In this time forty buildings, counting small and large,
have been built, and all except four are almost wholly the product of
student labour. As an additional result, hundreds of men are now
scattered throughout the South who received their knowledge of
mechanics while being taught how to erect these buildings. Skill and
knowledge are now handed down from one set of students to another in
this way, until at the present time a building of any description or
size can be constructed wholly by our instructors and students, from
the drawing of the plans to the putting in of the electric fixtures,
without going off the grounds for a single workman.
Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the
temptation of marring the looks of some building by leadpencil marks
or by the cuts of a jack-knife, I have heard an old student remind
him: "Don't do that. That is our building. I helped put it up."
In the early days of the school I think my most trying experience
was in the matter of brickmaking. As soon as we got the farm work
reasonably well started, we directed our next efforts toward the
industry of making bricks. We needed these for use in connection with
the erection of our own buildings; but there was also another reason
for establishing this industry.
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