Page:Up From Slavery.djvu/332

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industry, in order to get skill and love of work, so that when he goes out from the institution he is prepared to set the people with whom he goes to labour a proper example in the matter of industry.

The value of our property is now over $300,000. If we add to this our endowment fund, which at present at $215,000, the value of the total property is now nearly half a million dollars. Aside from the need for more buildings and for money for current expenses, the endowment fund should be increased to at least $500,000. The annual current expenses are now about $80,000. The greater part of this I collect each year by going from door to door and from house to house. All of our property is free from mortgage, and is deeded to an undenominational board of trustees who have the control of the institution.

From thirty students the number has grown to eleven hundred, coming from twenty-seven states and territories, from Africa, Cuba, Porto Rico, Jamaica, and other foreign countries. In our departments there are eighty-six officers and instructors; and if we add the families of our instructors, we have a constant population upon our grounds of not far from fourteen hundred people.

I have often been asked how we keep so large a body of people together, and at the same time keep