debt, and a mortgage upon a man's crop is as disreputable as a saloon. The Mt. Meigs Institute is the first school of its kind in Alabama to demonstrate the fact that a school planted among the people in the rural districts of the South will make for intelligent, honest, thrifty citizenship. The success of this work made possible the establishment of many similar schools that have been planted in Alabama and other parts of the South. Of the young men and women who have attended my school I can not speak too highly. Sixty have graduated, and fifty-seven of the number are still living. Not only they, but many who could not afford to stay and graduate, are at work in an effort to help their less fortunate brethren. Thirty-six of my graduates have taken academic or trade courses in other schools, twenty-one of them at Tuskegee Institute. Ten have graduated from Tuskegee, or from other schools. Thirty-eight of them have learned trades, and all of them are at work and prosperous. They include dressmakers, cooks, housekeepers, laundresses, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, painters, etc. Several are successful farmers, and one of the girls is a large cotton-planter and general farmer. Two are successful merchants in Birmingham, Ala.; one is a prominent minister, having also taken a course at the Virginia Union Seminary, Richmond, Va.; one is in charge of an orphan asylum, and several are teachers; one taught with me for seven years after having also graduated from Tuskegee. Thirty have married, fifteen have bought homes, one has property valued at $7,000, others have property ranging in value from $800 to $2,000. Of the sixty, only four have failed to maintain their moral character. Six teachers are now employed; we really need another. About 30 boarding pupils are regularly enrolled, with 250 pupils in daily attendance from near-by homes. The school is conducted just as economically as it well can be; the annual expense is about $2,000, of which sum I have insisted that the people themselves shall annually meet one-half. If I have been of any service to my people, I owe it all to Mr. Washington and to one of the noblest women that ever lived, Mrs. Booker T. Washington, nee Davidson, both of whom indelibly impressed upon me while attending the Tuskegee Institute those lessons which led me to want to spend myself in the helping of my people. X UPLIFTING THE SUBMERGED MASSES BY W. J. EDWARDS