File:C. L. Moore to Alice Mary Longfellow, 31 March 1893 (be4c291d-2141-416c-9807-c337d178d949).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1007.001/002.003-001#057

[printed letterhead: The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute]
Hampton, Va., Mar 31, 1893.
Miss Alice Longfellow,
Dear Madam, –
We send your today the letter from the student - who receives this year the benefit of your scholarship. Katie Hunter has not returned and I think is teaching school. Caroline is in one of the lower classes in the night school. She is a bright girl for that section and a very capable one. Her teacher reports that she [p. 2] does specially well in language, but she is some what deaf and that stands in the way of her advancing very rapidly.
Thanking you in behalf of the school for your generous interest in the work, I am,
Very sincerely yours,
C. L. Moore
P.S. An Indian letter will follow soon.
M.J. Sherman
[printed letter on verso]
[engraving of scene of Hampton]
More than one has said or thought, “The Hampton School has so many friends that it does not need a scholarship from me this year.”
So long as this school has the entire responsibility for board, clothing, etc., (besides tuition at $70.00 per year) of about five hundred Negro youth and the tuition of one hundred and thirty Indians, it must ask of its friends the sum of sixty thousand dollars a year.
Colored students earn annually in our sixteen industrial departments about fifty-five thousand dollars; but nearly half of it is non-productive, while most useful and instructive training; it saves the employment of outside labor. Of our eighty teachers and officers, about half are in the industrial work. This drill of hand as well as of head and heart is expensive, but pays in the end.
We are compelled to use unrestricted bequests, in sums of from $500 to $5,000 for current expenses, to the amount of $12,000 or $15,000 a year, which we would gladly convert into interest bearing funds. All legacies given for endowment or other specified purposes are strictly applied to the object designated.
It should be remembered that bequests referred to in the newspapers are likely to be several years in bearing fruit. These reports, in some ways, weaken us. The school to-day owes about seventeen thousand dollars, and its appeals for help must be as vigorous as ever.
[p. 2] To Contributors of Scholarship Gifts of Seventy Dollars.
Please find enclosed a letter of acknowledgment, original and uncorrected, from a student who has been assigned this year as your beneficiary and who writes to express...... appreciation, and to give some account of......... While free tuition is thus provided, the student is responsible for board, books and clothes, the cost of which is chiefly worked out in the labor departments, Every student who receives a scholarship of seventy dollars is thus required, on his part, to give, by his own efforts or by the aid of his friends, more than an equivalent in cash or in labor. Colored students earned last year on our farm and in our household industries and twelve workshops $59,481,55. The earnings of Indians (whose board and clothing are provided by the government) are given them that they may learn the use of money, one half being kept until they return home.
The course of study begins with one year in the night school, except that apprentices to the trades spend all day from two to four years in the shops, two years in the night school being about equivalent to one in the day school; the work in the former being more earnest and satisfactory, even after ten hours of hard labor.
The Junior Class, made up chiefly from the night school, is followed by the Middle Class, whose members are then sent out for one year, to teach in public schools of this and other states. Then those who desire come back and enter as Seniors. The plan has, for years, worked admirably, bringing back a class of thoughtful students, who know their needs, and graduate far better qualified to teach than if their course of study had been unbroken.
In assigning scholarship letters, many must be sent from the duller portion of our pupils, We cannot, in every case, send a letter from a highly promising student. Among the best workers we have sent out are those who have been fullgrown on entering but backward in study, poor spellers and writers, but faithful and steady. Dullness and character often go together; we are surest of the least brilliant - the plodders; while those of fine ability are not uncommon, and have made noble records among their people. We beg a hopeful view of the unpromising letters.
Many have to repeat their Junior or Middle year. The three years' course is too short for about one third of our students, the dull ones, who need to review the year's work to be well grounded in all its studies.
Unless a definite promise has been made, no one is considered as pledged ahead for a scholarship contribution.
No reply to this letter is expected, yet an answer would be greatly enjoyed. Much good has resulted from the relations established by these letters.
Since students, especially new comers, need several months' training in expression by language and writing, scholarship letters are not usually sent until February; and then that the work of sending several hundreds may be done with the least interruption to teaching and study, they are all, or nearly all, prepared and sent at once. Hence the response to a scholarship gift made any time after July 1st, the beginning of the fiscal year, may be delayed for several months.
S. C. ARMSTRONG,
PRINCIPAL
Hampton, Va., February, 1893.

• Keywords: long archives; document; alice m. longfellow papers (long 16173); organizations; hampton institute; education; correspondence; Manuscripts (1007.001); (LONG-Subcollection); Correspondence (1007.001/002); (LONG-SeriesName); Scholarship Student Correspondence (1007.001/002.003); (LONG-SubseriesName); Letters to Alice Longfellow (1007.001/002.003-001); (LONG-FileUnitName)