Next he touched on the high rents and said: “You mothers know that sooner or later you have to take in roomers to help pay that rent, and after a while you take in Tom, Dick, or Harry, or anybody who's got the money regardless of who or what they are, and you mothers know the danger that spells for your daughters.” (At this point he was interrupted by a chorus of “amens” from women all over the great hall.) He continued: “Now, you take the ‘old man’ aside an' tell him straight, you're not going to have any more roomers hanging round your house— that he's got to hustle for a better job or go into some little business for himself, or move out into some little cottage in the country, or do something to get rid of those Tom, Dick, and Harry roomers.”

In short, in this speech Mr. Washington showed that he knew just as intimately the lives of his people in the flats of Greater New York as on the farms of southwestern Georgia.

In spite of his grasp of details Mr. Washington never became so immersed in them as to lose sight of his ultimate goal, and conversely he never became so blinded by the vision of his ultimate goal as to overlook details. The solution of the so-called Negro problem in America, he felt, is to be found along these lines: As his people have more and more opportunity for training and become better and better trained they become more and more self-sufficient. They are developing their own carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, farmers, merchants, and bankers as well as lawyers, teachers, preachers, and physicians. These trained people naturally, for the most part, serve their own race, and to them the members of the race naturally turn for the service that each is equipped to render. As they acquire wealth, education, and cultivation, the persons possessing these advantages naturally intermingle socially and build up a society from which the rough, ignorant, and uncouth of their own race are as inevitably excluded as are such persons from all polite social intercourse of whatever people. These Negroes of education and cultivation no more desire to force themselves into the society of the other race than do any persons of real education and cultivation desire to go where they are not wanted. As the race increases in wealth and culture it becomes more and more easy and natural for its successful members to satisfy their social desires and ambitions in their own society. Already in the centres of Negro prosperity and culture it would be almost, if not quite, as impossible for a white man to be received into the best Negro society as it would for a Negro to be received into the best white society. This growing independence and self-sufficiency in the trades, the professions, and social intercourse leads inevitably, as he pointed out, to a form of natural segregation based upon economic needs and social preferences, and in conformity to the laws of nature, which is a very different matter from the artificial and arbitrary segregation forced upon unwilling people by the laws of men. Under these conditions the disputes as to whether the best society of the blacks is inferior or superior to the best society of the whites becomes as academic and futile as would be similar contentions as to whether the best society of Constantinople is inferior or superior to that of Boston.

While Negroes are more and more drawing apart from the whites into their own section of the city, town, or county they nevertheless find it a source of strength to live near the whites in order that they may have the benefit of their aid in those matters in which the older and stronger race excels. Nor is this an entirely one-sided advantage, as there are not a few matters in which the Negroes have natural advantages over the whites and hence may render them useful service. Thus the two races, socially separated but economically interdependent, may to mutual advantage live side by side.

Some persons claim that any such plan of race adjustment, while theoretically plausible and ideally desirable, is nevertheless practically impossible. They contend that no so radically different races have ever lived side by side in harmony and each aiding the other. However that may be, there remains the fact that such a harmonious and mutually helpful relationship between the two races does already exist in the town of Tuskegee, throughout Macon County, and in many other of the more progressive localities throughout the South to-day. And at the same time, the lynchings and riots and other manifestations of racial conflict are continuously if slowly growing less frequent. Whatever may be the relative strength of the two theories, the facts are lining up in support of the Booker Washington prophecy at the Atlanta Exposition when he said: “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

During the last twenty years of his life Mr. Washington came more and more to be regarded as the representative and spokesman of his race, and was invited to represent and speak for them at such national and international gatherings as the annual conventions of the National Negro Business League, of which he was the president and founder; the great meeting in honor of the brotherhood of man, held in Boston in 1897; the Presbyterian rally for Home Missions, at which President Grover Cleveland presided; the International Sunday-school Convention held in Chicago in 1914; the meeting of the National Educational Association in St. Louis in 1904; the Thanksgiving Peace Jubilee in the Chicago Auditorium at the close of the war with Spain in 1898, with President McKinley and his Cabinet in attendance; the Commencement exercises at Harvard in 1896, when President Eliot conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts; the International Conference on the Negro, held at Tuskegee in 1912, with representatives present from Europe, Africa, the West Indies, and South America, as well as all sections of the United States. Dartmouth College conferred his Doctorate upon him in 1901.

At Harvard in 1896 President Eliot, with these words, conferred upon Mr. Washington the first honorary degree ever conferred by a great university upon an American Negro: “Teacher, wise helper of his race; good servant of God and country.” In his speech delivered at the Alumni Dinner on the same day Mr. Washington brought this message to Harvard: “If through me, an humble representative, seven millions of my people in the South might be permitted to send a message to Harvard—Harvard that offered up on death's altar young Shaw, and Russell, and Lowell, and scores of others, that we might have a free and united country—that message would be: ‘Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by the way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust discrimination, and prejudice, but through them all we are coming up, and with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our progress!’”

The next year at the great meeting in honor of the brotherhood of man held in Music Hall, Boston, which concluded with the unveiling of the monument of Robert Gould Shaw, Booker Washington in concluding his address turned to the one-armed color bearer of Colonel Shaw's regiment and said: “To you, to the scarred and scattered remnants of the Fifty-fourth, who with empty sleeve and wanting leg have honored this occasion with your presence—to you, your commander is not dead. Though Boston erected no monument, and history recorded no story, in you and the loyal race which you represent Robert Gould Shaw will have a monument which time cannot wear away.”

In his speech at the Peace Jubilee exercises after the war with Spain, Mr. Washington said: “When you have gotten the full story of the heroic conduct of the Negro in the Spanish-American War—heard it from the lips of Northern soldiers and Southern soldiers, from ex-abolitionist and ex-master—then decide within yourselves whether a race that is thus willing to die for its country should not be given the highest opportunity to live for its country.” And again in the same speech, after rehearsing the successes of American arms, he said: “We have succeeded in every conflict, except the effort to conquer ourselves in the blotting out of racial prejudices. . . . Until we thus conquer ourselves, I make no empty statement when I say that we shall have, especially in the Southern part of our country, a cancer gnawing at the heart of the Republic that shall one day prove as dangerous as an attack from an army without or within.” Note this as the language of a man on a great national occasion who has been accused of a time-serving acquiescence in the injustices which his race suffers!

In his address before the National Educational Association in St. Louis, in 1904, he made the following remarks which are typical of points he sought to emphasize when addressing audiences of white people: “Let me free your minds, if I can, from possible fear and apprehension in two directions: the Negro in this country does not seek, as a race, to exercise political supremacy over the white man, nor is social intermingling with any race considered by the Negro to be one of the essentials to his progress. You may not know it, but my people are as proud of their racial identity as you are of yours, and in the degree that they become intelligent, racial pride increases. I was never prouder of the fact that I am classed as a Negro than I am to-day. . . . I can point you to groups of my people in nearly every part of our country that in intelligence and high and unselfish purpose of their school and church life, and in the purity and sweetness of their home life and social intercourse, will compare favorably with the races of the earth. You can never lift any large section of people by continually calling attention to their weak points. A race, like a child in school, needs encouragement as well as chastisement.”

In his address before the annual session of 1914 of the National Negro Business League at Muskogee, Oklahoma, Mr. Washington made the following remarks which are typical of his points of chief emphasis in addressing his own people: “Let your success thoroughly eclipse your shortcomings. We must give the world so much to think and talk about that relates to our constructive work in the direction of progress that people will forget and overlook our failures and shortcomings. . . . One big, definite fact in the direction of achievement and construction will go farther in securing rights and removing prejudice than many printed pages of defense and explanation. . . . Let us in the future spend less time talking about the part of the city that we cannot live in, and more time in making that part of the city that we can live in beautiful and attractive.

It is characteristic of the kind of criticism to which Mr. Washington was subjected that a certain element of the Negro press violently denounced this comment as an indirect endorsement of the legal segregation of Negroes. Probably the last article written by Mr. Washington for any publication was the one published posthumously by the New Republic, New York City, December 4, 1915, entitled, “My View of Segregation Laws,” in which he stated in no uncertain terms his views on the segregation laws which were being passed in the South. In concluding his article, he said:

“Summarizing the matter in the large, segregation is ill-advised because:

1. It is unjust.

2. It invites other unjust measures.

3. It will not be productive of good, because practically every thoughtful Negro resents its injustice and doubts its sincerity. Any race adjustment based on injustice finally defeats itself. The Civil War is the best illustration of what results where it is attempted to make wrong right or seem to be right.

4. It is unnecessary.

5. It is inconsistent. The Negro is segregated from his white neighbor, but white business men are not prevented from doing business in Negro neighborhoods.

6. There has been no case of segregation of Negroes in the United States that has not widened the breach between the two races. Wherever a form of segregation exists it will be found that it has been administered in such a way as to embitter the Negro and harm more or less the moral fibre of the white man. That the Negro does not express this constant sense of wrong is no proof that he does not feel it.

“It seems to me that the reasons given above, if carefully considered, should serve to prevent further passage of such segregation ordinances as have been adopted in Norfolk, Richmond, Louisville, Baltimore, and one or two cities in South Carolina.

“Finally, as I have said in another place, as white and black learn daily to adjust, in a spirit of justice and fair play, these interests which are individual and racial, and to see and feel the importance of those fundamental interests which are common, so will both races grow and prosper. In the long run, no individual and no race can succeed which sets itself at war against the common good; for in the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.”

In concluding his Muskogee speech he said: “If there are those who are inclined to be discouraged concerning racial conditions in this country we have but to turn our minds in the direction of the deplorable conditions in Europe, growing largely out of racial bitterness and friction. When we contrast what has taken place there with the peaceful manner in which black people and white people are living together in this country, notwithstanding now and then there are evidences of injustice and friction, which should always be condemned, we have the greatest cause for thanksgiving. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can be found so many white people living side by side with so many of dark skin in so much of peace and harmony as in the United States.”

This concluding observation was particularly characteristic of him. Somewhere, or somehow, he always turned to account all significant events for weal or woe from the most trivial personal happenings to the titanic world war.

Like all great leaders, Booker Washington did the bulk of his work quietly in his own office and not on dramatic historic occasions before great audiences. He received every day, for instance, a huge and varied mail which required not only industry to handle, but much judgment, patience, and tact to dispose of wisely and adequately. We will here mention and quote from a sheaf of letters taken at random from his files which partially illustrate the range of his interests and the variety of the calls which were constantly made upon him.

A railroad official in Colorado asked his opinion on the question of separate schools for white and black children apropos of a movement to amend the State constitution so as to make possible such separate schools. In his reply Mr. Washington said: “As a rule, colored people in the Northern States are very much opposed to any plans for separate schools, and I think their feelings in the matter deserve consideration. The real objection to separate schools, from their point of view, is that they do not like to feel that they are compelled to go to one school rather than the other. It seems as if it was taking away part of their freedom. This feeling is likely to be all the stronger where the matter is made a subject of public agitation. On the other hand, my experience is that if this matter is left to the discretion of the school officials it usually settles itself. As the colored people usually live pretty closely together, there will naturally be schools in which colored students are in the majority. In that case, the process of separation takes place naturally and without the necessity of changing the constitution. If you make it a constitutional question, the colored people are going to be opposed to it. If you leave it simply an administrative question, which it really is, the matter will very likely settle itself.”

We next find a courteous reply to the letter of some poor crank who wanted to secure his backing for a preparation which he had concocted for taking the curl out of Negroes' hair. Then comes a letter to a man who wants to know whether it is true that the Negro race is dying out. To him Mr. Washington quoted the United States census figures for 1910, which indicate an increase of 11 3/10 per cent. in the Negro population for the decade.

Next, we come upon a letter written to a man who is interested in an effort of the Freedman's Aid Society to raise a half a million dollars for Negro schools in the South. Since this letter so well describes an important phase of Booker Washington's leadership we give it almost in full. It was written in 1913 and runs thus:

“I think the most interesting work that Tuskegee has done in recent years is its work in rural schools in the country surrounding the Institute. During the last five or six years forty-seven school buildings have been erected in Macon County by colored people themselves. At the same time the school term has been lengthened in every part of the county from five to eight months. This work has been done under the direction of a supervising teacher working in connection with the extension department of the Institute.

“Among other things that have been attempted to encourage the people to improve their schools has been a model country school started in a community called Rising Star, a few miles from the Institute. The school at Rising Star is an example of the rural school that Tuskegee is seeking to promote. It consists of a five-room frame house in which the teachers—a Tuskegee graduate and his wife—not only teach, but live. All the rooms are used by the school children. In the kitchen they are taught to cook, in the dining-room to serve a meal, in the bedroom to make the beds. In the garden they are taught how to raise vegetables, poultry, pigs, and cows. They recite in the sitting-room or on the veranda, and their lessons all deal with matters of their own every-day life. . . . Instead of figuring how long it will take an express train to reach the moon if it travelled at the rate of forty miles an hour, the pupils figure out how much corn can be raised on neighbor Smith's patch of land and how much farmer Jones' pig will bring when slaughtered.

“The pupils learn neatness and cleanliness by living in a decent home during their school hours. They carry the lesson home, and the result is seen in cleaner and better farmhouses. The model school has become the pattern on which the farmers and their wives are improving their homes. . . .”

Then comes a letter from a poor woman who wants him in the course of his travels to look up her husband who abandoned her some years before. For purposes of identification she says: “This is the hith of him 5-6 light eyes dark hair unwave shave and a Suprano Voice his age 58 his name Steve. . . .” Even though Mr. Washington did not agree to spend his spare time looking for a disloyal husband with a soprano voice, he sent the poor woman a kind reply and suggested some means of tracing her recreant spouse.

We come next upon a long letter written to a man who wishes to quote for publication in a magazine Booker Washington's opinion on the relation between crime and education. In the concluding paragraphs of his reply Mr. Washington says: “In nine cases out of ten the crimes which serve to unite and give an excuse for mob violence are committed by men who are without property, without homes, and without education except what they have picked up in the city slums, in prisons, or on the chain gang. The South is spending too much money in giving the Negro this kind of education that makes criminals and not enough on the kind of schools that turn out farmers, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Other things being equal, it is true not only in America, in the South, but throughout the world, that there is the least crime where there is the most education. This is true of the South and of the Negro, just the same as it is true of every other race. Particularly is it true that the individuals who commit crimes of violence and crimes that are due to lack of self-control are individuals who are, for the most part, ignorant. The decrease in lynching in the Southern States is an index of the steady growth of the South in wealth, in industry, in education, and in individual liberty.”

Then comes a letter to an individual who desires to know what proportion of the American Negroes can read and write now, and what proportion could at the time of the Civil War. The reply again quotes the 1910 census to the effect that 69.5 per cent. can now read and write as compared with only 3 per cent. at the close of the war. The letter also points out that the rate of illiteracy among American Negroes is now lower than the rate for all the peoples of Russia, Portugal, Brazil, and Venezuela, and almost as low as that of Spain.

There follows a sheaf of correspondence in which Mr. Washington agreed to speak at the unveiling of a tablet in Auburn, New York, to the memory of “Aunt Harriet” Tubman Davis, the black woman, squat of stature and seamed of face, who piloted three or four hundred slaves from the land of bondage to the land of freedom. While there he also agreed to speak at Auburn prison in response to the special request of some of the prisoners.

Then we find a courteous but firmly negative reply to a long-winded bore who writes a six-page letter urging Mr. Washington to secure the acceptance by the Negro race of a flag which he has designed as their racial flag.

After this follows a group of letters which passed between him and the late Edgar Gardiner Murphy, author of “The Present South,” “The Basis of Ascendency,” and other important books. In one of these letters Mr. Washington agrees, as requested, to read the proofs of “The Basis of Ascendency,” and in another he thus characteristically comments upon Mr. Murphy's fears that a pessimistic book on the status of the Negro written by a supposed authority (a colored man) would do wide-reaching harm: “Of course among a certain element it will have an influence for harm, but human nature, as I observe it, is so constructed that it does not take kindly to a description of a failure. It is hard to get up enthusiasm in connection with a funeral procession. No man, in my opinion, could write a history of the Southern Confederacy that would be read generally because it failed. I am not saying, of course, that the Negro race is a failure. Mr.—— writes largely from that point of view, hence there is no rallying point for the general reader.”

In reply to a Western university professor who had asked his opinion of amalgamation as a solution of the race problem he wrote: “I have never looked upon amalgamation as offering a solution of the so-called race problem, and I know very few Negroes who favor it or even think of it, for that matter. What those whom I have heard discuss the matter do object to are laws which enable the father to escape his responsibility, or prevent him from accepting and exercising it, when he has children by colored women. I think this answers your question, but since there seems to be some misunderstanding as to how colored people feel about this subject, I might say in explanation of what I have already said: The Negroes in America are, as you know, a mixed race. If that is an advantage we have it; if it is a disadvantage, it is still ours, and for the simple reason that the product of every sort of racial mixture between the black man and any other race is always a Negro and never a white man, Indian, or any other sort of man.

“The Negro in America is defined by the census as a person who is classed as such in the community in which he or she resides. In other words, the Negro in this country is not so much of a particular color or particular racial stock as one who shares a particular condition. It is the fact that they all share in this condition which creates a cause of common sympathy and binds the members of the race together in spite of all differences.”

To an embarrassing question put by the society editor of some paper Mr. Washington replied by merely telling a funny story the application of which to the impertinent inquiry was obvious. In another letter he summed up his opinion of the much-mooted question of the franchise in these two sentences: “There is no reason why every Negro who is not fitted to vote should not be disfranchised. At the same time, there is no good reason why every white man who is not fitted to vote should not also be disfranchised.”

From the foregoing correspondence it will be seen that one of Booker Washington's many rôles was to act as a kind of plenipotentiary and interpreter between his people and the dominant race. For this part he was peculiarly fitted by his thorough understanding of and sympathy for each race.

Theodore Roosevelt, immediately after taking the oath of office as President of the United States, in Buffalo after the death of President McKinley, wrote Mr. Washington the following note:

When the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association met in Atlanta, Ga., in 1904, many of the delegates, after adjournment, visited the Tuskegee Institute. Among these delegates was Prof. Paul Monroe of the Department of History and Principles of Education of the Teachers' College of Columbia University. In recording his impressions of his visit, Professor Monroe says: “My interest in Tuskegee and a few similar institutions is founded on the fact that here I find illustrated the two most marked tendencies which are being formulated in the most advanced educational thought, but are being worked out slowly and with great difficulty. These tendencies are: first, the endeavor to draw the subject matter of education, or the ‘stuff’ of schoolroom work, directly from the life of the pupils; and second, to relate the outcome of education to life's activities, occupations, and duties of the pupil in such a way that the connection is made directly and immediately between schoolroom work and the other activities of the person being educated. This is the ideal at Tuskegee, and, to a much greater extent than in any other institution I know of, the practice; so that the institution is working along not only the lines of practical endeavor, but of the most advanced educational thought. To such an extent is this true that Tuskegee and Hampton are of quite as great interest to the student of education on account of the illumination they are giving to educational theory as they are to those interested practically in the elevation of the Negro people and in the solution of a serious social problem. May I give just one illustration of a concrete nature coming under my observation while at the school, that will indicate the difference between the work of the school and that which was typical under old conditions, or is yet typical where the newer ideas, as so well grasped by Mr. Washington, are not accepted? In a class in English composition two boys, among others, had placed their written work upon the board, one having written upon ‘Honor’ in the most stilted language, with various historical references which meant nothing to himself or to his classmates—the whole paragraph evidently being drawn from some outside source; the other wrote upon ‘My Trade—Blacksmithing’—and told in a simple and direct way of his day's work, the nature of the general course of training, and the use he expected to make of his training when completed. No better contrast could be found between the old ideas of formal language work, dominated by books and cast into forms not understood or at least not natural to the youth, and the newer ideas of simplicity, directness, and forcefulness in presenting the account of one's own experience. Not only was this contrast an illustration of the ideal of the entire education offered at Tuskegee in opposition to that of the old, formal, ‘literary’ education as imposed upon the colored race, but it gave in a nutshell a concept of the new education. This one experience drawn from the life of the boy and related directly to his life's duration and circumstances was education in the truest sense; the other was not save as Mr. Washington made it so in its failure. . . .’

Among the delegates was also Mr. A. L. Rafter, the Assistant Superintendent of Schools of Boston, who in speaking at Tuskegee said: “What Tuskegee is doing for you we are going to take on home to the North. You are doing what we are talking about.” In general, these foremost educational experts of the dominant race looked to Booker Washington and Tuskegee for leadership instead of expecting him or his school to follow them.

Booker Washington not only practised at Tuskegee this close relation between school life and real life—and it is being continued now that he is gone—but preached it whenever and wherever opportunity offered. Some years ago, in addressing himself to those of his own students who expected to become teachers, he said on this subject among other things: “. . . colored parents depend upon seeing the results of education in ways not true of the white parent. It is important that the colored teacher on this account give special attention to bringing school life into closer touch with real life. Any education is to my mind ‘high’ which enables the individual to do the very best work for the people by whom he is surrounded. Any education is ‘low’ which does not make for character and effective service.

“The average teacher in the public schools is very likely to yield to the temptation of thinking that he is educating an individual when he is teaching him to reason out examples in arithmetic, to prove propositions in geometry, and to recite pages of history. He conceives this to be the end of education. Herein is the sad deficiency in many teachers who are not able to use history, arithmetic, and geometry as means to an end. They get the idea that the student who has mastered a certain number of pages in a textbook is educated, forgetting that textbooks are at best but tools, and in many cases ineffective tools, for the development of man. . . .

“The average parent cannot appreciate how many examples Johnny has worked out that day, how many questions in history he has answered; but when he says, ‘Mother, I cannot go back to that school until all the buttons are sewed on my coat,’ the parent will at once become conscious of school influence in the home. This will be the best kind of advertisement. The button propaganda tends to make the teacher a power in the community. A few lessons in applied chemistry will not be amiss. Take grease spots, for example. The teacher who with tact can teach his pupils to keep even threadbare clothes neatly brushed and free from grease spots is extending the school influence into the home and is adding immeasurably to the self-respect of the home.”∗

The idea that education is a matter of personal habits of cleanliness, industry, integrity, and right conduct while of course not original with Booker Washington was perhaps further developed and more effectively emphasized by him than by any other American education. Just as Matthew Arnold insisted that religion was a matter of conduct rather than forms and dogmas so Booker Washington held that education is a matter of character and not forms. He concluded one of his Sunday night talks to his students with these words: “I want every Tuskegee student as he finds his place in the surging industrial life about him to give heed to the things which are ‘honest and just and pure and of good report,’ for these things make for character, which is the only thing worth fighting for. . . .” In another of these talks he said: “A student should not be satisfied with himself until he has grown to the point where, when simply sweeping a room, he can go into the corners and crevices and remove the hidden trash which, although it should be left, would not be seen. It is not very hard to find people who will thoroughly clean a room which is going to be occupied, or wash a dish which is to be handled by strangers; but it is hard to find a person who will do a thing right when the eyes of the world are not likely to look upon what has been done. The cleaning of rooms and the washing of dishes have much to do with forming characters.”∗

This recalls Booker Washington's own experience when as a ragged and penniless youth he applied for admission to Hampton and was given a room to sweep by way of an entrance examination. Indeed, one of Booker Washington's greatest sources of strength as a teacher lay in the fact that his own life not only illustrated the truth of his assertions, but illustrated it in a striking and dramatic manner. His life was, in fact, an epitome of the hardships, struggles, and triumphs of the successful members of his race from the days of slavery to the present time. A great believer in the power of example he lived a life which gave him that power in its highest degree. Because of his inherent modesty and good taste he never referred to himself or his achievements as examples to be emulated, and this merely further enhanced their power.

In concluding another Sunday night talk he said: “As a race we are inclined, I fear, to make too much of the day of judgment. We have the idea that in some far-off period there is going to be a great and final day of judgment, when every individual will be called up, and all his bad deeds will be read out before him and all his good deeds made known. I believe that every day is a day of judgment, that we reap our rewards daily, and that whenever we sin we are punished by mental and physical anxiety and by a weakened character that separates us from God. Every day is, I take it, a day of judgment, and as we learn God's laws and grow into His likeness we shall find our reward in this world in a life of usefulness and honor. To do this is to have found the kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of character and righteousness and peace.”∗

To quote once more from these Sunday night talks, in another he said: “There is, then, opportunity for the colored people to enrich the material life of their adopted country by doing what their hands find to do, minor duties though they be, so well that nobody of any race can do them better. This is the aim that the Tuskegee student should keep steadily before him. If he remembers that all service, however lowly, is true service, an important step will have been taken in the solution of what we term ‘the race problem.’ ”

As is shown by these quotations Booker Washington used these Sunday night talks to crystalize, interpret, and summarize the meaning and significance of the kind of education which Tuskegee gives. He, the supreme head of the institution, reserved to himself this supremely important task. The heads of the manifold trades are naturally and properly concerned primarily with turning raw boys and girls into good workmen and workwomen. The academic teachers in the school are similarly interested in helping them as students to secure a mastery of their several subjects. The military commandants are concerned with their ability to drill, march, carry themselves properly, and take proper care of their persons and rooms. The physician is interested in their physical health and the chaplain in their religious training. Important as are all these phases of Tuskegee's training and closely as he watched each Mr. Washington realized that they might all be well done and yet Tuskegee fail in its supreme purpose: namely, the making of manly men and womanly women out of raw boys and girls. As he said in one of the passages quoted, “character is the only thing worth fighting for.” Now, while the forming of character is the aim, and in some appreciable degree the achievement, of every worth-while educational institution, it is to a peculiar degree the aim and the achievement of Tuskegee. The ten million Negroes in the United States need trained leaders of their own race more than they need anything else. Whatever else they should or should not have these leaders must have character. Since Tuskegee is the largest of the educational institutions for Negroes, with the man at its head who was commonly recognized as the leader of leaders in his race, naturally the heaviest responsibility in the training of these leaders fell, and will continue to fall, upon Tuskegee. Consequently the task at Tuskegee is not so much to educate so many thousands of young men and women as to train as many leaders for the Negro people as can possibly be done and done well within a given space of time. These Tuskegee graduates lead by the power of example and not by agitation. One runs a farm and achieves so much more success than his neighbors, through his better methods, that they gradually adopt these methods and with his help apply them to their own conditions. Another teaches a country school and does it so much better than the average country school teacher that his or her school comes to be regarded as a model to be emulated by the other schools of the locality. When a Tuskegee girl marries and settles in a community she keeps her house so much cleaner and in every way more attractive than the rank and file of her neighbors that gradually her house and her methods of housekeeping become the standard for the neighborhood. There is, however, nothing of the “holier than thou” or the complaisant about the true Tuskegee graduate and neither is there anything monopolistic. They have had the idea of service thoroughly drilled into their consciousness—the idea that their advantages of education are, as it were, a trust which they are to administer for the benefit of those who have not had such advantages.

Now such leaders as these must not only be provided if the so-called race problem is to be solved, but they must be provided speedily. In every community in which the black people are ignorant and vicious and without trained leaders among themselves they are likely at any time to come into conflict with the dominant race, and every such conflict engenders bitterness on both sides and makes just so much more difficult the final solution of the race problem. This is why Booker Washington labored so incessantly to increase the quantity of Tuskegee's output as well as to maintain the quality. He brought Tuskegee to the point where it reached through all its courses including its summer courses, short courses, and extension courses, more than 4,000 people in a single year, not counting the well-nigh innumerable hosts he counseled with on his State educational tours. In short, Booker Washington's task at Tuskegee was not only to turn out good leaders for his people, but to turn them out wholesale and as fast as possible. He was, as it were, running a race with the powers of ignorance, poverty, and vice. This in part accounted for the sense of terrific pressure which one felt at Tuskegee, particularly when he was present and personally driving forward his great educational machine. This also may have accounted for the seeming lack of finesse in small matters which occasionally annoyed critical visitors who did not understand that the great institution was racing under the spur of its indomitable master, and that just as in any race all but essentials must be thrown aside.

Long before the University of Wisconsin had, through its extension courses, extended its opportunities in greater or less degree to the citizens of the entire State, Booker Washington, through similar means, had extended the advantages of Tuskegee throughout Macon County in particular and the State of Alabama and neighboring States in general.

The extension work of Tuskegee began in a small way over twenty years ago. It preceded even the work of the demonstration agents of the United States Department of Agriculture. There was first only one man who in his spare time went out among the farming people and tried to arouse enthusiasm for better methods of farming, better schools, and better homes. He was followed by a committee of three members of the Tuskegee faculty, which committee still directs the work. One of the first efforts of this committee was to get the farmers to adopt deep plowing. There was not a two-horse plow to be found. There was a strong prejudice against deep plowing which was thus expressed by a Negro preacher farmer whom one of the committee tried to persuade: “We don't want deep plowing. You're fixin' for us to have no soil. If we plow deep it will all wash away and in a year or two we will have to clear new ground.” Not long after this a member of the committee with a two-horse plow was practising what he had been preaching when a white planter who was passing stopped and said: “See here, its none of my business of course, but you're new here and I don't want to see you fail. But if you plow your land deep like that you'll ruin it sure. I know. I've been here.”

After a time, however, the committee persuaded a few colored farmers to try deep plowing on a small scale as an experiment. One of the first of these was a poor man who had had the hardest kind of a struggle scraping a scant existence out of the soil for himself and his large family. He was desperate and agreed to try the new method. He got results the first year, moved on to better land and followed instructions. In a few years he bought 500 acres of land, gave each of his four sons 100 acres, and kept 100 acres for himself. Since then father and sons alike have been prosperous and contented and have added to their holdings.

In short, these Negro farmers were no more eager to be reformed and improved in their methods than are any normal people. There is a shallow popular sentiment that unless people are eager for enlightenment and gratefully receive what is offered them they should be left unenlightened. Booker Washington never shared this sentiment. His agent reported that in response to their appeals for the raising of a better grade of cattle, hogs, and fowl the farmers replied that the stock they had was good enough. One of their favorite comments was, “When you eat an egg what difference does it make to you whether that egg was laid by a full-blooded fowl or a mongrel?” Instead of being discouraged or disgusted by this attitude on the part of the people he merely regarded it as what was to be expected and set about devising means to overcome it. As always he placed his chief reliance upon the persuasive eloquence of the concrete. He decided to send blooded stock and properly raised product's around among the farmers so that they might compare them with their inferior stock and products and see the difference with their own eyes. This plan was later carried out through the Jesup Wagon contributed by the late Morris K. Jesup of New York. This wagon was a peripatetic farmers' school. It took a concentrated essence of Tuskegees' agricultural department to the farmers who could not or would not come to Tuskegee.

The wagon was drawn by a well-bred and well-fed mule. A good breed of cow was tied behind. Several chickens of good breeds, well-developed ears of corn, stalks of cotton, bundles of oats and seeds, and garden products, which ought at the time to be growing in the locality, together with a proper plow, for deep plowing, were loaded upon the wagon. The driver would pull up before a farmhouse, deliver his message, and point out the strong points of his wagonload and would finally request a strip of ground for cultivation. This request granted he would harness the mule to the plow, break the ground deep, make his rows, plant his seeds, and move on to the next locality. With a carefully planned follow-up system he would return to each such plot for cultivation and harvest, and, most important of all, to demonstrate the truths he had sought to impress upon the people by word of mouth. Where the first driver sent out was a general farmer, the second would be, let us say, a dairyman, the third a truck gardener, and finally a poultry raiser would go; usually a woman, since in the South women, for the most part, handle this phase of farming. These agents also distribute pamphlets prepared by the Agricultural Research Department of Tuskegee on such subjects as school gardening, twenty-one ways to cook cowpeas, improvement of rural schools, how to fight insect pests, cotton growing, etc. The constant emphasis upon practice by no means entails any neglect of theory.

Besides this work there is each January for two weeks at Tuskegee the regular Farmers' Short Course. Many of the country schools adjourn for this period so that both teachers and pupils may attend. In this course not only teachers and pupils, but fathers and mothers, sons and daughters sit side by side in the classrooms receiving instruction in stock raising, canning, poultry raising, and farming in all its branches. There are special courses for the women and girls in the care of children and in housekeeping. The following breezy announcement is taken from the prospectus of this course for the year 1914:

The New Orleans Times-Democrat, in its editorial accompanying the publication of this letter, said: “We have seen the corrupting influence in our politics and our elections of making fraud an element of our suffrage system. We are certainly not going to get away from fraud by encouraging it, or making it a part of the suffrage system we place in our new constitution.” The same editorial further states that impartiality in the use of the ballot can be given Negro and white man not only “with the utmost safety,” but “it would have a beneficial effect upon the politics of the State.” In fact, the press of both North and South, both of the whites and the blacks, published this letter with practically unanimous editorial endorsement, but in spite of all this the leaders of the convention remained obdurate, the immediate object was lost, and Louisiana followed the example of Mississippi and South Carolina. No one realized, however, better than Booker Washington that the effort was by no means in vain. Owing to the general awakening of intelligent public opinion the convention leaders were forced into the position of driving through the discriminatory amendment not only in the face of the condemnation of the better element throughout the country but even with the disapproval of the better and leading citizens of their own State.

Shortly afterward members of the Georgia Legislature, seeking political preferment for themselves through the familiar means of anti-Negro agitation, introduced a bill which aimed to discriminate against the Negroes of Georgia by legislative enactment just as the Negroes of Louisiana had been discriminated against by a constitutional amendment. This time Mr. Washington went personally to Atlanta and appealed directly to a number of the members of the Legislature and to the editors of the leading papers in opposition to this bill. In an interview published in the Atlanta Constitution at the time he said:

“I cannot think that there is any large number of white people in the South who are so ignorant or so poor that they cannot get education and property enough to enable them to stand the test by the side of the Negro in these respects. I do not believe that these white people want it continually advertised to the world that some special law must be passed by which they will seem to be given an unfair advantage over the Negro by reason of their ignorance or their poverty. It is unfair to blame the Negro for not preparing himself for citizenship by acquiring intelligence, and then when he does get education and property, to pass a law that can be so operated as to prevent him from being a citizen, even though he may be a large taxpayer. The Southern white people have reached the point where they can afford to be just and generous; where there will be nothing to hide and nothing to explain. It is an easy matter, requiring little thought, generosity or statesmanship to push a weak man down when he is struggling to get up. Any one can do that. Greatness, generosity, statesmanship are shown in stimulating, encouraging every individual in the body politic to make of himself the most useful, intelligent, and patriotic citizen possible. Take from the Negro all incentive to make himself and his children useful property-holding citizens, and can any one blame him for becoming a beast capable of committing any crime?”

This time the immediate object was attained. The Atlanta Constitution and other leading Georgia papers indorsed Booker Washington's appeal and the Legislature voted down its anti-Negro members. Be it said to the credit of the Georgia Legislature that it has resisted several similar attempts to discriminate against the Negro citizens of the State, and it was not till 1908, ten years after the Louisiana law was passed, that Georgia finally passed a law disfranchising Negro voters.

Booker Washington has been accused of not protesting against the lynching of Negroes. In the article published in the Century Magazine in 1912, from which we have previously quoted, he said on this subject: “When he was Governor of Alabama, I heard Governor Jelks say in a public speech that he knew of five cases during his administration of innocent colored people having been lynched. If that many innocent people were known to the governor to have been lynched, it is safe to say that there were other innocent persons lynched whom the governor did not know about. What is true of Alabama in this respect is true of other states. In short, it is safe to say that a large proportion of the colored persons lynched are innocent. . . . Not a few cases have occurred where white people have blackened their faces and committed a crime, knowing that some Negro would be suspected and mobbed for it. In other cases it is known that where Negroes have committed crimes, innocent men have been lynched and the guilty ones have escaped and gone on committing more crimes.

“Within the last twelve months there have been seventy-one cases of lynching, nearly all of colored people. Only seventeen were charged with the crime of rape. Perhaps they are wrong to do so, but colored people do not feel that innocence offers them security against lynching. They do feel, however, that the lynching habit tends to give greater security to the criminal, white or black.”

Mr. Washington often pointed out how the lynching of blacks leads inevitably to the lynching of whites and how the lynching of guilty persons of either race inevitably leads to the lynching of innocent persons of both races.

Let it not be supposed that Booker Washington confined his condemnation of lynching to the comparatively safe cover of the pages of an eminently respectable Northern magazine. Some years ago when he was on a speaking trip in the State of Florida two depraved Negroes in Jacksonville committed an atrocious murder. The crime aroused such intense race feeling that Mr. Washington's friends foresaw the likelihood of a lynching and, fearing for his safety, urged him to cancel his engagements in Jacksonville, where he was due to speak before white as well as black audiences within a few days. This he refused to do and insisted that because there was special racial friction it was especially necessary that he should keep his engagements in the city. While he was driving to the hall where he was to address a white audience the automobile of one of his Negro escorts was stopped by a crowd of excited white men who angrily demanded that Booker Washington be handed over to them. When they found he was not in the car they allowed it to pass on without molesting the Negro occupant, who enjoyed to an unusual degree the confidence and respect of both races in the city. What they would have done had they found Booker Washington one may only conjecture. At about the same time the Negro murderers were captured. The howls of the infuriated mob on its way to the jail to lynch the accused murderers could be heard in the distance from the hall where Mr. Washington spoke. Without referring in any way to the event which was taking place at the time Mr. Washington, to the alarm of his friends, launched into a fervid denunciation of lynching and ended with an earnest and eloquent appeal for better feeling between the races. Instead of his words breaking up the meeting in a storm of anger and rioting, this audience composed of Southern whites and colored people vigorously applauded his sentiments. Undoubtedly they were applauding not so much the views expressed as the courage shown in expressing them at that place and under those circumstances.

A somewhat similar experience occurred on a recent speaking tour which he and a party were making through the State of Louisiana. He was accompanied by a company of Negro leaders, including Major Moton of Hampton, who has since become his successor as Principal of Tuskegee Institute. They were in a portion of the State notorious for its lynchings of Negroes. No one who has ever seen Major Moton, or knows anything about him, would think of accusing him of timidity or cowardice. But when they went before a white audience in this particular district he urged Mr. Washington as a matter of common prudence to “soft pedal” what he had to say about lynching. Just as in Jacksonville Mr. Washington did just the opposite, and made his denunciation particularly emphatic, and just as in Jacksonville there was the same applause and apparent approval of his views.

Booker Washington also protested that in the matter of public education his people are not given a square deal in parts of the South, particularly in the country districts. He continually emphasized the relation between education and crime. Other things being equal the more and the better the education provided the less the number and seriousness of the crimes committed. Also he pointed out that the neglect of Negro school facilities injures the white citizens almost if not quite as much as the Negroes themselves. And conversely that good school facilities for the colored children benefit the whites almost as much as the Negroes. He also insisted that quite aside from all moral and ethical considerations Negro education pays in dollars and cents. As illustrating the relation between Negro education and crime or rather lack of Negro education and crime he related this incident in an article entitled, “Black and White in the South” published in the Outlook of March 14, 1914: “A few weeks ago three of the most prominent white men in Mississippi were shot and killed by two colored boys. Investigation brought to light that the two boys were rough and crude, that they had never been to school, hence that they were densely ignorant. While no one had taught these boys the use of books, some one had taught them, as mere children, the use of cocaine and whiskey. In a mad fit, when their minds and bodies were filled with cheap whiskey and cocaine, these two ignorant boys created a ‘reign of murder,’ in the course of which three white men, four colored men, and one colored woman met death. As soon as the shooting was over a crazed mob shot the two boys full of bullet-holes and then burned their bodies in the public streets.

“Now this is the kind of thing, more or less varied in form, that takes place too often in our country. Why? The answer is simple: it is dense ignorance on the part of the Negro and indifference arising out of a lack of knowledge of conditions on the part of the white people.”

He then pointed out that the last enumeration in Mississippi, where this crime was committed, indicated that 64 per cent. of the colored children had had no schooling during the past year. That in Charleston County, South Carolina, another backward State in Negro education, there was expended on the public education of each white child $20.2; for the colored child $3.12; in Abbeville County $11.17 for the white, 69 cents for the colored child. This 69 cents per capita expense was incurred by maintaining a one-room school for two and one-half months, with a teacher paid at the rate of $15 a month. In another county the Negro school was in session but one month out of the twelve. Throughout the State, outside the cities and large towns, the school term for the colored children is from two to four months. Thus 200,000 colored children in South Carolina are given only three or four months of schooling a year. “Under these conditions it would require twenty-eight years for a child to complete the eight grades of the public school. . . . But South Carolina is by no means the only State that has these breeding spots for ignorance, crime, and filth which the nation will sooner or later have to reckon with.”

In the article in the Century Magazine from which quotations have already been made Mr. Washington cites this statement made by W. N. Sheats, former Superintendent of Education for the State of Florida, in explanation of an analysis of the sources of the school fund of the State: “A glance at the foregoing statistics indicates that the section of the State designated as ‘Middle Florida’ is considerably behind all the rest in all stages of educational progress. The usual plea is that this is due to the intolerable burden of Negro education, and a general discouragement and inactivity is ascribed to this cause. The following figures are given to show that the education of the Negroes of Middle Florida does not cost the white people of that section one cent. Without discussing the American principle that it is the duty of all property to educate every citizen as a means of protection to the State, and with no reference to what taxes that citizen may pay, it is the purpose of this paragraph to show that the backwardness of education of the white people is in no degree due to the presence of the Negro, but that the presence of the Negro has been actually contributing to the sustenance of the white schools.”

Mr. Sheats then shows that the cost of the Negro schools was $19,467, while the Negroes contributed to the school fund in direct taxes, together with their proper proportion of the indirect taxes, $23,984. He concludes: “If this is a fair calculation the schools for the Negroes are not only no burden on the white citizens, but $4,525 for Negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted to the white schools.”

Mr. Charles L. Coon, Superintendent of Schools at Wilson, N. C., is quoted as demonstrating that had there been expended upon the Negro schools the Negro's proportionate share of the receipts from indirect taxes, as well as the direct taxes paid by them, $18,077 more in a given year would have been expended on colored schools in Virginia, $26,539 more in North Carolina, and $141,682 more in Georgia. These figures would seem to show that in these States at least the Negro schools are not only no burden upon the white taxpayers but that the colored people do not get back in school facilities the equivalent of all they themselves contribute in taxes.

In the matter of passenger transportation facilities Booker Washington protested that injustice is done his people by most of the railroads of the South, not in providing separate accommodations for blacks and whites, but in furnishing the Negroes with inferior accommodations while charging them the same rates. This injustice causes, he believes, more resentment and bitterness among his people than all the other injustices to which they are subjected combined. The Negro or “Jim Crow” compartment is usually half of the baggage car which is usually inadequate for the traffic, badly lighted, badly ventilated, and dirty. The newsdealer of the train uses this coach and increases the congestion by spreading his wares over several seats. White men frequently enter this compartment to buy papers and almost always smoke in it, thus requiring the colored women to ride in what is virtually a smoker. Aside from these matters the Negroes rarely have through cars and no sleeping, parlor, or buffet cars, and frequently no means of securing food on long journeys since many if not most of the station restaurants refuse to serve them.

In the Century article Mr. Washington thus quoted the experience of a sensible and conservative Negro friend of his from Austin, Texas—a man of education and good reputation among both races in his native city: “At one time,” he said, in describing some of his travelling experiences, “I got off at a station almost starved. I begged the keeper of the restaurant to sell me a lunch in a paper and hand it out of the window. He refused, and I had to travel a hundred miles farther before I could get a sandwich. At another time I went to a station to purchase my ticket. I was there thirty minutes before the ticket office was opened. When it did finally open I at once appeared at the window. While the ticket agent served the white people at one window, I remained waiting at the other until the train pulled out. I was compelled to jump aboard the train without my ticket and wire back to get my trunk expressed. Considering the temper of the people, the separate coach law may be the wisest plan for the South, but the statement that the two races have equal accommodations is all bosh. I pay the same money, but I cannot have a chair or a lavatory, and rarely a through car. I must crawl out at all times of night, and in all kinds of weather, in order to catch another dirty ‘Jim Crow’ coach to make my connections. I do not ask to ride with white people. I do ask for equal accommodations for the same money.”

Booker Washington was of course obliged to travel in the South almost constantly and to a great extent at night. He nearly always travelled on a Pullman car, and so when not an interstate passenger usually “violated” the law of whatever State he happened to be passing through. The conductors, brakemen, and other trainmen, as a rule, treated him with great respect and consideration and oftentimes offered him a compartment in place of the berth which he had purchased.

Pullman cars in the South are not as a rule open to members of the Negro race. It is only under more or less unusual conditions that a black man is able to secure Pullman accommodations. Dr. Washington, however, was generally treated with marked consideration whenever he applied for Pullman car reservations. He was sometimes criticised, not only by members of his own race, but by the unthinking of the white race who accused him of thus seeking “social equality” with the white passengers.

The work he was compelled to do, however, in constantly travelling from place to place, and dictating letters while travelling, made it necessary that he conserve his strength as much as possible. He never believed that he was defying Southern traditions in seeking the comfort essential to his work.

Upon one occasion Dr. Washington went to Houston, Texas, and was invited by the Secretary of the Cotton Exchange, in the name of the Exchange, to speak to the members of the leading business organizations of Houston, upon the floor of the Cotton Exchange Bank. He was introduced by the secretary, who desired to give Dr. Washington the opportunity to put before representative Southern white men the thoughts and ideas of a representative colored man as to how the two races might live together in the South on terms of mutual helpfulness. Such was the impression he made upon the whites that when Dr. Washington's secretary applied for Pullman accommodations for him, returning East, they were not only ungrudgingly but even eagerly granted. In those days it was unheard of for a colored man to travel as a passenger in a Pullman car in Texas.

The injustices mentioned and all others connected with railway passenger service for Negroes Booker Washington sought in characteristic fashion to mitigate by instituting, through the agency of the National Negro Business League, what are known as Railroad Days. On these days each year colored patrons of railroads lay before the responsible officials the respects in which they believe they are unfairly treated and request certain definite changes. Although started only a few years ago these Railroad Days have already accomplished a number of the improvements desired in various localities.

As an aid to the committees appointed in the various communities Mr. Washington sent out a letter addressed to these committees which was published in the Negro papers. This letter advised that all protests on Railroad Days give: first, “a statement of present conditions,” second, “a statement of conditions desired.” There followed a sample detailed statement of the present conditions about which there is usually cause for complaint accompanied by a similar statement of the conditions desired.

It was then suggested that these specific recommendations be followed by these general requests:

“1. The same class and quality of accommodations for colored passengers as are provided for the most favored class of travellers.

“2. Such regulations as will protect colored passengers from the rudeness and insults of employees of the railroad.

“3. Some definite authority to whom these matters may be referred, where friction arises, and who will, in good faith, investigate and adjust them.”

The letter concluded with this advice:

“All those who are going to act on the suggestions to make a united effort to bring about better railroad and other travelling facilities should not omit to remind our people that they have a duty to perform as well as the railroads.

“First, our people should try to keep themselves clean and presentable when travelling, and they should do their duty in trying to keep waiting-rooms and railroad coaches clean.

“Second, it should be borne in mind that little or nothing will be accomplished by merely talking about white people who are in charge of railroads, etc. The only way to get any results is to go to the people and talk to them and not about them.”

Compare this definite, reasonable, and effective form of protest with the bitter, vague, and futile outcry against the “Jim Crow” car which is frequently heard.

Booker Washington sent a marked copy of the Century Magazine containing the article, “Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?” to the head of every railroad in the South calling attention to the portion relating to unfair treatment in passenger service for his people. In response he received letters which in almost every case were friendly and in many cases showed an active desire to coöperate in the improvement of the conditions complained of. Mr. Washington published extracts from these letters in the Negro press prior to his Railroad Day proposal in order to show that the railroad officials were for the most part at least willing to give a respectful hearing to the complaints of their Negro patrons if properly approached. President Stevens of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company wrote that he had had one hundred copies of the article distributed among the officials and employees of his road. Mr. J. M. Parker, Receiver and General Manager of the Arkansas, Louisiana & Gulf Railway Company, wrote: “I have your favor with enclosure. . . I shall take pleasure in reading this article, and from glancing through it I am inclined to think that the statement that the Negro is not getting a square deal in the way of transportation facilities is well founded.” Mr. William J. Black, Passenger of the Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fé Railway System, wrote in part: “You will, no doubt, be pleased to learn that the Santa Fé has already provided equipment for colored travel in conformity with the plan outlined in your article.” From all or most of the Southern railways came letters of the general tenor of those quoted, and thus was the way prepared for the successful inauguration of the Railroad Days.

Constantly as he labored for the rights of his people he never sought to obtain for them any special privileges. Unlike most leaders of groups, classes, or races of people he never sought any exclusive or special advantages for his followers. He did not want the Negro to receive any favors by reason of his race any more than he wanted him to be discriminated against on that account. He wanted all human beings, Negroes among the rest, to receive their deserts as individuals regardless of their race, color, religion, sex, or any other consideration which has nothing to do with the individual's merits. One of his favorite figures was that “one cannot hold another in a ditch without himself staying in the ditch.” There is not a single right for which he contended for his people which if won would not directly or indirectly benefit all other people. Were they in all the States admitted to the franchise on equal terms with white citizens what Mr. Washington termed the “encouragement of vice and ignorance among white citizens” would cease.

Were the lynching of Negroes stopped the lynching of white men would also cease. Both the innocent black man and the innocent white man would feel a greater sense of security while the guilty black man as well as the guilty white man would be less secure. Were the Negroes given their full share of public education the whites would gain not only more reliable and intelligent Negro labor, but would be largely freed so far as Negroes are concerned from the menace of the crimes of violence which are committed almost exclusively by ignorant persons. Finally, were Negro travellers given equal accommodations and treatment for equal rates on all the Southern railways the volume of Negro travel would more rapidly increase, thus increasing the prosperity of the railways and their shareholders which would in turn promote the prosperity of the entire South.

True to his policy of always placing the emphasis upon those things which are encouraging instead of upon those things which are discouraging, Mr. Washington concluded the already much-quoted article, “Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance? with these observations: “Notwithstanding all the defects in our system of dealing with him, the Negro in this country owns more property, lives in better houses, is in a larger measure encouraged in business, wears better clothes, eats better food, has more schoolhouses and churches, and more teachers and ministers, than any similar group of Negroes anywhere in the world.”

Booker Washington was always emphasizing the necessity of better conditions right here and now instead of in a distant future or in heaven. He was constantly combating the tendency in his people—a tendency common to all people but naturally particularly strong in those having a heritage of slavery—to substitute the anticipated bliss of a future life for effective efforts to improve the conditions of this present life. He was always telling them to put their energies into societies for the preservation of health and improvement of living conditions, instead of into the too numerous and popular sick benefit and death benefit organizations.

At the next stop of the party Mr. Washington was introduced to the assembled townspeople by a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, who was one of their leading citizens and most successful farmers. In this talk he urged the people to get more land and keep it and to grow something besides cotton. He said they should not lean upon others and should not go to town on Saturdays to “draw upon” the merchants, but should stay at home and “draw every day from their own soil corn, peas, beans, and hogs.” He urged the men to give their wives more time to work around the house and to raise vegetables. (This, of course, instead of requiring them to work in the fields with the men as is so common.) He urged especially that they take their wives into their confidence and make them their partners as well as their companions. He assured them that if they took their wives into partnership they would accumulate more and get along better in every way.

There was no advice given by him more constantly or insistently in speaking to the plain people of his race, whether in country or city, than this injunction to the men to take their wives into their confidence and make them their partners. He recognized that the home was the basis of all progress and civilization for his race, as well as all other races, and that the wife and mother is primarily the conservator of the home.

One of the stops of the trip was at a little hamlet called Damascus. Here, in characteristic fashion, he told the people how much richer they were in soil and all natural advantages than were the inhabitants of the original Damascus in the Holy Land. He then argued that having these great natural advantages, much was to be expected of them, etc. Like all great preachers, teachers, and leaders of men he seized upon the names, incidents, and conditions immediately about him and from them drew lessons of fundamental import and universal application.

The efforts of the Negro farmers on these trips to get a word of approval from their great leader were often pathetic. One old man had a good breed of pigs of which he was particularly proud. He contrived to be found feeding them beside the road just as the great man and his party were passing. The simple ruse succeeded. Mr. Washington and his companions stopped and everyone admired the proud and excited old man's pigs. And then after the pigs had been duly admired, he led them to a rough plank table upon which he had displayed in tremulous anticipation of this dramatic moment a huge pumpkin, some perfectly developed ears of corn, and a lusty cabbage. After these objects had also been admired the old man decoyed the party into the little whitewashed cottage where his wife had her hour of triumph in displaying her jars of preserves, pickles, cans of vegetables, dried fruits, and syrup together with quilts and other needlework all carefully arranged for this hoped-for inspection.

The basic teaching of all these tours was: “Make your own little heaven right here and now. Do it by putting business methods into your farming, by growing things in your garden the year around, by building and keeping attractive and comfortable homes for your children so they will stay at home and not go to the cities, by keeping your bodies and your surroundings clean, by staying in one place, by getting a good teacher and a good preacher, by building a good school and church, by letting your wife be your partner in all you do, by keeping out of debt, by cultivating friendly relations with your neighbors both white and black.”

Mr. Washington was constantly bringing up in the Tuskegee faculty meetings cases of distress among the colored people of the county, which he had personally discovered while off hunting or riding, and planning ways and means to relieve them. Apparently it never occurred to him that technically, at least, the fate of these poor persons was not his affair nor that of his school. At one such meeting he told of having come upon while hunting a tumbledown cabin in the woods, within it a half-paralyzed old Negro obviously unable to care for his simple wants. Mr. Washington had stopped, built a fire in his stove, and otherwise made him comfortable temporarily, but some provision for the old man's care must be made at once. One of the teachers knew about the old man and stated that he had such an ugly temper that he had driven off his wife, son, and daughter who had until recently lived with him and taken care of him. The young teacher seemed to feel that the old man had brought his troubles upon his own head and so deserved little sympathy. Mr. Washington would not for a moment agree to this. He replied that if the old fellow was so unfortunate as to have a bad temper as well as his physical infirmities that was no reason why he should be allowed to suffer privation. He delegated one of the teachers to look up the old man's family at once and see if they could be prevailed upon to support him and to report at the next meeting what had been arranged. In the meantime he would send some one out to the cabin daily to take him food and attend to his wants.

At another faculty meeting he brought up the plight of an old woman who was about to be evicted from her little shack on the outskirts of the town because of her inability to pay the nominal rent which she was charged. He arranged to have her rent paid out of a sum of money which he always had included in the school budget for the relief of such cases. In such ways he was constantly impressing upon his associates the idea that was ever a mainspring of his own life—namely, that it was always and everywhere the duty of the more fortunate to help the less fortunate.

While he was sometimes severe with his more prosperous and better educated associates he was always considerate and thoughtful of the ignorant, the old, and the weak. He was never too busy to delight the heart of a white-haired old man who had been the original cook of the school by listening to his stories about the early days, or to discuss with another old man his experiences in the Civil War. He would never betray the least impatience in listening to these old men tell him the same story for the five hundredth time. Although the real usefulness of both these old fellows had long passed he never showed them by word or deed that he did not regard them as useful and valuable members of his staff.

The following were the especially significant paragraphs of these declarations:

“It is found that for every dollar's worth of cotton we grow, we raise only forty-nine cents' worth of all other crops. An investigation has shown that there are 20,000 farms of Negroes on which there are no cattle of any kind; 270,000 on which there are no hogs; 200,000 on which no poultry is raised; 140,000 on which no corn is grown; on 750,000 farms of Negroes no oats are grown; on 550,000 farms no sweet potatoes are grown, and on 200,000 farms of Negroes there are no gardens of any sort. These hundreds of thousands of farms without cattle, grain, or gardens are for the most part operated by tenants. In their behalf, the Tuskegee Negro Conference respectfully requests of the planters, bankers, and other representatives of the financial interests of the South that more opportunities be given Negro tenants on plantations to grow crops other than cotton.”

After the regular conference the usual Conference of Workers was held. This conference is composed of people such as heads of schools and colleges, preachers, teachers, and persons generally holding responsible positions of leadership in their respective communities. These leaders discuss the larger community problems in distinction from individual problems. At this gathering, for instance, the principal of the County High School at Cottage Grove, Ala., explained how through diversified farming the parents of his students had been able to live while holding their cotton for higher prices.

Some of the principals of schools told how they had accepted cotton as payment of tuition for some of their students. Others had taken in payment barrels of syrup, sacks of corn, and hogs. All the schools reported cutting expenses, by reduction of their dietary, the salaries of teachers, or some other forms of retrenchment, meaning sacrifice for students or teachers, or both, that the work of education might continue and weather the hard times. In concluding the conference Booker Washington explained the terms of the recently enacted Smith Lever Act for Federal aid in the extension of agricultural education throughout the rural districts of the country. Thus ended the twentieth session of the great Tuskegee Negro Conference and the last session presided over by the Founder of the Conference. It was most appropriate that this, his last conference, should have so unanimously and effectively applied one of the leading tenets of Booker Washington's teaching—namely, the winning of lasting profit from the experiences of adversity.

As well as these annual Farmers' Conferences there are held at Tuskegee monthly meetings for the farmers from the locality where they display their products, tell of their successes and failures, and compare notes on their experiences all under the expert leadership, guidance, and advice of the staff of the agricultural department of the Institute. Every month, or oftener, there is an agricultural exhibit in which the best products of the various crops such as potatoes, corn, and cotton are displayed, and the methods used in their production explained by figures and graphic charts.

As early as 1895 Booker Washington started a campaign to get his people to raise more pigs. This campaign he revived at intervals, and for the last time in the fall of 1914, when the whole country and particularly the South was suffering from the first acute depression caused by the European War. In the Southern States this depression was, of course, especially acute because the European market for cotton was for the time being cut off. As one of the means to aid his people in this trying time he sent the following letter to the entire press of the South of both races:

This letter was not only printed by most of the white papers as well as all of the Negro papers, but it was widely endorsed editorially in the white as well as the black press. Many of the newspapers for whites urged that the white farmers also follow the suggestion. The granges and farmers' institutes of both races took up the appeal and urged it upon their members. There can be no doubt that through the publication of this one brief letter, sent out at just the right psychological moment, Booker Washington materially aided the Southern farmers of both races to tide over a serious crisis and materially increased the economic wealth of the entire South. As he well knew, the people were desperate and panicky and hence ready to follow almost any lead. In any ordinary state of the public mind such a letter could have produced nothing like such an influence. This well illustrated Booker Washington's accurate knowledge of and feeling for the psychology of the public which enabled him almost without exception to speak or remain silent at the right times.

Booker Washington was not only interested in black farmers but white farmers. He always emphasized the responsibility of the farmer as the builder of the foundations of society. He was constantly inviting the white farmers of the surrounding country to visit the school and see what was being done on the school farms and by the Experiment Station. And the white farmers availed themselves freely of this opportunity and profited by it. The school's veterinarian is probably the only one in the county, and this division was established very largely for the purpose of bringing the school and the community— both white and black—into closer relation. In dealing with farmers, even more perhaps than with other classes of people, Washington would appeal to their pride and even to their vanity. He was fond of telling them that they were the salt of the earth. One of his favorite stories was about the farmer who keeps his best potatoes for himself and his family and sends the speckled ones to town; keeps his tender young chickens and sends the old tough ones to town; keeps his rich milk and sends his skimmed milk to town. While there may never have been quite such a farmer the story had its element of truth, and helped to make the farmer appreciate his good fortune and his importance in the scheme of things.

In 1910, when the last Federal Census was taken, 503 Negro farm owners in Macon County, Booker Washington's home county, owned 61,689 acres, or an average of more than one hundred and twenty-two and one-half acres of land per man. This is probably the largest amount of land owned by the Negroes of any county in the United States. Certainly this was true at that time. The better class of Negro farmers has greatly increased during the past thirty years until at present from 90 to 95 per cent. of the 3,800 Negro farmers in the county operate their own farms either as cash tenants or owners. The increase in the number of Negroes owning or operating farms has been an important factor in securing a better quality and variety of food. They have diversified their crops and raised a larger amount of their own food supplies, particularly meat and vegetables, and they have produced more milk, butter, and eggs. It will be seen that Booker Washington's voice when he reiterated over and over again, “The man who owns the land will own much else besides,” did not fall upon deaf ears.

When Booker Washington came to Macon County and founded Tuskegee Institute, in 1881, the soil was worn out, and cotton, the chief crop, was selling for an almost constantly lowering price. Although there were few counties with a lower yield of cotton per acre, one-quarter of a bale, over 42 per cent. of the tilled land of the county was devoted exclusively to this crop. Very little machinery was used in the farming, the antique scooter plow and hoe being the main reliance. The soil was rarely tilled more than three or four inches deep. There was, in fact, a superstition among whites as well as blacks that deep plowing was injurious to the soil. Two-horse teams were seldom used. Sub-soiling, fall plowing, fallowing, and rotation of crops were little known and less practised. The county was producing per capita per year only about five pounds of butter, four dozen eggs, and less than three chickens.

The Negroes were with few exceptions shiftless and improvident plantation laborers and renters. Of the almost 13,000 Negroes in the county not more than fifty or sixty owned land. They lived almost exclusively in one-room cabins. Sometimes in addition to the immediate family there were relatives and friends living and sleeping in this one room. The common diet of these Negroes was fat pork, corn bread, and molasses. Many meals consisted of corn bread mixed with salt water. This, then, was the raw material with which Booker Washington had to work and from which has been developed, largely through his influence, one of the most prosperous agricultural counties in the South—a county which has been heralded in the press as feeding itself because of the great abundance and variety of its products. In 1910 the per capita production for the county was: 40 gallons of milk, 11 pounds of butter, 7 dozen eggs, and 5 chickens. It must, of course, do more than this before it will actually feed itself.

Mr. Washington was constantly drumming it into the consciousness of the Negro farmer that as long as he remained ignorant and improvident he was sure to be exploited and imposed upon. He used to illustrate this by the story of the ignorant Negro who after paying a white man fifty cents a week for six months on a five-dollar loan cheerfully remarked: “Dat Mr.——sho is one fine gen'lman, cause he never has ast me fo' one cent ob dat principal.” It may be surmised that this type of money lender is not enthusiastic over Negro education.

It is significant of the importance which Booker Washington attached to agriculture that the first great Federal official whom he invited to visit the school was the National Secretary of Agriculture. In 1897 he got the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture in President McKinley's Cabinet, to visit Tuskegee and attend the dedication of the school's first agricultural building.

Secretary Wilson arrived at night accompanied by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, a Southerner, a leader of the educational thought of the South, and the secretary of the John F. Slater Fund Board. The students lined up on either side of the main thoroughfare through the school grounds with back of them a great gathering of the farmers from the surrounding territory and many from a distance. Each one of this great throng was given a pine torch and all these torches were simultaneously lighted as Secretary Wilson entered the school grounds. The Secretary and Doctor Curry, preceded by the Institute Band, rode between these two great masses of cheering people and flaming torches.

Each representative carried letters of introduction to leading men and women in the various centres throughout his territory. All these letters were personally signed by Mr. Washington. At the close of each day each collector telegraphed Mr. Washington at Tuskegee giving the amount of subscriptions and pledges he had secured that day. The next morning Mr. Washington wired each collector, stating the total amount of gifts and pledges secured by all five collectors. When the Trustees met in New York City, on the last Thursday of June, 1915, all but four or five thousand dollars of the over $245,000 had been raised.

The Trustees themselves made up the difference by increasing by this amount their own subscriptions. Thus was successfully concluded the last great and difficult task which Booker Washington was to be permitted to perform.

Of the hundreds of invitations to speak here, there, and everywhere which kept pouring in upon him certain ones he definitely accepted because of the money-raising opportunities either direct or indirect which they offered; others of less promise he tentatively accepted to fall back upon in case the more desirable ones for any reason miscarried. Chautauqua engagements he considered only where they provided an opportunity for direct appeal for contributions for the work, or at least the chance to distribute printed matter. Chautauqua bureaus offering him as much as half the gate receipts above $500 in addition to a guarantee of $300 a night he turned down out of hand if they did not include one or both of these opportunities. No matter how much money they offered he would never accept such propositions unless they carried with them some opportunity to make a direct appeal for his work. It was sometimes suggested to him that he might receive these fees personally and then turn them over to the school. This he declined to do because he was unwilling to give even the appearance of capitalizing his reputation and oratorical gifts for his personal enrichment. Booker Washington was not one of those simple-hearted individuals who are guided solely by what they deem inherently right. He always strove to avoid the appearance of evil as well as the evil itself; and, with one unhappy exception, he always succeeded. He fully realized that his conduct was under constant scrutiny by enemies in both races eager to find some pretext to drag him down. So circumspect was he in his behavior that once only between the time he became a national character in 1895 until his death twenty years later did his critics succeed in distorting any deed of his into the semblance of misconduct. The very nature of the charge in this one instance was sufficient refutation for any person acquainted in even the slightest degree with the man's life, work, or character.

The press as well as the platform he constantly used to keep his work before the public for money-raising purposes. He had as good a “nose for a story” as the best of reporters, and every story that came his way was sure to find its way into print. No matter how driven with pressing matters nor how tired he never denied himself to “the newspaper boys.” He believed that the more prominence, the more “limelight,” he could secure the better, provided he used it for the promotion of his work. Thus he presented the apparent anomaly of being at the same time one of the most modest and unassuming of men and also one of the greatest advertisers of his day.

As well as the general press of both races he constantly used the school press for money-raising purposes. The school paper which circulates among donors and prospective donors as well as among the students, teachers, and graduates carries in each issue brief statements of some immediate and pressing needs and the money required to satisfy them. These needs are set forth in the following manner:

The need for a new laundry building with equipment, a foundry, and a veterinary hospital were similarly presented. The funds to meet each of these needs were received as a result of these appeals, and a new list of needs is now being advertised.

In concluding his annual report each year Mr. Washington would summarize the immediate needs of the institution. In his last report he thus stated them:

A few months later, as he lay dying in a New York hospital, the following letter was received for him at Tuskegee. It was at once forwarded and passed him on his last journey to his home in the South. He never saw it. The donor, a Northern friend who withholds his name, has renewed the offer to the Trustees and they have accepted it.

The interest of this giver was first aroused by his reading “Up from Slavery” when it appeared in book form in 1901. As soon as he had read the book he sent Dr. Washington a check for $10,000 for his work which he has renewed each year since until he made the above offer. “Up from Slavery” has brought more money to Tuskegee than all the other books, articles, speeches, and circulars written by Mr. Washington himself and the many others who have written or spoken about him and his work. Among its larger immediate results, aside from awakening the interest of the anonymous giver already mentioned, was its similar effect upon the late H. H. Rogers, Vice-President and active head at the time of the Standard Oil Company, and upon Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Rogers became so much interested that he not only gave large sums for the general needs of Tuskegee but eventually financed a large part of the rural school extension work, which has been described in earlier chapters, and which is now so important a part of the school's activities. Under Booker Washington's inspiration and guidance, too, Mr. Rogers later combined railroad building with race building. In building his Virginia railroad he undertook a wide-reaching work in agricultural education among the Negro farmers living within carting distance of his road. Booker Washington had demonstrated to his satisfaction that by increasing at the same time their wants and their ability to gratify their wants he would be building up business for his railroad.

Shortly after the publication in 1901 of “Up from Slavery,” Frank N. Doubleday, of Doubleday, Page & Co., the publishers of the book, in playing golf with Mr. Carnegie mentioned Booker Washington and told him something of his life. Mr. Carnegie was interested and wanted to know more. Mr. Doubleday gave him a copy of “Up from Slavery.” After reading the book he immediately got into communication with the author, told him of his interest in his life and work, and of his desire to help him. The result was that Mr. Carnegie agreed to pay for the construction and equipment of a library to be built by the students. Booker Washington, his Executive Council, and the school's architect, spent hours and hours of time in scrutinizing every detail to bring the cost down to the smallest possible figure consistent with an adequate result. The final cost to Mr. Carnegie was only $15,000. Mr. Carnegie was amazed that so large, convenient, and dignified a building could be built at so small a cost. Over and over again both to Mr. Washington and to friends of the school he expressed his surprise and pleasure at the result obtained by this relatively small expenditure. After that there was no doubt he would do more for the school. It was simply a question of how much more and what form it would take. In 1903 the following letter was received by the late William H. Baldwin, Jr., in his capacity as president of the Tuskegee Board of Trustees.

This great gift delighted Booker Washington not only for what it meant directly to his work, but because it so strikingly illustrated a truth which he had long and insistently impressed upon his staff and his students: namely, that if every dollar contributed were made to do the work of two, more dollars would be forthcoming from the same source.

The two events upon which Booker Washington's popular fame chiefly rests are his speech before the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Ga., in 1895, and the publication of “Up from Slavery” five years later. Since “Up from Slavery” played so great a part in aiding its author to secure funds for his work it seems appropriate to give here some account of how it came to be written, how it was written, and how it was received.

In the year 1900 the editors of the Outlook decided to illustrate in the concrete the opportunities of America by getting some of the Americans of greatest achievement to tell how they had risen by their own efforts from the very depths of untoward circumstances. For this purpose they selected Jacob A Riis and Booker T. Washington. After much hesitancy on his part and urgency on theirs Booker Washington finally agreed to write the story of his life for serial publication in the Outlook. His hesitancy was due merely to the fact that he could not believe that the events of his life would be of any interest to the public. So convinced was he in this belief that he had the greatest difficulty in starting to write even after he had agreed to do so. Finally, after a particularly urgent letter from the editors, he stole some hours from his absorbing and exacting duties at Tuskegee to write the first chapter. After these efforts had been typewritten by his stenographer they produced only three and one-half pages—an amount of copy discouragingly inadequate for the first installment. He mailed the material, however, with a line of apology for its inadequacy and promising to send more the next day. On receipt of this scant initial copy the editors wrote him a letter of congratulation and approval which greatly encouraged him, in spite of his heavy and unrelenting administrative duties, to push ahead with new courage. Notwithstanding, however, the best intentions on the part of the writer and the most patiently insistent reminders on the part of the editors there were many and wide gaps in the supposedly consecutive series of chapters before the story was finally finished. Much of the story he dragged from his tired brain, and jotted down on odds and ends of paper on trains, while waiting in railway stations, in hotels, and in ten and fifteen minute intervals snatched from overburdened days in his office. The fact that it was a physical impossibility to give adequate time and attention to so important a piece of work distressed him and made him feel even more apologetic about the product.

The enthusiastic reception of his story by the editors and later by the public was accordingly particularly surprising and gratifying to him. After its serial publication he was soon almost overwhelmed with congratulatory letters and laudatory reviews. Julian Ralph in the New York Mail and Express wrote in part:

“It does not matter if the reader feels a prejudice against the Negro, or if he be a Negrophile, or if he has never cared one way or the other whether the Negro does or does not exist. Whatever be his feelings, ‘Up from Slavery’ is as remarkable as the most important book ever written by an American. That book is ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin.’ Booker Washington's story is its echo and its antithesis. ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’ was the wail of a fettered, hope-forsaken race. ‘Up from Slavery’ is the triumphant cry of the same race, led by its Moses upon a trail which leads to an intelligent use of the freedom that came to it as an almost direct result of Mrs. Stowe's revolutionary novel. ‘Up from Slavery’ and ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’ are inseparably linked in the history of our relations with our dark-skinned fellow-citizen. One book begins precisely where the other left off.”

William Dean Howells in the North American Review said of it: “. . . What strikes you first and last is his constant common sense. He has lived heroic poetry, and he can, therefore, afford to talk simple prose. . . . The mild might of his adroit, his subtle statesmanship (in the highest sense it is not less than statesmanship, and involves a more Philippine problem in our midst), is the only agency to which it can yield. . . .”

Among the congratulatory letters came one from Athens, Greece, signed “Bob Burdette, Mrs. Burdette, and the children” which greatly amused and delighted Mr. Washington. It reads, paraphrasing the passage in the book where he tells of the insistent stranger who unerringly seeks him out when he tries to get a little quiet and rest on a train, “‘Is not this Booker T. Washington? We wish to introduce ourselves.’ You see, you can't escape it. We read that sentence, and shouted with delight over it, in Damascus. I was going to write—‘far-away Damascus’ —but no place is far away now. Damascus is very near to Tuskegee, in fact, only six or seven thousand years older, and not more than fifty thousand years behind. It must have had a good start, too, for Abraham went there or sent there to get that wise and tactful ‘steward of his house’ Eliezir. But Damascus has always remained in the same place, whereas Tuskegee has been marching on by leaps and bounds. But you are a busy man—we have heard that, even in this land. And I can see you reading this letter five lines at a time. No use sitting next the window, piling your hand-baggage up in the seat, and pulling your hat over your eyes, is there? No, for we come along just the same, sit on the arm of the seat, touch your elbow, and —‘Is not this Booker T. Washington?’ We have been travelling for a year. The Outlook has followed us week by week. And week by week we have reached out to clasp your hand, and have knelt to thank God for the story of your life—for its inspiration, its hopefulness, its trust, its fidelity to duty and purpose. Such a wonderful story, told in the elegance of simplicity that only a great heart can feel and write. We paused again and again to say ‘God bless him.’ And now we send you our hand clasp and message—‘God bless him and all of his.’ There, now! You may pile up your baggage a little higher—pull your hat down over your eyes a little farther—and pretend to sleep a little harder. We will leave you. But not in peace. More likely in pieces. For I see other people, crowding in from the other car, with their glittering eyes gimleted upon you.”

The Treasurer also submitted a daily report of contributions and other receipts of the previous day with the name and address of each contributor. Mr. Washington arranged to receive and look over these daily reports even when travelling. Hence, in a sense, he was never absent. Only very rarely and under most unusual circumstances did he cut this means of daily contact with the multifold activities of the institution.

Although a task master, a driver, and a relentless critic, he was just in his dealings with his subordinates and his students, very appreciative of kindness or thoughtfulness, and generous in his approbation of tasks well done. Three of the younger children of officers of the school, while out walking with one of their teachers, discovered a fire in the woods near the Institute one day. After notifying the men working nearby, the children hurried home and wrote Mr. Washington a letter telling him about the fire. They had heard him warn people against the danger of forest fires and of the great harm they did. This letter the three children excitedly took to the Principal's home themselves, as it was on Sunday. He was not in, but the first letter he dictated on arriving at his office the next morning was this:

In the fall of the same year he addressed this letter of appreciation to Mr. Bridgeforth, director of the Agricultural Department, mentioned in the note of the children:

His quick mind and his keen sense of humor would sometimes lead him to make fun in a kindly way of his slower colleagues. The members of the Executive Council and the Faculty sometimes felt he treated them rather too much as if he were the teacher and they the pupils. His frequent humorous sallies and stories exasperated some of the more serious-minded members of his staff very much as Lincoln's sallies and stories exasperated some of the members of his Cabinet, particularly Secretary Stanton. This sense of humor was undoubtedly with Booker Washington as with Abraham Lincoln one of the great safety valves without which he could not have carried his heavy burden as long as he did.

Among other things he always insisted that the human element be put into the work of the institution and kept in it. He would reprimand a subordinate just as sharply for failure to be human as for a specific neglect of duty. He was particularly insistent that all letters to the parents of the students should be intimate and friendly rather than formal and stereotyped. He believed that nothing would more quickly or more surely kill the effectiveness of the school than the application of cut-and-dried theories and formulas to the handling of the students and their problems. He never lost sight of the fact that the most perfect educational machine becomes worthless if the soul goes out of it.

On his return from trips he would write a personal letter about their boy or girl to each parent whom he had met while away. After he had addressed a meeting and was shaking hands with those who came forward to meet him a man would say, as one once did, with embarrassed pride, “I 'spec you know my boy—he's down to your school. He's a tall, black boy an' wears a derby hat.” When Mr. Washington got back to Tuskegee he sent for “the tall, black boy” with the derby hat and wrote his proud father all about him.

On his return from journeys he would write individual letters not only to the parents of students and to his hosts and hostesses, but to each and every person who had tried in any way to contribute to the pleasure and success of his trip. On returning from the State educational tours which we have described he would write personal letters of thanks and appreciation not only to every member of the general committee on arrangements which had managed his tour throughout the State, but also to every member of the local committees for the various towns and cities which he visited. He would also write such a letter to the Governor or Mayor or whatever public official or prominent citizen had introduced him. Usually on these tours school children, or a group of women representing a local colored women's club, would present him with flowers. He would in such cases insist that the name of each child or each woman in the group be secured so that he might on his return write to each one a personal letter of thanks. Many such letters are now among the treasured possessions of humble Negro homes throughout the country.

Recognizing that Tuskegee's chief claim to support from the public must be found in the achievements of her graduates he built up the Division of Records and Research to keep in constant touch with the graduates and gather information about them and their work. By this means he could find out in detail at a moment's notice what most of the graduates were doing and in terms of statistics what all were doing. Eighteen to twenty of them are building up or conducting schools on the model of Tuskegee Institute in parts of the South where they are most needed. With these he naturally sought to keep in particularly close touch.

With funds provided for the purpose by one of the Tuskegee Trustees, committees of Tuskegee officers and teachers are sent from time to time to visit these schools established by Tuskegee graduates. They act as friendly inspectors and advisers. The following is the plan of report drafted for the guidance of these committees: