One of the obstacles faced by the board and staff of the Alabama Boys’ Industrial School can—with all due respects to Paris—be summed up by the question: “How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Birmingham?”
This was not a problem unique to the new school located on 270 acres of land in eastern Jefferson County. Other administrators around the country were facing the same issue, especially with the trend in juvenile corrections moving away from large, punitive, prison-like institutions toward industrial school campuses located on expansive farms.
Hastings Hornell Hart, one of the leading criminologists and social workers of the early twentieth century, predicted this dilemma in one of his books. He believed that farm life was ideal for building the character of many boys, calling it a “wholesome and happy life.” At the same time, however, he admitted that “only a minority of boys in juvenile reformatories can be adapted to life on the farm.” Hart contended that “the majority of boys come from the cities and villages; they have the town fever in their veins and it is almost impossible to keep them on the farms. It is true also that many country boys crave the town life.” 1
It was with these challenges that the Alabama Boy’s Industrial School began its industrial farm in June 1900. Their only farm-related assets the first year were one pair of mules, a harness, plows, assorted tools, two registered Jerseys, two registered Devons, two Cotswold sheep, and Berkshire and Victoria pigs. The total value was estimated at $633.2
The first year or so was devoted primarily to meeting the basic needs of the boys and staff. “Our table was supplied both of the past summers with a variety of vegetables,” C. D. Griffin wrote. “We also saved a quantity of turnips, potatoes, beets and peas for winter use. Several barrels of cucumbers were put in brine for pickles, and gallons of tomatoes, blackberries and plums were canned.”
The boys also hired out to make extra money. “One of our neighbors employed us to assist in picking cotton, and although few of the boys were acquainted with this form of labor, they soon became very skillful,” the superintendent wrote. “The first summer we earned $35.80, which we invested in cutlery for the school. This past summer we again picked cotton and earned $36.85, which we expended for a large rectangular clock for our reception hall to be inscribed ‘Presented to the Boys’ Industrial School by the boys of 1902.” 3
A group of boys work in a field beside the campus.
The first actual farm manager, C. M. Taul, described what he faced when he took the job in 1904. “I found it in a rather bad condition, without suitable tools and the stock to properly work the place. Briars, bushes, and crabgrass were in profusion, and caused us to have a great deal of extra work that ought to have been done years before.”
He also found a “very crooked, ugly gully which ran almost every direction before it got across” the property. Using “the school’s boys, the three mules and horse,” they cut a ditch eight feet wide and 300 feet long to take its place, and filled in the gully. He was satisfied that the farm “will be very much improved in appearance and in much better shape for cultivating.” If that weren’t enough to help the boys sleep at night, they also lent a hand in stringing “about 1000 yards of barbed wire fence.”
There was one little bit of fun on the farm, however. “We also dug a potato cellar under the new part of the barn, and as we struck a large rock, we had to do a good deal of blasting,” Taul recalled. “The boys enjoyed this very much, so much that they wanted to blast all the rocks in sight.” 4
Superintendent Weakley, who came on board the same year, also lamented on the condition of the farm. “There is much to do before we can get our farm in a high state of cultivation, for the land is almost entirely worn out, and it will necessarily take several years of hard work to place it on a paying basis.” He reported “about twenty boys regularly working on the farm, who receive instruction in agriculture the same as the other children receive lessons in the shops. They work half of the day and spend the remaining part in school.”5
The farm had a good yield that year, with 450 bushels of sweet potatoes—the “finest in the valley,” according to Weakley—plus 300 bushels of corn, 100 bushels of Irish potatoes, 75 gallons of sorghum syrup, and ample quantities of vegetables and peanuts.6 They produced hay for their stock and supplemented it with the excess roughage from their corn crop. Taul estimated the total value of what was produced that year on the farm to be approximately $660.7
Taul also gave a positive report on his farmhands. “I will say in conclusion that the farm boys have done remarkably well, and have been as easily controlled as the ordinary farm labor, and if they have good tools and stock to work with, they will take pride and pleasure in working on the farm. The greatest drawback now is the lack of land and stock to give all the boys employment who want to work on the farm.”8
In summarizing his first year, Weakley weighed in on the intrinsic value of farming. “Realizing the free and independent life of an industrious farmer, the good he can accomplish and his position as an honorable citizen, we do all in our power to encourage the children to take up this line of work as their life study.”9
The dairy operation was also upgraded during Weakley’s first year at the school. Six cows, mostly Jerseys and Guernseys, were purchased, and as funds allowed, the dairy was modernized to include sterilizers, refrigerators, a pasteurizer, and a bottling machine. They were soon producing enough milk for one quart a day per boy.10
In one annual report, Weakley gave special accolades to a cow named Old Blue. Her production over two years was nearly 14,779 pounds of milk valued at over $1139.90. It seems odd to hear milk measured by the pound, but that was and still is the unit of measurement used in the dairy business. After subtracting the cost of Old Blue’s feed, she had made the school $867.53.
In the same report, Weakley mentioned the keen interest that the boys had taken in their respective cows and their production, along with the following comment: “The boys claim the cows as their own, give them affectionate names, and are quite jealous of each others’ cows.”11
Weakley told a story in his papers that demonstrates the boys’ attachment to their cows. Two boys were milking their cows side-by-side, when one of the fellows kicked the other boy’s cow. As Weakley put it, this was “an overt act no self-respecting dairyman would ever tolerate.” The custodian of the unsuspecting cow grabbed the other boy by the collar and angrily threatened, “Look here, boy! If you ever kick my cow again, I’ll knock you loose from your inferiority complex.” That’s probably not the therapy that Freud had in mind for that disorder, but under the circumstances, it most likely eliminated the problem.12
One of Colonel Weakley’s favorite stories concerned the time he sent one of the boys to find and return the dairy farm’s bull, Old Jerry, who had broken out of the pasture. Weakley waited and waited, but neither the boy nor Old Jerry returned. Years later, Weakley received the following letter:
Dear Colonel Weakley,
Twenty years ago, you sent me to look for Old Jerry. I have been in every State in the Union looking for him, and now I am down here in Mexico still looking, and if I find him I will bring him back.”
As time went on, there was literally a passing from the old, primitive ways of the past into the new, modern way of farming. In his 1925 report, Weakley referred to some of this and showed his wit in doing so. “We will need next year a new tractor—the old one has asthma, and just at the most critical time it has a very inconvenient habit of emitting a few wheezy coughs and then goes into a state of coma,” he wrote. “It usually takes about ten hours of a mechanic’s time and a barrel of gasoline to resuscitate it.”13
On a more serious note, he told of the passing of a friend. “During the year we lost by death one of our mules, Jim. This faithful animal was at the School when I came here twenty-one years ago. Jim was the only living thing on the place that was here when I came, and while it is not my intention to pay a lengthy tribute to his memory, I think it proper to mention him in passing. He served us well throughout his useful life, and in his going we sensed a personal loss. As it often happens with human life, after he was too old for active service, we turned him out to graze in idleness on the best and greenest pastures—in fact we pensioned him.”14
The size and production of the farm continued to grow. In 1931, farm manager Joe Walden gave a detailed account on every conceivable crop from green beans to field peas to English peas; from turnip greens to collards to cabbage to lettuce; not forgetting Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes, or the abundance of onions, radishes, tomatoes, and carrots. The biggest seller was tomatoes, which generated a profit of nearly $1,200, but the lettuce netted less than $50. The total profit on the crops was $10, 418.83.
As for the dairy, the herd now consisted of twenty-nine cows, fifteen calves, and two bulls. Nearly 235,000 pounds of milk was produced at a value of $11,725.70.15
In 1945, just a few years before Weakley’s retirement, a Birmingham News article provided a good rundown of the farm. “The school operates a 230-acre farm and practical instruction is given in farming, gardening, care of stock and farm machinery operation. About 75 acres are planted in hay, corn, oats, and other field crops; 23 acres in vegetables and about 46 acres are used for pastures. Farm equipment includes a tractor and plow, mower, disc harrow and other smaller tools. The farm has five mules, about 65 hogs and pigs and about 67 cows, heifers, calves and mules.”16
As for keeping the boys on the farm, Weakley addressed the attitude of the farm squad in one of his reports, stating, “As a whole, we find the farm boys are more willing to work than the others, and I must say they deserve great credit for the manner in which they perform their duties.”
In his report, Walden may have revealed the secret. “The boys have been better satisfied and seemed to take more interest in their work this year than usual; one reason for this, I think, has been the picnics and outings that we have enjoyed this summer.” 17
Professor Hart could have learned a thing or two from the shrewd staff at the Alabama Boys’ Industrial School. He just did not know that a simple picnic every now and then could help fight the allure of those big city lights.
1 Hastings Hornell Hart, Preventive Treatment of Neglected Children (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1910), 18.
2 First, 7-8.
3 Second, 12-13.
4 Sixth, 46-47.
5 Ibid., 34-35.
6 Ibid., 35.
7 Ibid., 46-47.
8 Ibid., 47.
9 Ibid., 35.
10 Ibid.
11 ABIS reports, Twenty-Second Annual Report (East Lake: Alabama Boys’ Industrial School, 1922), 10.
12 Weakley, 35.
13 Twenty-Fifth, 14.
14 Ibid.
15 Thirty-First, 34-35.
16 Sparrow.
17 Thirty-First, 39.