Many requests have been made of me to write something of the story of my life. Until recently I have never given much consideration to these requests, for the reason that I have never thought that I had done enough in the world to warrant anything in the way of an autobiography; and I hope that my life work, by reason of my present age, lies more in the future than in the past. My daughter, Portia, said to me, not long ago: “Papa, do you know that you have never told me much about your early life, and your children want to know more about you.” Then it came upon me as never before that I ought to put something about my life in writing for the sake of my family, if for no other reason.

I will not trouble those who read these lines with any lengthy historical research concerning my ancestry, for I know nothing of my ancestry beyond my mother. My mother was a slave on a plantation near Hale's Ford, in Franklin County,

I am indebted to and beg to thank Mr. E. Webber for valuable assistance rendered in connection with the preparation of this publication. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.

We began life in West Virginia in a little shanty, and lived in it for several years. My step-father soon obtained work for my brother John and myself in the salt furnaces and coal mines, and we worked alternately in them until about the year 1871. Soon after we reached West Virginia a school teacher, Mr. William Davis, came into the community, and the colored people induced him to open a school. My step-father was not able to spare me from work, so that I could attend this school, when it was first opened, and this proved a sore disappointment to me. I remember that soon after going to Malden, West Virginia, I saw a young colored man among a large number of colored people, reading a newspaper, and this fired my ambition to learn to read as nothing had done before. I said to myself, if I could ever reach the point where I could read as this man was doing, the acme of my ambition would be reached. Although I could not attend the school, I remember that, in some way, my mother secured a book for me, and although she could not read herself, she tried in every way possible to help me to do so.

Every barrel of salt that was packed in the mines was marked, and by watching the letters that were put on the salt barrels I soon learned to read. As time went on, after considerable persuasion on my part, my step-father consented to permit me to attend the public school half of the day, provided I would get up very early in the morning and perform as much work as possible before school time. This permission brought me great joy. By four o'clock in the morning I was up and at my work, which continued until nearly nine o'clock. The first day I entered school, it seems to me, was the happiest day that I have ever known. The first embarrassment I experienced at school was in the matter of finding a name for myself. I had always been called “Booker,” and had not known that one had use for more than one name. Some of the slaves took the surnames of their owners, but after freedom there was a prejudice against doing this, and a large part of the colored people gave themselves new names. When the teacher called the roll, I noticed that be called each pupil by two names, that is a given name and a surname. When he came to me he asked for my full name, and I told him to put me down as “Booker Washington,” and that name I have borne ever since. It is not every school boy who has the privilege of choosing his own name. In introducing me to an audience in Essex Hall, London, during my visit to Europe, in the summer of 1899, Honorable Joseph H. Choate, the American Ambassador, said that I was one of the few Americans that had had the opportunity of choosing his own name, and in exercising the rare privilege I had very naturally chosen the best name there was in the list.

My step-father seemed to be over careful that I should continue my work in the salt furnace until nine o'clock each day. This practice made me late at school, and often caused me to miss my lessons. To overcome this I resorted to a practice of which I am not now very proud, and it is one of the few things I did as a child of which I am now ashamed. There was a large clock in the salt furnace that kept the time for hundreds of workmen connected with the salt furnace and coal mine. But, as I found myself continually late at school, and after missing some of my lessons, I yielded to the temptation to move forward the hands on the dial of the clock so as to give enough time to permit me to get to school in time. This went on for several days, until the manager found the time so unreliable that the clock was locked up in a case.

It was in Malden that I first found out what a Sunday school meant. I remember that I was playing marbles one Sunday morning in the road with a number of other boys, and an old colored man passed by on his way to Sunday school. He spoke a little harshly to us about playing marbles on Sunday, and asked why we did not go to Sunday school. He explained in a few broken though plain words what a Sunday school meant and what benefit we would get from it by going. His words impressed me so that I put away my marbles and followed him to Sunday school, and thereafter was in regular attendance. I remember that, some years afterwards, I became one of the teachers in this Sunday school and finally became its superintendent.

No matter how dark the days or how discouraging the circumstances, there was never a time in my youth when the firm resolution to secure an education, at any cost, did not constantly remain with me. Next came the unpleasant coal mine experience.

My step-father was not able, however, to permit me to continue in school long, even for a half day at the time. I was soon taken out of school and put to work in the coal mine. As a child I recall now the fright which, going a long distance under the mountain into a dark and damp coal mine, gave me. It seemed to me that the distance from the opening of the mine to the place where I had to work was at least a mile and a half. Although I had to leave school I did not give up my search for knowledge. I took my book into the coal mine, and during the spare minutes I tried to read by the light of the little lamp which hung on my cap. Not long after I began to work in the mines my mother hired some one to teach me at night, but often, after walking a considerable distance for a night's lesson, I found that my teacher knew but little more than I did. This, however, was not the case with Mr. William Davis, my first teacher.

After working in the coal mine for some time, my mother secured a position for me as house boy in the family of General Lewis Ruffner. I went to live with this family with a good many fears and doubts. General Ruffner's wife, Mrs. Viola Ruffner, had the reputation of being very strict and hard to please, and most of the boys who had been employed by her had remained only a short time with her. After remaining with Mrs. Ruffner a while, I grew weary of her exact manner of having things done, and, without giving her any notice, I ran away and hired myself to a steamboat captain who was plying a boat between Malden and Cincinnati. Mrs. Ruffner was a New England woman, with all the New England ideas about order, cleanliness and truth. The boat captain hired me as a waiter, but before the boat had proceeded many miles towards Cincinnati he found that I knew too little about waiting on the table to be of any service, so he discharged me before I had been on his boat for many hours.

After my mother and brother John had secured me a few extra garments, with what I could provide for myself, I started for Hampton, about the first of October, 1872. How long I was on this journey I have at this time no very definite idea. Part of the way I went by railroad, part in a stage, and part on foot. I remember that when I got as far as Richmond, Virginia, I was completely out of money, and knew not a single person in the city. Besides, I had never been in a city before. I think it was about nine o'clock at night that I reached Richmond. I was hungry, tired and dirty, and had no where to go. I wandered about the streets until about midnight, when I felt completely exhausted.

By chance I came to a street that had a plank sidewalk, and I crept under this sidewalk and spent the night. The next morning I felt very much rested, but was still quite hungry, as it had been some time since I had a good meal. When I awoke, I noticed some ships not far from where I had spent the night. I went to one of these vessels and asked the captain to permit me to work for him, so that I could earn some money to get some food. The captain very kindly gave me work, which was that of helping to unload pig iron from the vessel. In my rather weak and hungry condition I found this hard work, but I stuck to it, and was given enough money to buy a little food. My work seemed to have pleased the master of the vessel so much that he furnished me with work for several days, but I continued to sleep under the sidewalk each night, for I was anxious to save enough money to pay my passage to Hampton.

After working on this vessel for some days, I started again for Hampton, and arrived there in a day or two, with a surplus of fifty cents in my pocket. I did not let any one know how forlorn my condition was. I feared that if I did, I would be rejected as one that was altogether too unpromising. The first person I saw after reaching the Hampton Institute was Miss Mary F. Mackie, the Lady Principal. After she had asked me many searching questions, with a good deal of doubt and hesitation in her manner, I was assigned to a room. She remarked at the same time that it would be decided later whether I could be admitted as a student. I shall not soon forget the impression that the sight of a good, clean, comfortable room and bed made upon me, for I had not slept in a bed since I left my home in West Virginia. Within a few hours I presented myself again before Miss Mackie to hear my fate, but she still seemed to be undecided. Instead of telling me whether or not I could remain, I remember, she showed me a large recitation room and told me to sweep it. I felt at once that the sweeping of that room would decide my case. I knew I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner had taught me that art well. I think that I must have swept that room over as many as three times, and dusted it the same number of times. After awhile Miss Mackie came into the room and rubbed her handkerchief over the tables and benches to see if I had left any dust, but not a particle could she find. She remarked with a smile, “I guess we will try you as a student.” At that moment I think I was the happiest individual that ever entered the Hampton Institute.

After I had been at the Hampton Institute a day or two I saw General Armstrong, the Principal, and he made the impression upon me of being the most perfect specimen of man, physically, mentally and spiritually, that I had ever seen; and I have never had occasion to change my first impression. In fact, as the years went by and as I came to know him better, the feeling grew. I have never seen a man in whom I had such confidence. It never occurred to me that it was possible for him to fail in anything that he undertook to accomplish. I have sometimes thought that the best part of my education at Hampton was obtained by being permitted to look upon General Armstrong day by day. He was a man who could not endure for a minute hypocrisy or want of truth in any one. This moral lesson he impressed upon every one who came in contact with him.

After I had succeeded in passing my “sweeping examination,” I was assigned by Miss Mackie to the position of assistant janitor. This position, with the exception of working on the farm for awhile, I held during the time I was a student at Hampton. I took care of four or five class rooms; that is, I swept and dusted them and built the fires when needed. A great portion of the time I had to rise at four o'clock in the morning in order to do my work and find time to prepare my lessons.

Everything was very crude at Hampton when I first went there. There were about two hundred students. There was but one substantial building, together with some old government barracks. There were no table cloths on the meal tables, and that which was called tea or coffee was served to us in yellow bowls. Corn bread was our chief food. Once a week we got a taste of white bread.

Before starting for Tuskegee I found it almost impossible to find the town on any map, and had difficulty in learning its exact location. I reached Tuskegee about the middle of June, 1881 I found it to be a town of some 2,000 inhabitants, about half of whom were Negroes, and located in what is commonly called the “Black Belt,” that is, the section of the South where the Negro race largely outnumbers the white population. The county in which Tuskegee is located is named Macon. Of Tuskegee and Macon County I prefer to quote the words of Maj. W. W. Screws, the editor of the “Montgomery (Alabama) Daily Advertiser,” who visited Tuskegee in 1898, seventeen years after the Tuskegee Institute was founded. Maj. Screws says:

“Just at this time there is probably no place in the United States, of similar size, so well known to the people of the country, as this lovely little city. It has always possessed merits which brought it conspicuously before Alabamians, for in every locality in this and many Southern States are noble men and women who received their educational training here.

“Thomas S. Woodward was one of the earliest white settlers in Macon County, and was one of the commissioners appointed to lay off the site for the court house. He built the first house in the new town, which they called Tuskegee, a corruption of the old Indian name, Tuskigi, which is said by Dr. Gatschet to be a contraction of Taskialgi (warriors). The old Indian town stood in the fork of the Coosa and was the home, part of the time, of the famous half-breed statesman, Alexander McGillivray. The name passed in its present form to the county seat of the new county.

“Tuskegee was settled by men who were well to do in a material point of view. They owned rich lands on the creeks and streams and in the prairie section of the county. This point is on a high, dry ridge, and from time immemorial has been noted for its healthfulness. Here came those who wished to build homes for their families, to have congenial company and to give their children educational advantages. They did not desire the projectors of the Montgomery and West Point, Railroad to put the town on its route, because of the interruption it was feared would be occasioned to the schools. From the very beginning of its existence, education has been the main feature of Tuskegee, and through its schools and colleges a population gathered here which has never been excelled in point of refinement, politeness and all the gentle amenities which tend to make life comfortable.

“The town of Tuskegee was first settled about 1830. James Dent built the first house. The town was first laid out in 1833. Mr. G. W. Campbell came to the county with his father from Montgomery in 1835, and at that time perhaps 150 people were in and about what now comprises Tuskegee's territorial limits. There was no court house building, and court sessions were held in a small log house with a dirt floor. When court was not in session the building was used as a school house. The Creek Indians were in great numbers in the neighborhood, but they were friendly and peaceful, and in 1836 commenced to move to their far Western home, going overland to Montgomery, where they took steamer for New Orleans. Tuskegee is one of the model towns in the way of good order.

“Among the white settlers here are Dr. W. J. Gautier, and Messrs. G. W. Campbell, J. W. Bilbro, J. O. A. Adams and W. H. Wright. They have a perfect wealth of interesting reminiscence connected with the early days of all East Alabama. Although they have passed the three score years, they are hale, healthy men, engaged in business, and set a splendid example of energy and active life to the younger generation. The firm of Campbell & Wright has been in existence, possibly, longer than any other in Alabama.

“The Montgomery and West Point Railroad is about five miles distant from Tuskegee, the nearest station being Chehaw: From there to Tuskegee, until about twenty years ago, the usual mode of conveyance for passengers and baggage was stage coach and omnibus; while all goods were transported by wagon. It was a tiresome, troublesome and expensive method. This difficulty has been overcome through the Tuskegee Railroad which now connects the two points.

“The population of Macon County before 1860, was largely heavy landed proprietors. They suffered immensely by the results of the war from disorganized labor, and reverses stripped them of much of their property. The county is almost exclusively agricultural, and the average yield year by year, of corn, cotton, peas, potatoes and other things grown on well regulated farms, is fairly good.”

When I reached Tuskegee, I found that Mr. Lewis Adams, a colored man of great intelligence and thrift, who was born a slave near Tuskegee, had first started the movement to have some kind of Normal School in Tuskegee for the education of colored youth. At the time he conceived this idea Hon. W. F. Foster and Hon. A. L. Brooks, both white Democrats, were members of the Alabama Legislature, and Mr. Adams so interested them in the movement that they promised to use their influence in the Legislature to secure an annual appropriation of $2,000 toward the expenses of a Normal School, provided one could be properly organized and started. Mr. Foster and Mr. Brooks were successful in their efforts to secure the appropriation, which was limited in its use to helping to pay teachers. A Board of three Commissioners was appointed to control the expenditure of this $2,000. When the school was first started this board consisted of Mr. Geo. W. Campbell, Mr. M. B. Swanson and Mr. Lewis Adams. After the death of Mr. Swanson, Mr. C. W. Hare was elected in his stead.

When I reached Tuskegee, the only thing that had been done toward the starting of a school was the securing of the $2,000. There was no land, building, or apparatus. I opened the school, however, on the 4th of July, 1881, in an old church and a little shanty that was almost ready to fall down from decay. On the first day there was an attendance of thirty students, mainly those who had been engaged in teaching in the Public schools of that vicinity. But these little buildings, inadequate as they were, were most gladly furnished by the colored people, who from the first day that I went to Tuskegee to the present time have done everything within their power to further the interests of the school.

One curious thing that happened in connection with the students was, as additional pupils began to come in, that some of them had been attending schools taught by some of those who came to the Tuskegee school, and, in several cases, it happened that former pupils entered higher classes than their former teachers.

After the school had been in session in the old church and little shanty for several months, I began to see the necessity of having a permanent location for the institution, where we could have the students not only in their class rooms, but get hold of them in their home life, and teach them how to take care of their bodies in the matter of bathing, care of the teeth, and in general cleanliness. We also felt that we must not only teach the students how to prepare their food, but how to serve and eat it properly. So long as we had the students only a few hours in the class room during the day, we could give attention to none of these important matters, which our students had not had an opportunity of learning before leaving their homes. Few of the students who came during the first year were able to remain during the nine months' session, for lack of money, so we felt the necessity of having industries where the students could pay a part of their board in cash. It was rather noticeable that, notwithstanding the poverty of most of the students who came to us in the earlier months of the institution, most of them had the idea of getting an education in order that they might find some method of living without manual labor; that is, they had the feeling that to work with the hands was not conducive to the development of the highest type of lady or gentleman. This feeling we wanted to change as fast as possible, by teaching students the dignity, beauty and civilizing power of intelligent labor.

After a few months had passed, I wrote Gen. J. F. B. Marshall, at that time treasurer of the Hampton Institute, and put our condition before him, telling him that there was an abandoned farm about a mile from the town of Tuskegee in the market which I could secure at a very cheap price for our institution. As I had absolutely no money with which to make the first payment on the farm, I summoned the courage to ask Gen. Marshall to lend me $500 with which to make the first payment. To my surprise a letter came back in a few days enclosing a check for $500. A contract was made for the purchase of the farm, which at that time consisted of 100 acres. Subsequent purchases and gifts of adjacent lands have increased the number of acres at this place to 700, and this is the present site of the Tuskegee Institute. This has again been enlarged from time to time by purchases and gifts of land not adjacent until at present the school owns farm lands to the number of about 2,500 acres.

After the school had been in session three months, Miss Olivia A. Davidson, a graduate of the Hampton Institute and later a graduate of the Framingham, Mass., Normal School, was employed as an assistant teacher.

Miss Davidson was teaching among her people near Memphis, Tennessee, in 1879, when the yellow fever drove her away. She went to Hampton, entered the senior class and graduated the following spring. She did not go to Hampton, however, until her application to return to Memphis to help nurse the yellow fever patients had been refused by the authorities there. Through friends she was able to enter the Normal School at Framingham, Massachusetts, and graduated in the summer of 1881; and, when an assistant at Tuskegee was called for, she accepted the work. Her enthusiasm had won the admiration of her schoolmates, and from them she received much assistance for the school at Tuskegee in after years.

The success of the school, especially during the first half dozen years of its existence, was due more to Miss Davidson than any one else. During the organization of the school and in all matters of discipline she was the one to bring order out of every difficulty. When the last effort had apparently been exhausted and it seemed that things must stop, she was the one to find a way out. Not only was this true at the school, but when a campaign for money had ended unsuccessfully, she would start for the North, and money was sure to be found.

Our hardest struggle began after we had made the first payment on the farm. We not only had to secure the money within a few months with which to repay Gen. Marshall's loan, but had to get the means with which to meet future payments, and also to erect a building on the farm. Miss Davidson went among the white and colored families in Tuskegee and told them our plans and needs, and there were few of either race who did not contribute either something in cash or something that could be turned into cash at the many festivals and fairs which were held for the purpose of raising money to help the school. In many cases the white ladies in Tuskegee contributed chickens or cakes that were sold for the benefit of our new enterprise. I do not believe there was a single Negro family or scarcely an individual in Tuskegee or its vicinity that did not contribute something in money or in kind to the school. These contributions were most gladly made, and often at a great sacrifice.

Perhaps I might as well say right here that one of the principal things which made it easy to start

From 1884 to 1894 comparatively little was heard of the school in the public press, yet that was a period of constant and solid growth. In 1884 the enrollment was 169. In 1894 the enrollment had increased to 712, and 54 officers and teachers were employed. Besides the growth in the number of students and instructors, there had also been quite an increase in the number of buildings, and in every way the students were made more comfortable in their surroundings. By 1893 we had upon the school grounds thirty buildings of various kinds and sizes, practically all built by the labor of the students.

Between 1884 and 1894, I think, the hardest work was done in securing money. Regularly, during this period, we were compelled, on account of lack of accommodations, to refuse many students, but very often they would come to us under such circumstances that, though lacking in accommodations, we could not have the heart to turn them away, especially after they had traveled long distances, as was true in many cases. Students seemed willing to put up with almost any kind of accommodations if they were given a chance to secure an education.

During this period either Miss Davidson or myself, or sometimes both of us, spent a great deal of time in the North getting funds with which to meet our ever increasing demands. This, of course, was the hardest and most trying part of the work. Beginning early in the morning, the day was spent in seeing individuals at their homes or in their offices; and in the evening, and sometimes during the day, too, addresses were delivered before churches, Sunday Schools, or other organizations. On many occasions I have spoken as many as five times at different churches on the same Sabbath.

The large increase in the number of students tempted us often to put up buildings for which we had no money. In the early days of the institution by far the larger proportion of the buildings were begun on faith. I remember at one time we began a building which cost in the end about $8,000, and we had only $200 in cash with which to pay for it; nevertheless the building was completed after a hard struggle and is now in constant use.

I remember at one time we were very much in need of money with which to meet pressing obligations. I borrowed $400 from a friend, with the understanding that the money must be returned within thirty days. On the morning of the day that the thirty days expired we were without the $400 with which to repay the loan, and were, of course, very much depressed in consequence. The mail, however, came in at about eleven o'clock, and brought a check from a friend for exactly $400. I could give a number of other such instances illustrating how we were relieved from embarrassing circumstances in ways that have always seemed to me to have been providential. Although the institution has had occasion many times to give promissory notes in order to meet its obligations, there has never been a single instance when any of its notes have gone to protest, and its credit and general financial standing have always been good with the commercial world. I have felt deeply obligated to the white and colored citizens of Tuskegee for their kindness in helping the school financially when it did not have money to meet its obligations. We have never applied to an individual or to either of the banks in Tuskegee for aid that we did not get it when the banks or individuals were able to aid us. The banks have been more than kind, often seemingly inconveniencing themselves in order to be of service to our institution. In the earlier days of the institution, when we had little in the way of income, on several occasions I have started to the depot, when I had to make a journey away from Tuskegee, with no money in my pocket, but felt perfectly sure of meeting a friend in the town of Tuskegee from whom I could get money, and I have never been disappointed in this respect.

In 1883 we received our first donation Of $500 from the Peabody Fund, through Dr. J. L. M. Curry, the General Agent. At that time Dr. Curry formed his first acquaintance with Tuskegee; and, as I have stated elsewhere, from then until now he has been one of our warmest and most helpful friends. The amount received from the Peabody Fund has since been increased until it now amounts to twelve or fifteen hundred dollars each year.

In connection with this appropriation from the Peabody Fund it may be interesting to relate a conversation which took place between Dr. Curry and one of the State officers at Montgomery, Alabama. The State officer in question was telling Dr. Curry that there were several other schools in the state that needed help more than Tuskegee did; and that, because Tuskegee, through the efforts of its teachers, was receiving money from the North and elsewhere which other schools were not getting, he thought we were not entitled to help from the Peabody Fund. Dr. Curry promptly replied that because we were making an extra effort to get funds which other schools were not getting was the strongest reason why we should be helped; in other words, he told the officer plainly that we were trying to help ourselves, and for that reason he wanted us helped from the Peabody Fund.

Through the constant efforts of Miss Davidson and myself in the North and South, the financial report for the first two years of the school showed receipts amounting to $11,679.69. The rapid increase in the growth of the school and in the confidence with the people may be shown by the fact that, during the third year of the existence of the school, the receipts nearly doubled themselves as compared with the second year; we received the third year the sum of $10,482.78, which was nearly as much as we received during the two previous years. By far the larger proportion of this amount came in small sums; very often amounts came from individuals that were as small as fifty cents. One of the things that constantly touched and encouraged us during the early years of the school was the deep interest manifested in its success by the old and ignorant colored people in and near the town of Tuskegee. They never seemed to tire in their interest and efforts. They were constantly trying to do something to help forward the institution. Whenever they had a few chickens or eggs, for example, to spare, they would bring them in and make a present of them to the school.

The income of the institution for the fifth year amounted to $20,162.13; for the ninth year $30,326; for the eleventh year, $61,023.28; for the fourteenth year, $79,836.50.

At the end of the third year we were able to report that the school owned property unencumbered by debt that was valued at $30,000. During the third year Alabama Hall, to which I have already referred, was completed at a cost of $10,000.

The report of the school's history for the fourth year shows that we received from all sources $11,146.07. During that year we got into a very tight place financially, and hardly knew which way to turn for relief. In the midst of our perplexity I went to Gen. Armstrong, and he very kindly loaned the school money to help it out of its embarrassment, although I afterwards learned that it was nearly all of the money that he possessed in cash.

In my fourth annual report to the Trustees I used the following words: “Greater attention has been given to the industrial department this year than ever before. Three things are accomplished by the industrial system: (1) The student is enabled to pay a part of his expenses of board, books, etc., in labor; (2) He learns how to work; (3) He is taught the dignity of labor. In all the industrial branches the students do the actual work, under the direction of competent instructors.” I have not had occasion to change in any great degree the foregoing sentences as representing the purpose for which Tuskegee stands.

During the fifth year of our work we were able also to add a saw mill, through the generosity of Gen. J. F. B. Marshall, to whom I have already referred. The addition of this saw mill enabled us to saw a large part of the lumber used by the institution.

In order to give many worthy students an opportunity to secure an education by working at some trade or industry during the day and studying at night, we opened in the fall of 1883 our our first night school. The night school was opened with one teacher and one student. From this small beginning the night school has increased, until at this writing there are four hundred and fifty students. By working in the day and going to school at night, the night students earn money with which to pay their expenses the next year in day school, and if they bring a good supply of clothing they can earn enough, together with what they earn during vacation, to keep them in school two or three years after they enter day school.

I cannot better indicate the constant growth

In the spring of 1895 I was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation from the Fisk University Lecture Bureau, in Nashville, Tennessee, to deliver a lecture before that organization. Mr. Edgar Webber was the president, and presided at the meeting when I spoke. This was among the first addresses which I had delivered in the South that was fully reported by the Southern press. A full description of the meeting was given by the Nashville Daily American and the Nashville Banner, and papers throughout many portions of the South contained editorials based upon this address. It was also my first opportunity to speak before any large number of educated and representative colored people, and I accepted the invitation very reluctantly and went to Nashville with a good deal of fear and trembling, but my effort seemed to meet with the hearty approval of the greater portion of the audience.

As the address delivered at Fisk University on this occasion constitutes in a large measure the basis for many of my other addresses and much of the work I have tried to do, I give in full what the Nashville American said:

“An intelligent and appreciative audience composed of prominent colored citizens, students and quite a large number of white people, crowded the beautiful and commodious Fisk memorial chapel last night to hear Prof. Booker T. Washington lecture on ‘Industrial Education.’ The lecture was the first given under the auspices of the Student's Lecture Bureau of Fisk University, and was in every way a complete success. Mr. Washington is a powerful and convincing speaker. His simplicity and utter unselfishness, both in speech and action, are impressive. He speaks to the point. He does not waste words in painting beautiful pictures, but deals mostly with plain facts. Nevertheless, he is witty and caused his audience last night to laugh and applaud repeatedly the jokes and striking points of his address.

“Booker T. Washington is doing a great work for his race and the South. He has the right views.

“Prof. Washington was introduced by Edgar Webber, President of the Lecture Bureau, and among other things he said:

‘I am exceedingly anxious that every young man and woman should keep a hopeful and cheerfull spirit as to the future. Despite all of our disadvantages and hardships, ever since our forefathers set foot upon the American soil as slaves, our pathway has been marked by progress. Think of it: We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.

“‘I believe that we are to reach our highest development largely along the lines of scientific and industrial education. For the last fifty years education has tended in one direction, the cementing of mind to matter.’

“The speaker then said most people had the idea that industrial education was opposed to literary training, opposed to the highest development. He wanted to correct this error. He would choose the college graduate as the subject to receive industrial education. The more mind the subject had, the more satisfactory would be the results in industrial education. It requires as strong a mind to build a Corliss engine as it does to write a Greek grammar. Without industrial education, the speaker feared they would be in danger of getting too many ‘smart men’ scattered through the South. A young colored man in a certain town had been pointed out to him as being exceedingly smart, and he had heard of him as being very accomplished. Upon inquiry, however, he learned the young man applied his knowledge and training to no earthly good. ‘He was just a smart man, that was all.’

“Continuing, the speaker said: ‘As a race there are two things we must learn to do—one is to put brains into the common occupations of life, and the other is to dignify common labor. If we do not, we cannot hold our own as a race. Ninety per cent. of any race on the globe earns its living at the common occupations of life, and the Negro can be no exception to this rule.’

“Prof. Washington then illustrated the importance of this by citing the fact that while twenty years ago every large and paying barber shop over the country was in the hands of black men, today in all the large cities you cannot find a single large or first class barber shop operated by colored men. The black men had had a monopoly of that industry, but had gone on from day to day in the same old monotonous way, without improving anything about the industry. As a result the white man has taken it up, put brains into it, watched all the fine points, improved and progressed until his shop today was not known as a barber shop, but as a tonsorial parlor, and he was no longer called a barber, but a tonsorial artist. Just so the old Negro man with his bucket of whitewash and his long pole and brush had given way to the white man who had applied his knowledge of chemistry to mixing materials, his knowledge of physics to the blending of colors, and his knowledge of geometry to figuring and decorating the ceiling. But the white man was not called a whitewasher; he was called a house decorater. He had put brains into his work, had given dignity to it, and the old colored man with the long pole and bucket was a thing of the past. The old Negro woman and her wash tub were fast being supplanted by the white man with his steam laundry, washing over a hundred shirts an hour. The many colored men who had formerly earned a living by cutting the grass in the front yards and keeping the flower beds in trim were no competitors for the white man, who, bringing his knowledge of surveying and terracing and plotting land, and his knowledge of botany and blending colors into active play, had dignified and promoted the work. He was not called a grass cutter or a yard cleaner, but a florist or a landscape gardener. The old black ‘mammy’ could never again enter the sick-room, where she was once known as a peerless nurse. She had given place to the tidy little white woman, with her neat white cap and apron, her knowledge of physiology, bandaging, principles of diseases and the administration of medicine, who had dignified, beautified and glorified the art of nursing and had turned it into a profession. Just so, too, the black cook was going out of date under the influence of the superior knowledge and art of cookery possessed by white ‘chefs,’ who were educated men and commanded large salaries.

“‘Now,’ said the speaker, ‘what are we going to do? Are we going to put brains into these common occupations? Are we going to apply the knowledge we gain at school? Are we going to keep up with the world, or are we going to let these occupations, which mean our very life blood, slip from us? Education in itself is worthless; it is only as it is used that it is of value. A man might as well fill his head with so much cheap soup as with learning, unless he is going to use his knowledge.’

“Prof. Washington said that he had been told that the young colored man is cramped, and that after he gets his education there were few chances to use it. He had little patience with such argument. The idea had been too prevalent that the educated colored man must either teach, preach, be a clerk or follow some profession. The educated colored men must, more and more, go to the farms, into the trades, start brickyards, saw-mills, factories, open coal mines; in short apply their education to conquering the forces of nature.

“One trouble with the average Negro, said the speaker, was that he was always hungry, and it was impossible to make progress along educational, moral or religious lines while in that condition. It was a hard matter to make a Christian out of a hungry man. It had often been contended that the Negro needed no industrial education, because he already knew too well how to work. There never was a greater mistake, and the speaker compared, as an illustration, the white man with his up-to-date cultivator to the ‘one gallused’ Negro with his old plow, patched harness and stiff-jointed mule.

“The speaker was inclined to fear that the Negro race laid too much stress on their grievances and not enough on their opportunities. While many wrongs had been perpetrated on them in the South, still it was recognized by all intelligent colored people that the black man has far better opportunity to rise in his business in the South than in the North. While he might not be permitted to ride in the first-class car in the South, he was not allowed to help build that first class car in the North. He could sooner conquer Southern prejudice than Northern competition The speaker found that when it came to business, pure and simple, the black man in the South was put on the same footing with the white man, and here, said he, was the Negro's great opportunity. The black man could always find a purchaser for his wares among the whites.

“Prof. Washington concluded with an appeal to his race to use the opportunities that are right about them, and thus grow independent.

“He has made a lasting impression on the minds of all who heard him. If he continues his wonderful career he will be classed with Douglass as a benefactor to the Negro race.”

The Memphis Commercial-Appeal a few days after this address was delivered contained an editorial concerning it. I quote that in full because it is among the first editorials from a Southern newspaper concerning my addresses and the work at Tuskegee, and also because it shows that the efforts put forth at Tuskegee in behalf of industrial education for the Negro have had the effect of awakening not only the Negroes, but even the Southern whites, to the necessity of more education of this kind. The editorial is as follows:

“Prof. Booker T. Washington, a short time since, delivered an address before the students of Fisk University, in which he advocated industrial education for the Negro race. The address has received considerable attention and evoked many favorable comments, and the theme is one worthy of far more consideration than it has ever received in the South. Our interest in the matter, however does not particularly concern its application to the Negro. We are chiefly interested for the Southern whites and the South itself. The South is just about to enter an era of industrial development that will be almost without parallel. Its progress will be all the more rapid because of the long delay that has allowed other fields to be exhausted before the vast wealth of our natural resources began to be developed. The one great drawback to the development of the south has been the lack of skilled and educated labor, and in the great industrial awakening that is upon us, the skill to manage and operate our mills and factories and convert our abundant crude material into finished products must come from the North, unless something is done to educate our own people in the industrial arts. The opening of the eyes of the world to the vast natural wealth of the South will then simply mean that strangers will come in and dispossess our own people of their vintage and turn to their own account the opportunities we have never learned to employ. We must awake to the fact that we are face to face with a new civilization. The old order changeth, giving place to the new. We must adjust ourselves to the changed conditions, or be left behind in the march of progress. We must catch the spirit of modern progress and achievement, or be rooted out by those that have. The great men of this generation are not statesmen, lawyers, orators or poets. The richest rewards of intellectual effort go to those who know how to bring the forces of nature to aid the processes of production; in the natural era that is now upon us this will be especially true of the South. The men who have the capacity for taking active and effective part in the development of our resources, for the management of mills and factories, for contributing skilled labor to the fashioning of crude material into finished product, these are the men who will reap the mighty harvest and the men who will possess and rule our country. The same is true of the farm as well as the factory. The crude and unskilled methods of Southern agriculture must give way to more scientific tillage. If our own farmers cannot learn the lesson they must be displaced by those that know it.

“All the Southern States are doing much in the way of educating the people; but without disparaging the value of the learning obtained in our schools, how much of it goes to prepare the young for grappling with the conditions that surround them or will help to make them masters or successful workers in the great field of modern progress? Look at the vast wealth of undeveloped resources that encompasses almost every Southern community. Look at the fertile fields or the worn lands still in bondage to ignorant labor and an ante-bellum agricultural system. Will a knowledge of grammar or of Greek convert our coal, our iron and our timber into wealth, or make our fields bountiful with the harvest? The plain truth is that much of the learning obtained in our schools is wasted erudition. The young are not only not educated with reference to the conditions of the age, but their minds are carefully and systematically trained in other directions. They see no triumphs of intellect except in politics or the ‘learned professions.’ Their imaginations are inflamed by stories of how men from humble beginnings became great statesmen, great orators and great lawyers. The result is that thousands miserably fail because their little book learning has diverted them from occupations in which they might have achieved honorable success and even distinction. These men who might have become machinists become pettifogging lawyers, quack doctors or small-bore politicians. Industrial education is the great need of the South, because industrial skill and educated labor are to be the factors of its future progress, and these are to reap the richest rewards it will have to bestow. If our own children cannot be prepared to take their part in the great work, strangers will reap and enjoy the harvest.”

So much has been said and written concerning the address which I delivered at the opening of the Atlanta Exposition in September, 1895, that it may not be out of place for me to explain in some detail how and why I received the invitation to deliver this address.

In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram at Tuskegee from prominent citizens in Atlanta, asking me to accompany a committee composed of Atlanta people,—all white, I think, except Bishop Gaines and Bishop Grant,—to Washington to appear before the Committee on Appropriations for the purpose of inducing Congress to make an appropriation to help forward the Exposition which the citizens of Atlanta were at that time planning to hold. I accepted this invitation and went to Washington with the committee. A number of the white people in the delegation spoke, among them the Mayor and other officials of Atlanta, and then Bishop Gaines and Bishop Grant were called upon. My name was last, I think, on the list of speakers. I had never before appeared before such a committee, or made any address in the capitol of the Nation, and I had many misgivings as to what I should say and the impression I would make. While I cannot recall my speech, I remember that I tried to impress upon the Committee with all the earnestness and plainness of language that I could, that if Congress wanted to help the South do something that would rid it of the race problem and make friends between the two races it should in every way encourage the material and intellectual growth of both races, and that the Atlanta Exposition would present an opportunity for both races to show what they had done in the way of development since freedom, and would at the same time prove a great encouragement to both races to make still greater progress. I tried to emphasize the fact that political agitation alone would not save the Negro, that back of politics he must have industry, thrift, intelligence and property; that no race without these elements of strength could permanently succeed and gain the respect of its fellow citizens, and that the time had now come when Congress had an opportunity to do something for the Negro and the South that would prove of real and lasting benefit, and that I should be greatly disappointed if it did not take advantage of the opportunity. I spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes and was very much surprised at the close of my address

While the Atlanta Exposition was in progress, the State Constitutional Convention of South Carolina was in session, having been convened for the specific purpose of passing a law that would result in disfranchising the greater proportion of the Negro voters. While this Convention was in session, I addressed an open letter to Senator Benj. Tillman of South Carolina, which read as follows:

“I am no politician. I never made a political speech, and do not know as I ever shall make one, so it is not on a political subject that I address you. I was born a slave; you a free man. I am but an humble member of an unfortunate race; you are a member of the greatest legislative body on earth, and of the great intelligent Caucasian race. The difference between us is great, yet I do not believe you will scorn the appeal I make to you in behalf of the 650,000 of my race in your State, who are to-day suppliants at your feet, and whose destiny and progress for the next century you hold largely in your hands. I have been told that you are brave and generous, and one too great to harm the weak and dependent; that you represent the chivalry of the South, which has claimed no higher praise than that of being the protectors of the defenseless. I address you because I believe that you and those associated with you in convention, have been misunderstood in the following dispatch to a number of papers:

“‘An appalling fact that may not be obvious at a first glance, is that the course proposed means the end of Negro education and Negro progress in South Carolina. This is openly admitted by Senator Tillman and his friends.’

“It has been said that the truest test of the civilization of a race is the desire of the race to assist the unfortunate. Judged by this standard, the Southern States as a whole have reason to feel proud of what they have done in helping in the education of the Negro.

“I cannot believe that on the eve of the twentieth century, when there is more enlightenment, more generosity, more progress, more self-sacrifice, more love for humanity than ever existed in any other stage of the world's history, when our memories are pregnant with the scenes that took place at Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge but a few days ago, where brave men who wore the blue and gray clasped forgiving hands and pledged that henceforth the interests of one should be the interests of all—while the hearts of the whole South are centered upon the great city of Atlanta, where Southern people are demonstrating to the world in a practical way that it is the policy of the South to help and not to hinder the Negro—in the midst of all these evidences of good feeling among all races and all sections of the country, I cannot believe that you and your fellow members are engaged in constructing laws that will keep 650,000 of my weak, dependent and unfortunate race in ignorance, poverty and crime.

“You, honored Senator, are a student of history. Has there ever been a race that was helped by ignorance? Has there ever been a race that was harmed by Christian intelligence? It is agreed by some that the Negro schools should be practically closed because he cannot bear his proportion of this burden of taxation. Can an ignorant man produce taxable property faster than an intelligent man? Will capital and immigration be attracted to a State where three out of four are ignorant and where property and crime abound?

“Within a dozen years, the white people of South Carolina have helped in the education of hundreds of colored boys and girls at Clafflin University and smaller schools. Have these educated men and women hindered the State or hurt its reputation? It warms my heart as I read the messages of the Governors of Alabama, Georgia and other Southern States, and note their broad and statesman-like appeals for the education of all the people, none being so black or miserable as not to be reached by the beneficent hand of the State.

“Honored Sir, do not misunderstand me; I am not so selfish as to make this appeal to you in the interest of my race alone, for, thank God, a white man is as near to my heart as a black man; but I appeal to you in the interest of humanity. ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ It is my belief that were it the purpose of your convention, as reported, to practically close Negro school-houses by limiting the support of these schools to the paltry tax that the Negro is able to pay out of his ignorance and poverty after but thirty years of freedom, his school-houses would not close. Let the world know it, and there would be such an inflowing of money from the pockets of the charitable from all sections of our country and other countries, as would keep the light of the school-houses burning on every hill and in every valley in South Carolina. I believe, Senator Tillman, that you are too great and magnanimous to permit this. I believe the people of South Carolina prefer to have a large part in the education of their own citizens; prefer to have them educated to feel grateful to South Carolina for the larger part of their education rather than to outside parties wholly. This question I leave with you. The black yeomanry of your State will be educated. Shall South Carolina do it, or shall it be left to others? Here in my humble home, in the heart of the South, I beg to say that I know something of the great burden the Southern people are carrying, and sympathize with them; and I feel that I know the Southern people, and am convinced that the best white people in South Carolina and the South are determined to help lift up the Negro.

“In addressing you this simple message, I am actuated by no motive save a desire that your State, in attempting to escape a burden, shall not add one that will be ten fold more grievous, and that we all shall so act in the spirit of Him who when on earth went about doing good, that we shall have in every part of our beloved South, a contented, intelligent and prosperous people.”

Soon after the Exposition, in reply to a request from the editor, I addressed the following letter to the Atlanta journal on the benefits of the Exposition:

“Without doubt the Atlanta Exposition has helped the cause of the Negro. Before the event there was much honest difference of opinion among members of the race as to the advisability of our taking any part whatever. Many of the objectors earnestly advocated by word of mouth and through the press the policy of ‘hands off;’ others as much opposed participation, yet kept silent, and, so far as public expression was concerned, maintained a neutral position. From the one class no help was received by those trying to collect an exhibit; from the other, direct opposition was encountered. By reason of these disadvantages, the Negro exhibit, while highly creditable under the circumstances, was not by any means what it would have been had there been unanimity of purpose and concentrated action. There is, however, little difference of opinion, either within the race or outside of it, as to the good resulting from the Negro's part in the Exposition. Many, who for various reasons did not sanction a Negro exhibit, are inclined now to favor our embracing, as they are offered, these opportunities for showing of what we are capable along the various lines of activity. Others, still holding to what they consider the logic of their position, yet concede and rejoice in the good accomplished.

“In the first instance, this Exposition has given the colored people an insight into their ability to accomplish something by united effort. There are two points to consider in this statement; that the colored people have been helped to a fuller knowledge of their capabilities, and that they have been taught a practical lesson in the value of co-operation. Neither of these points can be too much emphasized. Without self-confidence, self-respect, a certain amount of self-assurance of the proper kind, nothing can be achieved, either by an individual or by a race. We must believe in ourselves, if we would have people believe in us. If we wonder, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ what must we expect of others?

“Of but little less importance is the expressive example afforded of the power of co-operation. Mutual distrust, disinclination to unite forces, and inability to carry on concentrated action, belong to the dark days and are the badges of inferiority. We shall rise largely in proportion as we learn to join hands and to further mutual interests by joint action. The very effort to do something, to make something, in connection with the Exposition, regardless of intrinsic value of the thing produced or achieved, has been helpful and developing in its tendencies. We learn by doing and ‘rise on stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things.’

“The Exposition has also given thousands of white people, North and South, opportunities to see some of the best results of the Negro's advancement. It is a fact that always has been recognized and deplored by the better element of the colored people, that most white people see and know only the worse phase of Negro character. They live side by side with the brother in black and yet have no acquaintance with him beyond the slight knowledge gained of those serving them in menial capacities. So, perhaps, the entire race is judged by a few individuals who have had little or no opportunities for advancement along any of the lines that make for a higher civilization. The homes of culture, the work of the school, the progress in the industries, in the arts, in all things that tend to prove the Negro a man among men, have been as a sealed book to the vast majority of the white people in all sections of our country, and the adverse judgments that have been formed as to the Negro's worth and ability may be attributed more to an unfortunate ignorance and blindness on the subject than to any intention or desire to be unjust. Of no class of people, probably, is this truer than of the class commonly known as the ‘poor whites’ of the South. It was both interesting and amusing to view their surprise as they entered the Negro building at Atlanta, and to listen to the exclamations of astonishment which escaped them as they walked around and observed the exhibits. ‘What, this the work of niggers!’ Race prejudice received a heavy blow at Atlanta. The white man left with increased respect for the Negro, and he will show it in his future dealings with the members of the race. The Negro in turn, appreciative of the recognition accorded him, will entertain more cordial feelings toward those showing him such consideration. The Exposition brought the Negro prominently before the country. The attention of the press was drawn to him. Leading scientists and educators sat in judgment on the products of his brain and skill, ranged side by side with those of his white competitors for honors. His position as a part of the body politic was emphasized as never before. The impression his exhibit made was not such as to render him, in the eyes of the country, less desirable as a citizen than he had seemed before. On the contrary, his capabilities in various directions have been strikingly exemplified, and it has been demonstrated that he can measure up to the full stature of a man.

“As might have been anticipated, the showing made by the school was most creditable. The friends and advancers of Negro education must have felt that their bounty has not been misplaced. Especially must the great heart of the generous North have glowed with gratification. It is an interesting fact that out of the four highest awards, that of the gold medal made to educational institutions, two went to colored schools—Hampton and Tuskegee.

One of the most helpful things accomplished during the year 1896 was an exhibit of the industrial products of the Tuskegee Institute made in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia, in connection with a similar exhibit from the Hampton Institute. The Armstrong Association in New York City was instrumental in bringing about this exhibit. A large number of people who had no idea of the extent of our industrial work had an opportunity at these exhibits to see for themselves just what was being done by Hampton and Tuskegee. Our industrial exhibit included wagons, carriages and wearing apparel of all kinds, manufactured by the students. The exhibit, however, was not confined to industrial products; a thorough exhibit of academic work was also made.

Some people have an idea that because industrial education is emphasized at Tuskegee and Hampton, very little attention is given to academic training. This is an error. A close examination will prove that both at Hampton and Tuskegee the academic training is very thorough and far-reaching; in fact, if we had only called this institution “University’ or “College” and had given the same course of training that we now give, we would have met with no criticism on account of not giving more academic training. We are thoroughly imbued with the idea that a little training thoroughly given goes farther than to attempt to cover a great deal of ground poorly. Education after all is only valuable in giving mental grasp and culture.

Six months before he died, and nearly a year after he had been stricken with paralysis, General Armstrong visited Tuskegee. On his arrival, which was about nine o'clock in the evening, he was given a unique reception by the students. According to a pre-arranged plan, the moment that his carriage entered the school grounds, he began passing between two lines of lighted and waving “fat pine” wood knots held by over a thousand students and teachers. The General was completely overcome with happiness. He remained a guest in my home for nearly two months, and, although almost wholly without the use of voice or limb, he spent nearly every hour in devising ways to help the South. Time and time again he said to me, during this visit, that it was not only the duty of the country to assist in elevating the Negro of the South, but the poor white man as well. I resolved anew to devote myself more earnestly to the cause which was so dear to him.

Soon after the election of Major McKinley to the office of President in 1896, the Washington Post, to the surprise of nearly everybody, came out with a strong editorial urging the President-Elect to give me a place in his cabinet. The name of the late Hon. B. K. Bruce was also suggested in the same connection. This editorial created quite a journalistic discussion which extended to all parts of the country. I give a few extracts from newspapers that may indicate the character of this discussion.

The Washington Post, which, I think, was the first paper to discuss the propriety of my selection as a cabinet officer, opened the discussion with the following article:

“There is one problem which Mr. McKinley, if he be a just and grateful man—as we think he is—will have to consider, and consider very seriously. We have in mind the problem of what the Republican party proposes to do by way of recognizing its obligations to the colored voter. That party has owed much to the loyal and unselfish devotion of the race in times gone by, but never so much as in the campaign which it has conducted to a triumphant conclusion. What, now, will Mr. McKinley do to testify his gratitude?

“At every stage of his personal fight Mr. McKinley has been indebted to the Negro. It was the Negro contingent at St. Louis that made his nomination certain. It was the Negro's firm stand for gold that forced the sound money issue upon the convention. It was the Negro's vote in such States as Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Delaware and Indiana that made his victory possible. We all know now that McKinley would have had next to no chance at all had not the St. Louis convention declared emphatically and unequivocally for the gold standard. As between a simple declaration for tariff revision on the one hand and for free silver coinage without tariff disturbances on the other, the great Eastern and Middle States would have had but a languid choice. It was the solid sound money front presented by the colored delegates that compelled the adoption of the gold clause in the platform, and furnished Mr. McKinley with the issue upon which he rallied to his banner the merchants, the manufacturers, and the moneyed corporations throughout the land. Mr. McKinley could not have been elected but by the course pursued by the Negroes before. during, and after the assembling of the St. Louis convention. Now, in what fashion does he intend to recognize and reward their service?

“It seems to us that at least one cabinet position should be given to the race. Let us say the portfolio of Agriculture, for example. There are many colored men of notable attainments, of large experience in public life, and of the highest personal character, eminently qualified to discharge the duties of this office with credit to the administration and honor to themselves. We might name such men as Hon. B. K. Bruce and Prof. Booker T. Washington. Mr. Bruce has been a Senator of the United States, and it may be truly said of him that in that capacity he won the respect and esteem of all his colleagues and served his country with distinction. He also served a term as Register of the Treasury and another as Recorder of Deeds under the District government, always with notable ability. Prof. Washington is universally recognized as one of the foremost educators in the country. The institute over which he presides, at Tuskegee, Ala., has become conspicuous under his management, and is to-day ranked with the most useful and admirable of our seats of learning. The appointment of either of these gentlemen to the control of one of the executive departments would be a graceful acknowledgment of the obligations which the Republican party has incurred, and which we should think it would be anxious to discharge. We do not limit Mr. McKinley to these two. There are many other colored men abundantly fitted for a Cabinet position. It happens simply that ex-Senator Bruce and Prof. Washington occurred to us first in running over the list of eligibles.

“Returning to the abstract proposition, however, it is clear to us that Mr. McKinley owes his election, first to the fidelity and wise foresight of the colored delegates at St. Louis, and secondly to the loyal support of the colored voters in half a dozen states necessary to his election, which could not possibly have been carried for him without their aid. He is under obligations, which, as a man of feeling, he cannot well ignore and which he could most felicitously acknowledge by asking some truly representative Negro to enter his official family.”

The Canton (Ohio) Repository, after discussing in a long article a number of men, white and black, suitable for cabinet material, concluded as follows:

“Another able man is Prof. Booker T. Washington, the head of the Tuskegee Normal School, of Alabama. Mr. Washington has been spoken of for Secretary of Agriculture under the new administration, and is one of the foremost leaders of the colored race in this country and a pioneer in the industrial and educational development of his people. He is one of the younger leaders of the colored people and fully understands their needs and hopes. His address at the opening of the Atlanta Exposition has been favorably commented upon by all classes of people. He is the originator of the Normal college and is doing a great work in the South.”

There were other articles of similar character in other papers at the time, and still others of course that opposed vigorously the idea of placing a Negro in the Cabinet of the President of the United States.

In a speech delivered to the colored citizens of Boston, Mass., soon after this discussion began, I openly declared that under no circumstances would I accept a political appointment that would result in my turning aside from the work which I had begun at Tuskegee.

In the spring of 1897 I was invited by Dr. Francis J. Grimke, pastor of the 15th St. Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C., to deliver an address in his church. My subject on this occasion was “The Things in Hand.” It was just after President McKinley had been inaugurated as President. Washington was full of people from all over the country, and among them not a few colored people seeking office. At this meeting I urged as strongly as I could that the colored people should cease depending so much on office, and give more attention to industrial or business enterprises. This created a wide discussion among the colored people, especially among those who were in Washington seeking office. I have always held that the Negro has the same right to aspire to political or appointive offices as the white man has, but in our present condition we will be more sure of laying a foundation that will result in permanent political recognition in the future by giving attention at the present time in a very large measure to education, business and industry, than merely by seeking political office. I would have the Negro give up no right guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States, but I am also convinced that the way for him to secure the opportunity to exercise his rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution is to make himself the most useful and independent citizen in his community.

In certain quarters, for a number of years, a certain element of our people have opposed my plan for the elevation of the Negroes, on the ground that they have felt that I was not in favor of the Negro receiving a college education. This is an error. I do not oppose college education for our people, but I do urge that a larger percentage of our young men and women, whether educated in college or not, give the strength of their education in the direction of commercial or industrial development, just the same as the white man does. I have tried to show my approval of college education by giving as many college men as possible employment, and have on our pay roll at Tuskegee, constantly, from fifteen to twenty men and women who have been educated at the leading colleges throughout the country. The best way to approve of college education is to give those educated at college something to do. The great need for the next fifty or one hundred years among our people will be the sending out among them of men and women thoroughly equipped with academic and religious training, together with industrial or hand training, so that they can lead the masses to a betterment of their present industrial and material condition. The young white man who graduates at college, in nine cases out of ten, finds a business waiting for him that he can enter into as soon as he gets his college diploma. This business has been created by his father, grandfather or great-grandfather years before, but the black boy graduating from college finds no business waiting for him; he must start a business for himself; therefore, it is important, in our present condition, that the Negro be so educated along technical and industrial lines that he can found a business for himself. In the matter of technical or industrial education the blacks are not keeping up with the whites. Every state has technical schools for white boys and girls, and we can not expect to retain our hold on the industries of the South, unless we give special attention to preparing ourselves for doing the best work. In too many cases the Negro carpenter, the Negro blacksmith, the Negro contractor, and laundry woman are being replaced by white people who have come into the South from the North. We can only retain our hold upon the industries of the South by putting into the field men and women of the highest intelligence and skill. We must learn to do the tasks about our door in a thorough manner; to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; to be sure that nobody else can improve on our work.

“One of the wishes that lay nearest Colonel Shaw's heart was that his black troops might be permitted to fight by the side of the white soldiers. Have we not lived to see that wish realized, and will it not be more so in the future? Not at Wagner, not with rifle and bayonet, but on the field of peace, in the battle of industry, in the struggle for good government, in the lifting up of the lowest to the fullest opportunities. In this we shall fight by the side of the white man, North and South. And if this be true, as under God's guidance it will, that old flag, that emblem of progress and security, which brave Sergeant Carney never permitted to fall upon the ground, will still be borne, aloft by Southern soldier and Northern soldier, and, in a more potent and higher sense, we shall all realize that—

From the Boston Evening Transcript of June 1st, the following is taken:

“The core and kernel of yesterday's great noon meeting in honor of the Brotherhood of Man in Music Hall, was the superb address of the Negro President of Tuskegee. Booker T. Washington received his Harvard A. M. last June, the first of his race, said Governor Wolcott, to receive an honorary degree from the oldest university in this country, and this for the wise leadership of his people. And when Mr. Washington rose up in the flag-filled, enthusiasm-warmed, patriotic and glowing atmosphere of Music Hall, people felt keenly that here was the civic justification of the old abolition spirit of Massachusetts, in his person the proof of her ancient and indomitable faith; in his strong thought and rich oratory, the crown and glory of the old war days of suffering and strife. The scene was full of historic beauty and a deep significance. ‘Cold’ Boston was alive with the fire that is always hot in her heart for righteousness and truth. Rows and rows of people who are seldom seen at any public function, whole families of those who are certain to be out of town on a holiday, crowded the place to overflowing. The city was at her birthright fete in the persons of hundreds of her best citizens, men and women whose lives and names stand for the virtues that make for honorable civic pride.

“Battle music had filled the air. Ovation after ovation, applause warm and prolonged had greeted the officers and friends of Colonel Shaw, the sculptor, St. Gaudens, the memorial committee, the Governor and his staff, and the Negro soldiers of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts as they came upon the platform or entered the hall. Chief Marshal Appleton and Mr. Chaplain Hall had performed their duties. Colonel Henry Lee, of Governor Andrew's old staff, had made the noble, simple presentation speech for the committee, paying tribute to the chairman, Mr. John M. Forbes, in whose stead he served. Governor Wolcott had made his short memorable speech, saying, ‘Fort Wagner marked an epoch in the history of a race and called it into manhood.’ Mayor Quincy had received the monument for the city of Boston in eloquent words. Professor James, brother of Adjutant James, who fell at Fort Wagner, wounded but not killed, had told the story of Colonel Shaw and his black regiment in gallant words. He got at the soul of the day's meaning when he said that the battle-instinct is strong enough in the race, bred in our bone and blood, but what is needed is ‘that lonely kind of valor, civic courage we call it in time of peace;’ which blesses a nation with a continued saying, and whose ‘inner mystery’ the precious virtue of civil genius is preserved in perfect good temper and in power of righteous wrath. And then after the singing of ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory,Of the coming of the Lord,’ Booker Washington arose. It was, of course, just the moment for him. The multitude, shaken out of its usual Symphony concert calm, quivered with an excitement that was not suppressed. A dozen times it had sprung to its feet to cheer and wave and hurrah, as one person. When this man of culture and voice and power, as well as dark skin, began with the bibical poetic touch in his first words, and quickly uttered the names of Andrew and of Stearns, feeling began to mount. You could see tears glisten in the eyes of the soldiers and civilians on the platform. When the orator turned to the colored soldiers on the platform, to the color bearer of Fort Wagner, who smiling bore still the flag he never lowered, even when wounded, 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 you represent, Robert Gould Shaw would have a monument which time could not wear away,’ then came the climax of the emotion of the day and the hour. It was Roger Wolcott as well as the Governor of Massachusetts, the individual representative of the people's sympathy, as well as the chief magistrate, who had sprung first to his feet and cried, ‘Three cheers to Booker T. Washington.’”

One incident, however, I note that the newspapers do not describe fully. Most of my readers will perhaps know that Sergeant William H. Carney, of New Bedford, Mass., was the brave colored officer who at the battle of Fort Wagner, was the color bearer and held on to the American flag. Notwithstanding the fact that a large proportion of his regiment was slain, he escaped in some miraculous manner and exclaimed, after the battle was over, “The old flag never touched the ground.”

Before I made this address I had never met Sergeant Carney. Sergeant Carney, however, together with a remnant of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, was present on a front seat, and he held in his hand the same flag which he had held on to safely during the battle of Fort Wagner. When I turned to address the colored regiment and referred to Sergeant Carney, he rose as if by instinct with the flag in his hands. It has been my privilege to witness a good many satisfactory and rather sensational demonstrations in connection with several of my public addresses, but in dramatic effect I have never seen nor experienced anything that equaled the impression made on the audience when Sergeant Carney arose. For a good many minutes the audience seemed to entirely lose control of itself, and patriotic feeling was at a high pitch.

In November, 1897, the Tuskegee Institute received its first recognition from a member of the President's cabinet, in the way of a visit from Hon. James A. Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture. A year previous to the visit of Secretary Wilson, I began making efforts, in connection with friends of the institution, to raise money enough to erect a building to be devoted wholly to the teaching of agriculture, horticulture, dairying, fruit-gardening, market gardening, etc. About $10,000 was secured for the erection of this building. Secretary Wilson, whom I had met in the West some months before, promised me that he would try to be present at the formal opening of this building, and he kept his promise. Secretary Wilson was accompanied from Washington by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, the agent of the John F. Slater Fund, and was met at Tuskegee by Gov. Joseph F. Johnston and a large crowd of colored and white citizens. In addition to the persons named there were present, Ex-Gov. Northern, of Georgia, and the State Superintendent of Education of Georgia, Major Glenn. The occasion was widely published throughout the country and did much to place the work of the school prominently before the people. The opening of this building marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Tuskegee Institute, as since that time we have emphasized the teaching of agriculture to our students. During the earlier years of the school we found it difficult to get students to take much interest in our farm work. They wanted to go into the mechanical trades instead.

After the opening of this agricultural building and the securing of Mr. Geo. W. Carver, a thoroughly educated man in all matters pertaining to agriculture, the Agricultural Department has been put upon such a high plane that the students no longer look upon agriculture as a drudgery, and many of our best students are anxious to enter the Agricultural Department. We have demands from all parts of the South for men who have finished our courses in agriculture, dairying, etc., in fact, the demands are far greater than we can supply. I often wonder why it is, there being such excellent openings in these directions, that so few of our young men are willing to prepare themselves for these valuable and responsible positions.

I shall not occupy much more of the reader's time in detailing accounts of my various speech-making tours; were I to do so, a good part of this volume would be occupied in a description of them. Nearly one-half of my time is spent away from Tuskegee addressing audiences of various kinds in different parts of the country; sometimes in the South, at other times in the Middle or Eastern States and going as far West in many cases as Denver and Omaha. There is never a day that I do not receive a number of invitations urging me to go to some section of the country to make an address. When I am away from Tuskegee the portion of the time that is not spent in making addresses in behalf of Tuskegee is spent in seeing individuals. The latter work I consider very important and far-reaching.

During the winter of 1898 a State Constitutional Convention assembled in New Orleans, La., for the purpose of passing a law which would result in disfranchising a large proportion of the Negro voters. Some of the members of the Convention were very anxious to pass a law that would result in the disfranchising of the Negro voters without disfranchising any portion of the white voters. The passing of any such law seemed to me so manifestly unjust that I addressed an open letter to the Convention, which read as follows:

“To the Louisiana State Constitutional Convention:

“In addressing you this letter I know that I am running the risk of appearing to meddle with something that does not concern me. But since I know that nothing but love for our beautiful southland, which I hold as near my heart as any of you can, and a sincere love for every black man and white man within her borders, is the only thing actuating me to write, I am willing to be misjudged, if need be, if I can accomplish a little good.

“But I do not believe that you, gentlemen of the Convention, will misinterpret my motives. What I say will, I believe, be considered in the same earnest spirit in which I write.

“I am no politician; on the other hand, I have always advised my race to give attention to acquiring property, intelligence and character, as the necessary bases of good citizenship, rather than to mere political agitation. But the question upon which I write is out of the region of ordinary politics; it affects the civilization of two races, not for to-day alone, but for a very long time to come; it is up in the region of duty of man to man, of Christian to Christian.

When the Spanish-American war closed there was great rejoicing throughout the country, and many cities vied with each other in their effort to celebrate the return of peace on a scale that would command the attention of the whole country. The city of Chicago, however, seemed to have been the most successful in these celebrations. Chicago was fortunate in securing the President of the United States, together with nearly all the members of his cabinet, and various foreign ministers and other important officials. This gave the celebration in Chicago a national importance such as attached to the celebration held by no other city.

I was asked by President William R. Harper, of the University of Chicago, chairman of the committee on invitations, to deliver one of the addresses in Chicago. I accepted the invitation and delivered, in fact, two addresses, during the jubilee week in Chicago. The principal address which I delivered on this occasion was on Sunday evening, October 16. The meeting was held in the Chicago Auditorium, and was the largest audience that I have ever spoken to in any part of the country. Besides speaking in the main auditorium, I addressed, on the same evening, two overflow audiences held in different portions of the city. It is said there were 16,000 people in the Auditorium, and it seems to me there were at least 16,000 on the outside trying to get into the building. In fact, without the aid of a policeman, it was impossible for any one to get anywhere near the entrance. The meeting was attended by President William McKinley, the members of his cabinet, foreign ministers and a large number of army and navy officers, many of whom had distinguished themselves during the Spanish-American war. The speakers, besides myself, on Sunday evening, were Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Father Thomas P. Hodnett and Dr. John H. Barrows.

The speech which I delivered on Sunday evening was as follows:

“Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

“On an important occasion in the life of the Master, when it fell to Him to pronounce judgment on two courses of action, these memorable words fell from his lips: ‘And Mary hath chosen the better part.’ This was the supreme test in the case of an individual. It is the highest test in the case of a race or nation. Let us apply the test to the American Negro.

“In the life of our Republic, when he has had the opportunity to choose, has it been the better or worse part? When in the childhood of this nation the Negro was asked to submit to slavery or choose death and extinction, as did the aborigines, he chose the better part, that which perpetuated the race.

“When in 1776 the Negro was asked to decide between British oppression and American independence, we find him choosing the better part, and Crispus Attucks, a Negro, was the first to shed his blood on State street, Boston, that the white American might enjoy liberty forever, though his race remained in slavery.

“When in 1814, at New Orleans, the test of patriotism came again, we find the Negro choosing the better part, and Gen. Andrew Jackson himself testifying that no heart was more loyal and no arm more strong and useful in defense of righteousness.

“When the long and memorable struggle came between union and separation, when we knew that victory on one hand meant freedom, and defeat on the other his continued enslavement, with a full knowledge of the portentous meaning of it all, when the suggestion and temptation came to burn the home and massacre wife and children during the absence of the master in battle, and thus insure his liberty, we find him choosing the better part, and for four long years protecting and supporting the helpless, defenseless ones entrusted to his care.

“When in 1863 the cause of the union seemed to quiver in the balance, and there were doubt and distrust, the Negro was asked to come to the rescue in arms, and the valor displayed at Fort Wagner and Port Hudson and Fort Pillow testifies most eloquently again that the Negro chose the better part.

“When a few months ago the safety and honor of the republic were threatened by a foreign foe, when the wail and anguish of the oppressed from a distant isle reached his ears, we find the Negro forgetting his own wrongs, forgetting the laws and customs that discriminated against him in his own country, again choosing the better part—the part of honor and humanity. And if you would know how he deported himself in the field at Santiago, apply for an answer to Shafter and Roosevelt and Wheeler. Let them tell how the Negro faced death and laid down his life in defense of honor and humanity, and 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-abolitionists and ex-masters—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.

“In the midst of all the complaints of suffering in the camp and field, suffering from fever and hunger, where is the official or citizen that has heard a word of complaint from the lips of a black soldier? The only request that has come from the Negro soldier has been that he might be permitted to replace the white soldier when heat and malaria began to decimate the ranks of the white regiment, and to occupy at the same time the post of greatest danger.

“This country has been most fortunate in her victories. She has twice measured arms with England and has won. She has met the spirit of rebellion within her borders and was victorious. She has met the proud Spaniard, and he lays prostrate at her feet. All this is well, it is magnificent. But there remains one other victory for Americans to win— a victory as far-reaching and important as any that has occupied our army and navy. We have succeeded in every conflict, except the effort to conquer ourselves in the blotting out of racial prejudices. We can celebrate the era of peace in no more effectual way than by a firm resolve on the part of Northern men and Southern men, black men and white men, that the trenches that we together dug around Santiago shall be the eternal burial place of all that which separates us in our business and civil relations. Let us be as generous in peace as we have been brave in battle. Until we thus conquer ourselves, I make no empty statement when I say that we shall have 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.

“In this presence and on this auspicious occasion, I want to present the deep gratitude of nearly ten millions of my people to our wise, patient and brave Chief Executive for the generous manner in which my race has been recognized during this conflict—a recognition that has done more to blot out sectional and racial lines than any event since the dawn of our freedom.

“I know how vain and impotent is all abstract talk on this subject. In your efforts to ‘rise on stepping stones of your dead selves,’ we of the black race shall not leave you unaided. We shall make the task easier for you by acquiring property, habits of thrift, economy, intelligence and character, by each making himself of individual worth in his own community. We shall aid you in this as we did a few days ago at El Caney and Santiago, when we helped you to hasten the peace we here celebrate. You know us; you are not afraid of us. When the crucial test comes, you are not ashamed of us. We have never betrayed or deceived you. You know that as it has been, so it will be. Whether in war or in peace, whether in slavery or in freedom, we have always been loyal to the Stars and Stripes.”

I shall not attempt to burden the reader with newspaper comments on this address, but shall content myself with giving a description that appeared at the time in the Chicago Times-Herald.

“Booker T. Washington's address at the Jubilee Thanksgiving services at the Auditorium contained one of the most eloquent tributes ever paid to the loyalty and valor of the colored race, and at the same time, was one of the most powerful appeals for justice to a race which has always chosen the better part.

“The speaker, who is the recognized leader of the colored race, reviewed the history of his people from the childhood of the nation to the present day. He pictured the Negro choosing slavery rather than extinction; recalled Crispus Attucks, shedding his blood at the beginning of the American revolution that white Americans might be free, while black Americans remained in slavery; rehearsed the conduct of the Negroes with Jackson at New Orleans; drew a vivid and pathetic picture of the Southern slaves protecting and supporting the families of their masters while the latter were fighting to perpetuate black slavery; recounted the bravery of colored troops at Port Hudson and Forts Wagner and Pillow, and praised the heroism of the black regiments that stormed El Caney and Santiago to give freedom to the enslaved people of Cuba, forgetting for the time being the unjust discrimination that law and custom make against them in their own country.

“In all of these things the speaker declared that his race had chosen the better part. And then he made his eloquent appeal to the consciences of white Americans: ‘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 soldier and Southern soldier, from ex-abolitionists and ex-masters, 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.’

“When Americans conquer race prejudice, the speaker declared, they will have won a victory greater than can be obtained through the achievements of arms. He likened the effect of race discrimination, especially in the Southern States, to a cancer gnawing at the heart of the republic, ‘as dangerous as an attack from an army within or without.’

“This is not a threat, but a warning, and one to which the white race should give heed. The only solution of the ‘Negro problem’ which will remove all menace to the tranquillity and interest of the country, is a universal recognition of the Negro's civil rights. When law and custom cease to degrade him and place obstacles in the way of his advancement; when we cease by unjust discrimination to fill his heart with despair and hatred, but instead, give him hope and aid in his efforts to fully emancipate himself, he will solve the problem now fraught with vexation and danger.

“The race is fortunate in having a Booker T. Washington and other comparatively great men as living evidence of what education and the development of natural faculties have accomplished for the colored man, as well as what can be accomplished in the future.

“Only through the defeat of race prejudice can the colored man hope to acquire his full proportions as a citizen. And in conquering race prejudice, the white race will achieve a greater victory than both races won in the late war. They will be choosing the better part.”

The portion of the speech which seemed to raise the wildest and most sensational enthusiasm was the part where I thanked the President for his recognition of the Negro in his appointments during the Spanish-American war. The President occupied a seat in a box to the right of the platform. When I addressed the President I turned toward him, and as I closed the sentence thanking him for his generosity, the whole audience arose and cheered for some time. The cheering continued with waving of hats, handkerchieves and canes until the President himself arose in his box and bowed to me two or three times. This kindled anew the enthusiasm and the demonstration was almost beyond description.

Soon after starting the Tuskegee Institute I earnestly desired to have the President of the United States visit it. The chance of securing such a visit seemed to be so unattainable that I dared not mention it to my nearest friend; still, I resolved that such a visit should be made. The more I thought of it, the more I became convinced that there was but one way to secure the attention and the interest of the President of the United States, and that was by making the institution so useful to the country that the attention of the President would necessarily be attracted to it. From the first day that the school was opened, I tried to impress upon teachers and students the fact that by reason of our former condition of servitude, and prejudice against our color, we must try to perform every duty entrusted to us, not only as well, but better than any one else, so as to receive proper consideration. To-day this is the spirit which pervades the entire school. We strive to have our students understand that no possible prejudice can explain away the influence of a Negro living in a nicely painted house, with well-kept flower yards, gardens, farm, poultry and live stock and who is at the same time a large tax-payer in his county.

After nearly eighteen years of work and struggle, I was more than ever determined to secure a visit from the highest official of my country, not only that he and the members of his cabinet might see what ex-slaves had accomplished in the way of building an institution of learning, but also for the sake of the encouragement that such a recognition from the Nation's Chief Executive would give the whole Negro race in America.

In October, 1898, I saw it mentioned in several newspapers that President McKinley was likely to visit the Atlanta Peace Jubilee, in December. I went at once to Washington, and was not there a great while before I found my way to the White House. There was quite a crowd of people in the various reception rooms, many of whom had been waiting some time for an audience with the President. The size of the crowd somewhat discouraged me, and I concluded that my chances of seeing the President were very slim. I at once sought the Secretary to the President, Mr. J. Addison Porter, and very frankly told him my errand. Mr. Porter kindly sent my card in to the President, and in a few minutes Mr. McKinley permitted me to see him. After a most interesting conversation regarding the condition of the colored people in the South, in which he manifested his interest in their development, the President told me that, in case he saw his way clear to go to Altanta, in December, he would try hard to go to Tuskegee, which is a hundred and forty miles beyond Atlanta. At that time he did not make his promise final, but asked me to see him later.

By the middle of the following month, the President had definitely promised to attend the Peace Jubilee at Atlanta, Ga., December 14 and 15. I went again to see the President. This time Mr. Charles W. Hare, a white citizen of Tuskegee, accompanied me, and assisted in showing the President the importance of making such a visit. While the question was being discussed with cabinet officers, one of the oldest and most influential white citizens of Atlanta, one who had been a large slave-holder and who is now an active Democrat, stepped into the room. The President asked this gentleman's opinion of the wisdom of his making this visit, and as to his going one hundred and forty miles out of the way to visit such an institution. This Atlanta citizen replied that it was the thing to do. The reply was made without hesitation. Between my two visits, that active and most constant friend of the Negro race, Dr. J. L. M. Curry, agent of the Peabody and Slater Funds, hearing of my desire to have a visit from the President, made a personal call upon Mr. McKinley without my knowledge, and urged him to make the visit. I will not prolong the story, except to add that before the day of my last visit was over, the President definitely decided to spend the greater part of the day of December 16 in visiting the Tuskegee Institute. In connection with this visit I had to call upon the President three or four times at the White House, and at all times I found him kind, patient and most cordial, apparently forgetful of the differences in our history. The time of my last visit was but a few days after the election riots of that, year in North and South Carolina, when the colored people throughout the country were feeling gloomy and discouraged. I observed by the tenor of the President's remarks that he felt keenly and seriously for the race. Notwithstanding a large number of people were waiting to see him, he detained me some twenty minutes, discussing the condition and needs of my race in the South. When I told him that I thought a visit from the President of the United States at that time to a Negro institution would do more than almost anything else to encourage the race and show to the world in what esteem he held the race, he replied that he was determined to show his interest in us by acts rather than by mere words, and that if I thought his visit to Tuskegee would permanently help the race and the institution he would most gladly give up one day of his administration to visit Tuskegee.

The morning of December 16 came, and at eight o'clock the President, Mrs. McKinley, with members of his cabinet, their families, besides several distinguished generals, including General Shafter, General Joseph Wheeler, General Lawton and others, arrived on special trains from Atlanta. Invitations had been extended to Gov. Joseph F. Johnston, of Alabama, and his staff, and they were present. The Alabama Legislature also was invited, and it adjourned and came to Tuskegee in a body. In all, more than six thousand visitors came. The morning was spent in an inspection of the grounds and in witnessing a parade of all the work of the school, religious, academic and industrial, represented on floats. This over, we went to the large chapel, where the President, members of his cabinet, the Governor, and others spoke. A few extracts from the addresses of the President, Secretary of the Navy Long, and Postmaster General Smith, in commendation of Tuskegee's work, may be of interest. The President said:

“Teachers and Pupils of Tuskegee: To meet you under such pleasant auspices and to have the opportunity of a personal observation of your work is indeed most gratifying. The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute is ideal in its conception, and has already a large and growing reputation in the country and is not unknown abroad. I congratulate all who are associated in this undertaking for the good work which it is doing in the education of its students to lead lives of honor and usefulness, thus exalting the race for which it was established.

“Nowhere, I think, could a more delightful location have been chosen for this unique educational experiment, which has attracted the attention and won the support even of conservative philanthropists in all sections of the country.

“To speak of Tuskegee without paying special tribute to Booker T. Washington's genius and perseverance would be impossible. The inception of this noble enterprise was his, and he deserves high credit for it. His was the enthusiasm and enterprise which made its steady progress possible and established in the institution its present high standard of accomplishment. He has won a worthy reputation as one of the great leaders of his race, widely known and much respected at home and abroad as an accomplished educator, a great orator and a true philanthropist.

“What steady and gratifying advances have been made here during the past fifteen years a personal inspection of the material equipment strikingly proves. The fundamental plan of the original undertaking has been steadily followed; but new features have been added; gaps in the course of instruction have been filled in; the patronage and resources have been largely increased until even the legislative department of the State of Alabama recognized the worth of the work and of the great opportunities here afforded. From one small frame house the institution has grown until it includes the fine group of dormitories, recitation rooms, lecture halls and work shops which have so surprised and delighted us to-day. A thousand students, I am told, are here cared for by nearly a hundred teachers, altogether forming with the preparatory department a symmetrical scholastic community which has been well called a model for the industrial colored schools of the South. Certain it is that a pupil bent on fitting himself, or herself for mechanical work can have the widest choice of useful and domestic occupations.

“One thing I like about this institution is that its policy has been generous and progressive; it has not been so self-centered or interested in its own pursuits and ambitions as to ignore what is going on in the rest of the country or make it difficult for outsiders to share the local advantages. I allude especially to the spirit in which the annual conferences have been held by leading colored citizens and educators, with the intention of improving the condition of their less fortunate brothers and sisters. Here, we can see, is an immense field and one which cannot too soon or too carefully be utilized. The conferences have grown in popularity, and are well calculated not only to encourage colored men and colored women in their individual efforts, but to cultivate and promote an amicable relationship between the two races—a problem whose solution was never more needed than at the present time. Patience, moderation, self-control, knowledge, character, will surely win you victories and realize the best aspirations of your people. An evidence of the soundness of the purpose of this institution is that those in charge of its management evidently do not believe in attempting the unattainable, and their instruction in self-reliance and practical industry is most valuable.

“In the day and night schools many branches can be taught at a small expense, which will give the men and the women who have mastered them immediate employment and secure their success afterwards, provided they abide by the principles of industry, morality and religion here inculcated. In common with the Hampton Institute, in Virginia, the Tuskegee Institute has been and is to-day of inestimable value in sowing the seeds of good citizenship. Institutions of their standing and worthy patronage form a steadier and more powerful agency for the good of all concerned than any yet proposed or suggested. The practical is here associated with the academic, which encourages both learning and industry. Here you learn to master yourselves, find the best adaptation of your faculties, with advantages for advanced learning to meet the high duties of life. No country, epoch or race has a monopoly upon knowledge. Some have easier but not necessarily better opportunities for self-development. What a few can obtain free most have to pay for, perhaps by hard physical labor, mental struggle and self-denial. But in this great country all can have the opportunity for bettering themselves, provided they exercise intelligence and perseverance, and their motives and conduct are worthy. Nowhere are such facilities for universal education found as in the United States. They are accessible to every boy and girl, white and black.

“Integrity and industry are the best possessions which any man can have, and every man can have them. Nobody can give them to him or take them from him. He cannot acquire them by inheritance; he cannot buy them or beg them or borrow them. They belong to the individual and are his unquestioned property. He alone can part with them. They are a good thing to have and keep. They make happy homes; they achieve success in every walk of life; they have won the greatest triumphs for mankind. No man who has them ever gets into the police court or before the grand jury or in the workhouse or the chain gang. They give one moral and material power. They will bring you a comfortable living, make you respect yourself and command the respect of your fellows. They are indispensable to success. They are invincible. The merchant requires the clerk whom he employs to have them. The railroad corporation inquires whether the man seeking employment possesses them. Every avenue of human endeavor welcomes them. They are the only keys to open with certainty the door of opportunity to struggling manhood. Employment waits on them; capital requires them. Citizenship is not good without them. If you do not already have them, get them.

“To the pupils here assembled I extend my especial congratulations that the facilities for advancing afforded to them are so numerous and so inviting. Those who are here for the time being have the reputation of the institution in charge and should, therefore, be all the more careful to guard it worthily. Others who have gone before you have made great sacrifices to reach the present results. What you do will affect not only those who come after you here, but many men and women whom you may never meet. The results of your training and work here will eventually be felt, either directly or indirectly, in nearly every part of the country.

“Most of you are young, and youth is the time best fitted for development both of the body and mind. Whatever you do, do with all your might, with will and purpose, not of the selfish kind, but looking to benefit your race and your country. In comparing the past with the present you should be especially grateful that it has been your good fortune to come within the influences of such an institution as that of Tuskegee and that you are under the guidance of such a strong leader. I thank him most cordially for the pleasure of visiting this institution, and I bring to all here associated my good will and the best wishes of your countrymen, wishing you the realization of success in whatever undertakings that may hereafter engage you.”

Secretary Long said:

“Mr. President and Students:

“I cannot make a speech to you to-day. My heart is too full, full of hope, admiration and pride for my countrymen of both sections and both colors. I am filled with gratitude and admiration for your work, and from this time forward, I shall have absolute confidence in your progress and in the solution of the problem in which you are engaged.

“The problem, I say, has been solved. A picture has been presented to-day which should be put upon canvas with the pictures of Washington and Lincoln, and transmitted to future time and generations; a picture which the press of the country should spread broadcast over the land, a most dramatic picture, and that picture is this: The President of the United States standing on this platform; on one side, the Governor of Alabama, on the other, completing the trinity, a representative of a race only a few years ago in bondage, the colored president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.

“God bless the President under whose majesty such a scene as that is presented to the American people. God bless the State of Alabama which is showing that it can deal with this problem for itself. God bless the orator, philanthropist and disciple of the Great Master, —who if he were on earth would be doing the same work,—Booker T. Washington.”

Postmaster General Smith closed as follows:

“We have witnessed many spectacles within the last few days. We have seen the magnificent grandeur and the magnificent achievements of one of the great metropolitan cities of the South. We have seen heroes of the war pass by in procession.

Tuesday, February 23, 1892, was a day memorable in the lives and fortunes of the great bulk of the Negro population in the “Black Belt” of the South. This day saw the beginning of a strange and altogether new movement in which the Negro was called upon to participate.

From the time I first began working at Tuskegee, I began to study closely not only the young people, but the condition, the weak points and the strong points, of the older people. I was very often surprised to see how much common sense and wisdom these older people possessed, notwithstanding they were wholly ignorant as far as the letter of the book was concerned.

About the first of January, 1892, I sent out invitations to about seventy-five of the common, hard-working farmers, as well as to mechanics, ministers and teachers, asking them to assemble at Tuskegee on the 23d of February and spend the day in talking over their present condition, their helps and their hindrances, and to see if it were possible to suggest any means by which the rank and file of the people might be able to benefit themselves. I quote a portion of the printed invitation which was sent out to those invited to attend the Conference:

“In the Conference, two ends will be kept in view: First, to find out the actual industrial, moral and educational condition of the masses. Second, to get as much light as possible on what is the most effective way for the young men and women whom the Tuskegee Institute and other institutions are educating, to use their education in helping the masses of the colored people to lift themselves up.

“In this connection, it may be said that, in general, a very large majority of the colored people in the Black Belt cotton district are in debt for supplies secured through the ‘mortgage system,’ rent the land on which they live, and dwell in one-room log cabins. The schools are in session in the country districts not often longer than three months, and are taught in most cases in churches or log cabins with almost no apparatus or school furniture.

“The poverty and ignorance of the Negro, which show themselves by his being compelled to ‘mortgage his crop,’ go in debt for the food and clothes on which to live from day to day, are not only a terrible drawback to the Negro himself but a severe drain on the resources of the white man. Say what we will, the fact remains, that in the presence of the poverty and ignorance of the millions of Negroes in the Black Belt, the material, moral and educational interests of both races are making but slow headway.”

In answer to this invitation we were surprised to find that nearly four hundred men and women of all kinds and conditions came. In my opening address I impressed upon them the fact that we wanted to spend the first part of the day in having them state plainly and simply just what their conditions were. I told them that we wanted no exaggeration, and did not want any cut-and-dried or prepared speeches, we simply wanted each person to speak in a plain, simple manner, very much as he would if he were about his own fireside, speaking to the members of his own family. I also insisted that we confine our discussion to such matters as we ourselves could remedy, rather than in spending the time in complaining or fault-finding about those things which we could not directly reach. At the first meeting of this Negro Conference we also adopted the plan of having these common people themselves speak, and refused to allow people who were far above them in education and surroundings take up the time in merely giving advice to these representatives of the masses.

Very early in the history of these Conferences I found that it meant a great deal more to the people to have one individual who had succeeded in getting out of debt, ceasing to mortgage his crop, and who had bought a home and was living well, occupy the time in telling the remainder of his fellows how he had succeeded, than in having some one who was entirely out of the atmosphere of the average farmer occupy the time in merely lecturing to them.

In the morning of the first day of the Conference we had as many representatives from various parts as we had time in which to tell of the industrial condition existing in their immediate community. We did not let them generalize or tell what they thought ought to be or was existing in somebody's else community, we held each person down to a statement of the facts regarding his own individual community. For example, we had them state what proportion of the people in their community owned land, what proportion lived in one-room cabins, how many were in debt, the number that mortgaged their crops, and what rate of interest they were paying on their indebtedness. Under this head we also discussed the number of acres of land that each individual was cultivating, and whether or not the crop was diversified or merely confined to the growing of cotton. We also got hold of facts from the representatives of these people concerning their educational progress; that is, we had them state whether or not a school-house existed, what kind of teacher they had and what proportion of the children were attending school. We did not stop with these matters; we took up the moral and religious condition of the communities, had them state to what extent, for example, people had been sent to jail from their communities; how many were habitual drinkers; what kind of minister they had; whether or not he was able to lead the people in morality as well as in spiritual affairs.

After we had got hold of facts, which enabled us to judge of the actual state of affairs existing, we spent the afternoon of the first day in hearing from the lips of these same people in what way, in their opinion, the present condition of things could be improved, and it was most interesting as well as surprising to see how clearly these people saw into their present condition, and how intelligently they discussed their weak points as well their strong points. It was generally agreed that the mortgage system, the habit of buying on credit and paying large rates of interest, was at the bottom of much of the evil existing among the people, and the fact that so large a proportion of them live on rented land also had much to do with keeping them down. The condition of the schools was discussed with equal frankness, and means were suggested for prolonging the school term and building school-houses. Almost without exception they agreed that the fact that so large a proportion of the people live in one-room cabins, where there was almost no opportunity for privacy or separation of the sexes, was largely responsible for the bad moral condition of many communities.

When I asked how many in the audience owned their homes, only twenty-three hands went up.

Aside from the colored people who were present at the Conference who reside in the “Black Belt,” there were many prominent white and colored men from various parts of the country, especially representatives of the various religious organizations engaged in educational work in the South, and officers and teachers from several of the larger institutions working in the South. There were correspondents present representing such papers as the New York Independent, Evening Post, New York Weekly Witness, New York Tribune, Christian Union, Boston Evening Transcript, Christian Register, The Congregationalist, Chicago Inter-Ocean, Chicago Advance, and many others.

At the conclusion of the first Conference the following set of declarations was adopted as showing the concensus of opinion of those composing the Conference:

“We, some of the representatives of the colored people, living in the Black Belt, the heart of the South, thinking it might prove of interest and value to our friends throughout the country, as well as beneficial to ourselves, have met together in Conference to present facts and express opinions as to our industrial, moral and educational condition, and to exchange views as to how our own efforts and the kindly helpfulness of our friends may best contribute to our elevation.

“First. Set at liberty with no inheritance but our bodies, without training in self-dependence, and thrown at once into commercial, civil and political relations with our former owners, we consider it a matter of great thankfulness that our condition is as good as it is, and that so large a degree of harmony exists between us and our white neighbors.

“Second. Industrially considered, most of our people are dependent upon agriculture. The majority of them live on rented lands, mortgage their crops for the food on which to live from year to year, and usually at the beginning of each year are more or less in debt for the supplies of the previous year.

“Third. Not only is our own material progress hindered by the mortgage system, but also that of our white friends. It is a system that tempts us to buy much that we would do without if cash was required, and it tends to lead those who advance the provisions and lend the money, to extravagant prices and ruinous rates of interest.

“Fourth. in a moral and religious sense, while we admit there is much laxness in morals and superstition in religion, yet we feel that much progress has been made, that there is a growing public sentiment in favor of purity, and that the people are fast coming to make their religion less of superstition and emotion and more a matter of daily living.

“Fifth. As to our educational condition, it is to be noted that our country schools are in session on an average only three and a half months each year; the Gulf States are as yet unable to provide school-houses, and as a result the schools are held almost out of doors or at best in such rude quarters as the poverty of the people is able to provide; the teachers are poorly paid and often very poorly fitted for their work, as a result of which both parents and pupils take but little interest in the schools; often but few children attend, and these with great irregularity.

“Sixth. That in view of our general condition, we would suggest the following remedies: (1) That as far as possible we aim to raise at home our own meat and bread; (2) that as fast as possible we buy land, even though a very few acres at a time; (3) that a larger number of our young people be taught trades, and that they be urged to prepare themselves to enter as largely as possible all the various avocations of life; (4) that we especially try to broaden the field of labor for our women; (5) that we make every sacrifice and practice every form of economy that we may purchase land and free ourselves from our burdensome habit of living in debt; (6) that we urge our ministers and teachers to give more attention to the material condition and home life of the people; (7) that we urge that our people do not depend entirely upon the State to provide school-houses and lengthen the time of the schools, but that they take hold of the matter themselves where the State leaves off, and by supplementing the public funds from their own pockets and by building school-houses, bring about the desired results; (8) that we urge patrons to give earnest attention to the mental and moral fitness of those who teach their schools; (9) that we urge the doing away with all sectarian prejudice in the management of the schools.

“Seventh. As the judgment of this Conference we would further declare: That we put on record our deep sense of gratitude to the good people of all sections for their assistance, and that we are glad to recognize a growing interest on the part of the best white people of the South in the education of the Negro.

“Eighth. That we appreciate the spirit of friendliness and fairness shown us by the Southern white people in matters of business in all lines of material development.

In the spring of 1899 a rather notable meeting was held in Boston, in the afternoon, at the Hollis Street Theatre. This meeting was gotten up in the interest of the Tuskegee Institute, by friends of the institution, in Boston for the purpose of raising money for the school. It was presided over by Bishop Lawrence, Bishop of Massachusetts. I invited to speak with me at this meeting Dr. W. E. B. DuBois and Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dr. DuBois read an original story, and Mr. Dunbar recited from his own poems. The theatre was filled with representatives of the most cultured and wealthy men and women in Boston, and was said to be the most successful meeting of the kind that had been held for a good while. An admission was charged at the door, and a generous sum was raised for the school. This was the first time that Mr. Dunbar had appeared in Boston, and his readings produced a most favorable effect. The same was true of Dr. DuBois.

During this same year I received an invitation which surprised me somewhat. It was an invitation from the secretary of the Birmingham, Alabama, Lyceum, a white literary organization, composed of the best and most cultured people in the city of Birmingham, Alabama, inviting me to address the Lyceum. I accepted this invitation to deliver an address before the organization on the 30th of March. There was some adverse criticism and some protests through the newspapers, and otherwise, on the part of a certain element of white people in Birmingham; in fact, some effort was made to prevent white ladies from attending, but I was surprised and gratified when I appeared before the audience to find the room filled with representatives of the best ladies and gentlemen of Birmingham, and I have never spoken before any organization where my words were more heartily and more kindly received than was true on this occasion. This was the first time that I had ever received an invitation to address a white literary organization in the South, although during the winter of the same year I had delivered an address before the National Farmers' Association, which met at Fort Worth, Texas.

Immediately after the public meeting held in Boston in the Hollis Street Theatre, some friends of mine in Boston noted that I seemed to be rather worn out, as a result of nearly eighteen years of continuous work, without any vacation during the entire time. Without our knowledge, they quietly started a movement to raise a certain sum of money to be used in sending Mrs. Washington and myself to Europe, where we could rest for two or three months. This plan was a very great surprise to us, and it seemed difficult for us to make up our minds to leave the school for so long a time; but these friends insisted that we owed it to the work and to ourselves to take the vacation. The result was that we sailed for Europe on the 10th of May and remained abroad until the 5th of August. We had a very pleasant and delightful trip across the ocean, and made many friends on the voyage. I was called upon to speak on the steamer going and had a large and interesting audience. After a voyage of ten days we landed at Antwerp, Belgium, and remained there a short time. We then took a trip through the country in company with some New York friends whose acquaintance we made on the voyage. In Holland we traveled on the canal boats, which gave us an opportunity of seeing the home life of the country people, and also the agricultural life of the country.

I was especially anxious to study the agricultural and dairy systems, with a view to utilizing the information in our work at Tuskegee. The thorough cultivation of the soil, for which this country is noted, made a deep impression upon me. There are few other countries, if any, in the world, where the soil is so thoroughly cultivated as in Holland. The dairy interests there present an interesting and valuable field for study. While in Holland we visited The Hague, where the International Peace Congress was in session, and were shown many courtesies by the American members of the Peace Conference. After remaining for some time in Holland, we returned to Antwerp and spent some time there, and afterwards proceeded to Brussels, where we had a pleasant stay. From Brussels we went to Paris, where we remained nearly six weeks. In Paris we received much kind attention from General Horace Porter, the American Ambassador, and his wife, as well as from other American and French people. Soon after reaching Paris I received an invitation to deliver an address before the American University Club, an organization composed mainly of American college men residing in Paris. The American Ambassador, Gen. Horace Porter, presided at this meeting, and in addition to myself the speakers were Ex-president Benjamin Harrison and Archbishop Ireland. I was also invited to deliver an address the following Sunday in the American chapel, which I did. Mrs. Washington and I attended a reception given by the American Ambassador, where we met many prominent people.

Early in August we sailed for America from Southampton, and had a very pleasant voyage on the magnificent ocean steamer “St. Louis.” On the voyage I was called upon to speak again to the passengers, and made many friends for our cause.

While in Europe I received the following invitation:

This invitation from the City Council of Charleston was accompanied by the following:

This invitation to accept a reception from the citizens of Charleston, W. Va., where I had spent my boyhood days, was a very satisfactory surprise. When I left Charleston, and when I left Malden, which is very near Charleston, I was quite a boy, and I had not been able to spend any great length of time there since I had first left to enter the Hampton Institute.

I accepted the invitation for the Charleston reception, and when I reached Charleston was met by a committee of citizens headed by ex-Gov. W. A. MacCorkle. The meeting in connection with this reception was held in the opera house, and was presided over by Gov. George W. Atkinson. It was very largely attended by white and colored citizens from that vicinity, a large number of whom had known me in my boyhood days. I must refrain from giving any detailed account of all the kind and complimentary things they were kind enough to say about me at this meeting. I spent several days in Charleston, visiting the scenes of my early boyhood, and my sister in Malden, and many of the older citizens who remembered me.

After this reception in Charleston I was invited to go to Atlanta, Ga., by the white and colored citizens, to be given a reception there. The meeting in Atlanta was presided over by the Governor of the State, and was largely attended.

Receptions by the citizens of Montgomery and New Orleans soon followed. Invitations to attend receptions in other states came to me, but I was not able to accept them all.

In the fall of 1899 a meeting was held at Huntsville, Ala., the spirit of which has since been taken up by other Southern cities, which promises to prove of lasting benefit in settling the race problem in the South. In October a meeting was called at Huntsville, which had for its object the discussion of all matters relating to the upbuilding of the South. It was well attended by representatives from nearly every Southern State, and was a strong body of men. Among the other subjects discussed was the Negro problem in its relation to the industrial progress of the South.

In connection with others, I was invited to deliver an address. The audience was composed mainly of Southern white men, but in it was a large number of Southern white women, together with quite an attendance of colored men and women. The address which I delivered on that occasion attracted a great deal of attention throughout the country, and for that reason I have taken the liberty of giving it in full:

“In all discussion and legislation bearing upon the presence of the Negro in America, it should be borne in mind that we are dealing with a people who were forced to come here without their consent and in the face of a most earnest protest. This gives the Negro a claim upon your sympathy and generosity that no other race can possess. Besides, though forced from his native land into residence in a country that was not of his choosing, he has earned his right to the title of American citizen by obedience to the law, by patriotism and fidelity, and by the millions which his brawny arms and willing hands have added to the wealth of this country.

“In saying what I have to-day, although a Negro and an ex-slave myself, there is no white man whose heart is more wrapped up in every interest of the South and who loves it more dearly than is true of myself. She can have no sorrow that I do not share; she can have no prosperity that I do not rejoice in. She can commit no error that I do not deplore. She can take no step forward that I do not approve.

“Different in race, in color, in history, we can teach the world that, although thus differing, it is possible for us to dwell side by side in love, in peace, and in material prosperity. We can be one, as I believe we will be in a larger degree in the future, in sympathy, purpose, forbearance and mutual helpfulness. Let him who would embitter, who would bring strife between your race and mine, be accursed in his basket and in his store, accursed in the fruit of his body and the fruit of his land. No man can plan the degradation of another race without being himself degraded. The highest test of the civilization of any race is its willingness to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.

“The South extends a protecting arm and a welcome voice to the foreigner, of all nationalities, languages and conditions, but in this I pray that you will not forget the black man at your door, whose habits you know, whose fidelity you have tested. You may make of others larger gatherers of wealth, but you cannot make of them more law-abiding, useful and God-fearing people than the Negro who has been by your side for three centuries, and whose toil in forest, field and mine has helped to make the South the land of promise and glorious possibility.

“Before we can make much progress we must decide whether or not the Negro is to be a permanent part of the South. With the light that is before us, I have no hesitation in declaring that the great bulk of the Negro population will reside among you. Any hesitation or doubting as to the permanent residence of the race will work infinite harm to the industrial and economic interests of both races. Here, in His wisdom, Providence has placed the Negro. Here he will remain. Here he came without a language; here he found the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Here he came in paganism; here he found the religion of Christ. Here he came in barbarism; here he found civilization. Here he came with untrained hands; here he found industry. If these centuries of contact with the American has done this, can you not trust to the wise Creator, aided by the efforts of the Negro himself, and your guidance, to do the remainder? At this point, are you willing to cease your efforts and turn the work over to others for completion? Your duty to the Negro will not be fulfilled until you have made of him the highest type of American citizen, in intelligence, usefulness and morality.

“The South has within itself the forces that are to solve this tremendous problem. You have the climate, the soil and the material wealth. You have the labor to be performed that will occupy many times our present Negro population. While the calls come daily from South Africa, from the Hawaiian Islands, from the North and the West for the strong and willing arm of the Negro in the field of industry, you, at your very door, have that which others are energetically seeking. Not only are you in possession of that which others are seeking, but more important than all, custom and contact have so knit the two races together that the black man finds in these Southern States an open sesame in labor, industry and business that is not surpassed anywhere. It is here alone, by reason of the presence of the Negro, that capital is free from tyranny and despotism that prevents you from employing whom you please and for that wage that is mutually agreeable and profitable. It is here that that form of slavery which prevents a man from selling his labor to whom he pleases on account of his color is almost unknown. We have had slavery, now dead, that forced an individual to labor without a recompense, but none that compelled a man to remain in idleness while his family starved.

“The Negro in all parts of the country is beginning to appreciate the advantage which the South affords for earning a living, for commercial development, and in proportion as this is true, it will constitute the basis for the settlement of other difficulties. The colored man is beginning to learn that the bed rock upon which every individual rests his chances for success in life is securing in every manly way—never at the sacrifice of principle—the friendship, the confidence, the respect of his next-door neighbor in the little community in which he lives. Almost the whole problem of the Negro in the South rests itself upon the question as to whether he makes himself of such indispensable service to his neighbor, to the community, that no one can fill his place better in the body politic. There is no other safe course for the Negro to pursue. If the black man in the South has a friend in his white neighbor, and a still larger number of friends in his own community, he has a protection and a guarantee of his rights that will be more potent and more lasting than any Federal Congress or any outside power can confer. While the Negro is grateful for the opportunities which he enjoys in the business of the South, you should remember that you are in debt to the black man for furnishing you with labor that is almost a stranger to strikes, lock-outs and labor wars; labor that is law-abiding, peaceful, teachable; labor that is one with you in language, sympathy, religion and patriotism; labor that has never been tempted to follow the red flag of anarchy, but always the safe flag of his country and the spotless banner of the cross.

“But if the South is to go forward and not stand still, if she is to reach the highest reward from her wonderful resources and keep abreast of the progress of the world, she must reach that point, without needless delay, where she will not be continually advertising to the world that she has a race question to settle. We must reach that point where, at every election, from the choice of a magistrate to that of a governor, the decision will not hinge upon a discussion or a revival of the race question. We must arrive at that period where the great fundamental question of good roads, education of farmers, agricultural and mineral development, manufacturing and industrial and public school education will be, in a large degree, the absorbing topics in our political campaign. But that we may get this question from among us, the white man has a duty to perform, the black man has a duty. No question is ever permanently settled until it is settled in the principles of the highest justice. Capital and lawlessness will not dwell together. The white man who learns to disregard law when a Negro is concerned will soon disregard it when a white man is concerned.

“In the evolution of the South it seems to me that we have reached that period where private

The choice of officers for the League resulted in the following being elected:

Booker T. Washington, President, Tuskegee, Ala.; Giles B. Jackson, Vice President, Richmond, Va.; Mrs. Albreta Moore Smith, Vice President, Chicago, Ill.; Gilbert C. Harris, Treasurer, Boston, Mass.; Edward E. Cooper, Secretary, Washington, D. C.; E. A. Johnson, Compiler, Raleigh, N. C.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

T. Thomas Fortune, New York, Chairman; T. W. Jones, Chicago, Ill.; Isaiah T. Montgomery, Mound Bayou, Miss.; Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee, Ala.; E. E. Cooper, Washington, D. C.; George E. Jones, Little Rock, Ark.; W. R. Pettiford, Birmingham, Ala.; Gilbert C. Harris, Boston, Mass; Louis F. Baldwin, Boston, Mass.

Another very encouraging phase of the Boston meeting was the surprising number of highly successful men and women who appeared from different parts of the country, and who before had not been heard from. Many expressed the idea that the Business League had been long wanted and had in its power to do a work which no other organization could perform. The following editorials from various influential newspapers will give some of the value that was placed upon the Business League meeting:

From The Outlook, New York City: “The Convention of the National Negro Business League, held in Boston last week, brought together upwards of a hundred delegates, representing over twenty different states. The members of the convention made an excellent impression upon the representatives of the Boston press, both by their appearance and the intellectual quality of their speeches. The League was organized upon the initiative of Booker T. Washington, and his common-sense philosophy permeated most of the addresses. Had these been made at a gathering of white leaders, they might justly be condemned as materialistic. Indeed, one of them, glorifying the ‘almighty dollar’ as the ‘new king that has been born,’ should be so condemned. But in the main the emphasis put upon the acquiring of property sprang from the desire to lift up the manhood of the Negro race; for there is a moral difference between the advocacy of money-getting to secure independence and advocacy of money-getting to secure power. Economic independence is to-day as much needed for the further advancement of the Negro race as was emancipation from slavery for the advance which the present generation has witnessed. Even so uncompromising an opponent of materialism as Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., recognized this and emphasized it in his address to the convention: ‘The particular word I wish to leave with you,’ he said, ‘is this: Aim to be your own employers as speedily as possible. If you are farmers, do not rest until you control the land from which you gain your living. If you are mechanics, or traders, seek first to gain a home without a mortgage, foregoing many desirable things until you are free from debt. Independence and debt cannot long keep company. But, in the South, as in the North, possession of honestly earned property will surely bring respect and increase personal security.’ Among the Negro speakers were several men who have been remarkably successful; among others, a slave of Jefferson Davis who is now mayor of his little town in Mississippi. The speeches of some of these men telling of early struggles were full of encouragement to Negroes everywhere. The fact that some Negroes have succeeded in business, as well as the fact that some have succeeded in literature and art, forces all men to distinguish between Negroes and Negroes, and opens the door of opportunity to all Negroes who aspire.”

From Buffalo Express: “The recent meeting of the National Negro Business League in Boston brought to public notice a new line of endeavor advocated by the leading Negroes of the country for the betterment of their race's commercial and social position. The call for the formation of the League was issued by President Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute, and that it was heartily responded to by Negro business men in all parts of the country, was shown by the assembling of delegates from no less than twenty-five states. The key to the discussion during this interesting conference is to be found in the address of Prof. Booker T. Washington, who said in part: ‘I have faith in the timeliness of this organization. As I have noted the conditions of our people in nearly every part of our country, I have always been encouraged by the fact that almost without exception, whether in the North or South, wherever I have seen a black man who was succeeding in business, who was a tax-payer, and who possessed intelligence and high character, that individual was treated with highest respect by the members of the white race. In proportion as we can multiply those examples North and South will our problem be solved. Let every man strive to become the most useful and indispensable man in his community. A useless, idle class is a menace and a danger. We must not in any part of our country, become discouraged, notwithstanding the way often seems dark and desolate. We must maintain faith in ourselves and in our country.’

“This opens the line of work, the possibilities of which are most promising. The development of industrial life among the Negroes in the South by schools is essential to the growth of one element and is remedying the evil of idleness. The new plan goes farther and aids in developing the business instincts of the race, establishing Negroes in mercantile pursuits and in other ways making them important factors in the commercial circles of the country. Already there are many examples of the progress of the Negro in this direction. In Chicago is a large co-operative store, where groceries and meats are sold, while Philadelphia and Richmond each have a large department store conducted by Negroes. Nearly two hundred Negroes in Chicago alone are engaged in various lines of business. Still another example is found in the corporation of New Jersey of an investment and supply company in which the corporators are Negroes. This company is authorized to furnish supplies to families, establish stores, deal in real estate without limit and engage generally in commercial pursuits. It is stated in the papers that the company will carry on a portion of its business in the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Wilmington, Del., and Richmond and Norfolk, Va., as well as in other places. The capitalization of this company is $75,000.”

From Springfield Republican: “The organization of the National Negro Business League by the great convention at Boston, last week, was one of the most important steps yet taken in the lifting of the Negro race to that equality proclaimed implicitly by the Declaration of Independence and explicitly by the constitutional amendments which followed the war. Between one and two hundred delegates were present; the South that made the civil war for Negro slavery was well represented; New England, New York, Pennsylvania, were now the ruling factors in this congress of men opening a new stage in the progress of the race. They came as Americans,— and who has a better right than the Negro to that title? A few days ago a Southern white said that the Negroes had no country, no birthright —not reflecting that he has been given a country by arbitrament of war, and that his birthright, in a majority of cases, was quite as clearly traceable to white ancestry as his traducer's own. But the Negro race has been compelled to a solidarity which is rare in mixed races; the man or woman so white that no one could guess from his hair or complexion the stain of black blood, perforce casts in his lot with the blackest ‘Afro-American’— and be it acknowledged that he does it proudly, for the warmest advocates of the Negro race feeling are these very persons; they rightly feel that the African descent is the more honorable.

“The convention was one of such dignity and

Having, through nearly twenty years of incessant toil, succeeded in securing for Tuskegee the annual expenses for running the school and the money with which to purchase its present plant and equipment, valued at about $300,000, it has been for several years clearly seen by the trustees and myself that the thing needed to secure Tuskegee in the future was a permanent endowment fund. Not only is an endowment fund necessary as an assurance that the work of Tuskegee shall go on in the future, but it is necessary in order to relieve the Principal of the hard work of remaining in the North the greater portion of his time begging and speaking in order to raise the amount annually necessary to carry on the work. An endowment fund, the interest from which would be sufficient to meet, partially, the current expenses of the institution, would enable the Principal to devote his time to the executive work of the school, and this would obviously lead to greater perfection in the work there, both in the academic and industrial branches. Improved methods and facilities would redound to the benefit of each person educated at the institution. Various appeals, for the last year or two, have been made to the friends of Tuskegee for an endowment fund, and within the past year we have received by gifts and bequests $38,848.93 for this purpose. The United States Congress, in the winter of 1899, donated to Tuskegee 25,000 acres of land out of the public domain of Alabama, the proceeds of this grant to be added to the endowment fund.

No organized effort, however, was made to interest the friends of Tuskegee in the matter of raising a permanent endowment until the fall of 1899. It was then thought by the trustees and myself that the time was ripe for putting forth specific effort in this direction. Accordingly, it was decided to hold a public meeting in December, 1899, in the city of New York, at which the work of Tuskegee might be set forth by capable speakers, and the good the school was accomplishing, not only among the Negroes of the “black belt” but for the whole country, might be brought forcibly to the ears of the public. This meeting was held in the concert hall of Madison Square Garden, in the City of New York, on the evening of December 4, 1899. I take pleasure in giving a description of this meeting and in mentioning some of its immediate results, because it proved to be a magnificent tribute to the cause for which Tuskegee stands.

Ex-President Grover Cleveland had very kindly consented to be present and to preside at this meeting. The beautiful concert hall, which holds about 2,000 people, was packed that night so that it was difficult to procure even standing room. Many prominent people occupied seats upon the platform and in the boxes. Among the former I might mention Mr. Morris K. Jesup, Mr. Wm. E. Dodge, Mr. Alexander Orr, Mr. Robert C. Ogden, Mr. George Foster Peabody, Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, Rev. Dr. D. H. Greer, Mr. Charles E. Bigelow, Mr. Arthur Curtiss James, Mr. John A. Stewart, Mr. A. S. Frissell, Mr. George McAneny, Mr. Horace White, Hon. John M. Barrett, Mr. Walter H. Page, Hon. Seth Low, Hon. E. M. Shepard, Hon. Levi P. Morton, Dr. N. M. Butler, Mr. J. G. Phelps Stokes, Mr. John E. Parsons, Hon. Carl Schurz, Rev. P. B. Tompkins, Mr. Samuel P. Avery, Mr. R. F. Cutting, Mr. J. S. Kennedy, Mr. C. P. Huntington, Mr. C. S. Smith, Mr. R. W. Gilder, Chancellor H. K. McCracken, Mr. William G. Low, Mr. W. P. Ware, Prof. Chas. Sprague Smith, Mr. Wm. Jay Schieffelin, Mr. Charles Lanier, Mr. J. Hampden Robb, Mr. Dorman B. Eaton, Mr. Horace E. Deming, Mr. Joseph Lorocque, Mr. J. Kennedy Todd, Mr. LeGrand B. Cannon, Mr. Charles S. Fairchild, Mr. August Belmont, Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, Mr. Gustav Schwab, Mr. James C. Carter, Mr. John L. Cadwallader, Mr. Cleveland H. Dodge, Rev. Dr. H. Heber Newton, Mr. Edward Hewitt, Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, Mr. Wheeler H. Peckham, Mr. Everett P. Wheeler, Mr. I. Fredk. Kernochan, Col. Wm. Jay, Mr. Chas. C. Beaman, Rev. Dr. Wm. R. Huntington, Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix, Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott, Mr. William Dean Howells, Gen. Wager Swayne, Hon. W. L. Strong, Mr. Charles H. Marshall, Mr. Henry Holt, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. Among those who occupied boxes were Mr. Robert C. Ogden, Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Dodge, Mrs. C. R. Lowell, Mr. Henry Villard, Mr. C. D. Smith, Miss Putnam, Mr. George Foster Peabody, Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Mrs. Fredk. Billings, Miss Olivia Stokes, Mrs. C. A. Runkle, Miss Matilda W. Bruce, Miss Mary Parsons, Mr. W. H. Baldwin, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Morris K. Jesup, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore K. Gibbs, Mrs. W. H. Harkness, Mrs. C. B. Hackley, Miss Bryce, Mrs. F. C. Barlow, Mr. and Mrs. A. T. White, Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Pratt, Mr. C. E. Bigelow.

The day before the meeting was to be held Mr. Cleveland found himself confined to his house by illness, and wrote me of his inability to be present. The letter proved to be almost, if not quite, as great an encouragement to the object of the meeting as Mr. Cleveland's presence would have been. The letter was read at the meeting, and I think the reader will not complain if I quote it here. It is as follows:

In the absence of Mr. Cleveland, the Hon. Carl Schurz consented to preside at the meeting; and, as might be expected of one so ripe in experiences, he proved to be all that could be desired of a presiding officer. His short speech on taking the chair showed a hearty sympathy with the work that is being done at Hampton and Tuskegee. Mr. Schurz is a well-known German-American, who has been a general in the war of the Rebellion, a Senator in Congress and a member of the Cabinet of President Hayes. He has been for years a foremost worker in the Civil Service Reform movement. He is a writer of ability and a man who needs no introduction in the United States.

The Tuskegee Male Quartette was present and rendered plantation melodies, to the great delight of the audience.

The first speaker of the evening was Mr. Walter H. Page, a native of North Carolina, but for several years the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, in Boston. The effort of Mr. Page was truly wonderful. He is a native Southerner, who has studied the Negro question for more than twenty years, from every point of view, as he alleged. He was well prepared to speak, and with irresistible logic and unusual eloquence, pointed out the benefits of the Tuskegee plan for the solution of the race problem. He claimed it to be the only solution that had been discovered. He pointed out how hopeless was the condition of the race, unless the problem was solved by industrial and moral training, and how hopeful would be its condition if the problem were settled in this way.

At the conclusion of Mr. Page's address, Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr., one of our trustees, and a member of the Committee on the Investment of the Endowment Fund, spoke in behalf of the trustees, as follows:

“It is my privilege to speak to you as a trustee of Tuskegee Institute on the subject of its finances. The generous friends who have made Tuskegee possible should know its exact business condition. It has been a hard but beneficial struggle for Mr. Washington to raise the funds necessary to pay the current expenses of the Institution, to acquire the 2,267 acres of land, and to erect the forty-two buildings now comprising the school.

The Agricultural Department of the school has at its head Prof. G. W. Carver, a graduate of the Iowa State University, and a man of experience as a scientific farmer and a scientist of no mean acquirements. He has eight assistants who help in looking after the divisions of dairying, stock-raising, horticulture and truck farming embraced in this department. The State of Alabama appropriates annually the sum of $1,500 for the maintenance of an agricultural experiment station in connection with our agricultural department. Some of the experiments of Prof. Carver have attracted much attention, and it is recognized that his conduct of the station is doing much to show what improvements upon the old methods of farming may be wrought by scientific agriculture. This department is well housed in a beautiful brick building, containing a well equipped chemical laboratory, erected at a cost of $10,000, adapted to the purposes of agricultural experiment, and other apparatus necessary for the dairy and other divisions.

It is through the direction of the Agricultural department that the vast amount of farm and garden products, used by the 1,200 people constituting the population of the school when in session, is grown. About 135 acres of the home farm are devoted to the raising of vegetables, strawberries, grapes, and other fruits. The Marshall farm, with 350 acres in cultivation, is utilized for the growing of corn, sugar cane (from which syrup is made), potatoes, grain, hay and other farm products.

Mr. J. N. Calloway is the manager of the Marshall farm. It is worked by student labor, from thirty to forty-five boys being employed on it constantly. There is also a night school upon this farm, for the accommodation of students who work there, which is a branch of the main night school at the Institute. At present the farm night school requires the services of two teachers.

The Marshall farm not only produces a large amount of the farm products that are used by the school and its 800 head of live stock, counting horses, mules, cows, oxen, sheep and hogs, but also furnishes opportunity for students to learn the art and science of farming, at the same time attending night school and making something above expenses to be used when the student enters day school.

A large portion of the Marshall farm, about 400 acres, is utilized as pasture for the dry cows and beef cattle. Everything grown upon the farm is sold to the school at market prices. The expenses of running the farm are also accurately kept. At the end of the year a balance is struck. Last year the Marshall farm come out over $500 ahead including in the expense account the salary of the manager.

The mechanical department of the institution is now housed in the well equipped trades building, recently completed at a cost of $36,000. This is known as the Slater-Armstrong Memorial Trades Building. It was dedicated and formally opened on Wednesday, January 10, 1900, and is the largest building on the Tuskegee Institute grounds. It stands between the Agricultural Building and the new chapel. The shape is that of a double Greek cross, having an open court 85x112 feet in the center. When completed, it will measure 283x300 feet, the main or central portion being two stories high, the wings one story. This measurement does not include a room for the sawmill, which is to come at the extreme rear end. Owing to the fact that sufficient money has not yet been obtained, the rear portion of the building, consisting of seven rooms, has not been completed. It is built entirely of brick, and contains twenty-seven rooms. In round numbers, it took ten hundred thousand bricks to construct the building thus far, and every one of these bricks was made by students under the instructor in brickmaking, and laid in the wall by students under the instructor of bricklaying. The plans and specifications of the building were drawn by Mr. R. R. Taylor, formerly in charge of the architectural and mechanical drawing department of the Institute. The general oversight of both the planning and construction was, of course, exercised by Mr. J. H. Washington, Director of Industries.

The interior arrangements of the building are well suited to the teaching of the trades. The rooms, while varying in size from 37x42, the smallest, to 37x85, the largest, will average 37x55, the ceiling being 13 feet high. On the first floor there are the director's office, reading room, exhibit room, wheelwright shop, blacksmith shop, tin shop, printing office, carpenter shop, repair shop, woodworking machine room, ironworking machine room, foundry, brickmaking and plastering rooms, general stock and supply room, and a boiler and engine room. The second floor contains the mechanical drawing room, harness shop, paint shop, tailor shop, shoe shop, and electrical laboratory, and a room for carriage trimming and upholstering. Each shop has a cloak and tool room connected with it. Better lighted rooms could scarcely be found in any building. Each shop receives light from two sides and end. The office, reading room, and exhibit room are finished with wainscoting to window sills, and plastered from there up and overhead. In the drawing rooms the walls are plastered, but overhead the ceiling of this room is of yellow pine, panelled so as to show design. This ceiling is painted white. The other rooms are not plastered or sealed, but have what is called a yellow ochre finish on the walls. The machinery in the building is run by a 125-horse power engine and 75-horse power boiler, both donated by Mr. C. P. Huntington, of New York.

Each division is well supplied with all of the tools, appliances and machinery necessary to its successful working and to the accurate teaching of the trades. The director of this large and important department is Mr. J. H. Washington, who has under him twenty-two instructors for the various divisions.

We believe it is wise to give our girls the most thorough training in all those occupations suitable and adapted to woman, without in the least neglecting those moral and intellectual powers which elevate any race. With this in view we have the following departments for the training of our young women.

The department for the teaching of the Domestic Sciences has for its directress Mrs. Booker T. Washington. This department embraces laundering, cooking, dressmaking, plain sewing, millinery, mattress making, horticulture, gardening, and poultry raising. It is in Dorothy Hall. Not only are the trades above named taught in this department, but the young women, under the motherly direction of Mrs. Booker T. Washington, are taught the duties of systematic and orderly housekeeping and duties pertaining thereto.

The nurse training department is conducted in connection with the school hospital and has for its instructors our resident physician and a competent trained nurse. It has not been constituted a separate department, but has formed one of the divisions under the Director of the Mechanical Department. The increasing demand for trained nurses in the South has necessitated the establishment of a regular Training School for Nurses in connection with the school hospital.

A complete course of three years has been laid out, two years of which consist of daily work and instruction in the hospital, and the third year of lectures and bedside instructions, while one or two days of each week are devoted to hospital work. There are special provisions for those who apply for this department only. The school is open also to those who do not wish to follow the work as a profession, but desire to know how to intelligently care for the sick.

The division of music is under the supervision of the Director of the Academic Department, and like the nurse training department it has not been constituted an independent department. While the study of music has always been encouraged at Tuskegee, and considerable work has been done, we have been able only within the last few years to furnish a systematic and thorough course of study. The course in pianoforte embraces four years. The institution owns eight pianos, two cabinet organs and a library of music. Vocal music is taught to the classes in the academic department throughout the entire course.

Tuskegee students are famous for their fine singing of plantation melodies, and it is the object of the Institute to make these old, sweet, slave songs a source of pride and pleasure to the students.

There are at Tuskegee the following musical organizations: A choir, consisting of seventy-five voices; a choral society, consisting of one hundred and fifty voices, organized for the study of music from the masters; glee club, consisting of forty male voices; glee club, consisting of twenty female voices; and a male quartette, whose work is to travel in the North. The institution maintains an excellent brass band of thirty pieces, which is instructed by a competent director, employed by the school. Any student possessing knowledge of wind instruments, will be given a chance to enter the band; but this knowledge is not essential to membership. The band plays every school day morning for inspection and drill.

One of the most important branches of the Music Department is the orchestra, which consists of fourteen pieces. The same rule regarding membership in the band holds good for the orchestra. The orchestra plays every week night at evening devotions. Many students who have played in the orchestra have developed into competent musicians. The director of the band has charge of the orchestra. All students belonging to the orchestra are subject to certain rules governing this organization.

The Bible Training Department was established in 1893. The desire for increased opportunities for those who wish to fit themselves for the ministry, or other forms of Christian work in the South, had been long felt. To meet this need, a generous lady in New York erected at Tuskegee a building called Phelps Hall, a picture of which is herewith given, containing a chapel, library, reading room, office, three recitation rooms and forty sleeping rooms, to be used as a Bible School. The donor of this building furnished each room in a comfortable and convenient manner, making it one of the most beautiful and desirable buildings on the school grounds. The instruction is wholly undenominational. It is the aim of this new department to help all denominations, and not to antagonize any. The Bible School is not in opposition to any other theological work now being done, but it is simply a means of helping. The faculty is composed of some of the strongest men in the country. Rev. Edgar J. Penney is in charge of the work, assisted by Rev. B. H. Peterson. Rt. Rev. B. T. Tanner, Rev. C. O. Boothe, D. D., and Rt. Rev. George W. Clinton have been engaged to give a regular course of lectures during each term.

The members of the Bible School are required to do mission work on the Sabbath in the neighboring churches—preaching and teaching in the Sunday Schools whenever their services are needed—and to make weekly reports in writing of the work done.

It is not necessary to have a special call to the ministry to enter the Bible School at Tuskegee. Many who desire to do only missionary work or to become intelligent teachers of the Bible in the Sunday Schools, will be greatly benefited and helped; indeed, quite a few of those who are now members of this department are fitting themselves for this kind of work.

The demand for an educated ministry is growing throughout the South, and those who expect to preach must prepare themselves for the work.

This department was established for the express purpose of giving colored men and women a knowledge of the English Bible; implanting in their hearts a noble ambition to go out into the dark and benighted districts of the South and give their lives for the elevation and Christianizing of the South. Last year eighty-three students attended this department. This was the largest attendance since the department was founded.

Last, but not least, I mention the Academic Department, which offers a thorough course of instruction, nearly, if not quite, equal to the high school courses of the Northern and Western States. No language, however, except English, is taught. It is our aim to correlate the work of the Academic Department with the Industrial Departments, and it is the policy of the school not to give any student a diploma of graduation who has not completed the course in at least one division of one or another of the industrial departments.

On the day before Gen. Armstrong was stricken with the paralysis which finally resulted in his death, I remember that I met him on Beacon Street, in Boston, and told him that some ladies in New York were discussing the matter of giving us a new building, but seemed somewhat undecided as to the wisdom of doing so. I was talking to the General about interceding in order to get these friends to decide to furnish the building. He seemed greatly interested in the matter and promised to either see or communicate with these New York ladies. Before we finished our conversation, however, we were interrupted by some one and we did not finish the talk about the building. The next day Gen. Armstrong was stricken with paralysis, and no one was permitted to see him for several days. After several days had passed by, the doctors seemed to be convinced that he could not live but for a few hours, and I, in company with several other persons, was allowed to see him in his room at the Parker House. To my surprise, the minute I entered the room, he took up the thread of our conversation concerning the building where it was broken off several days previously on Beacon Street, and began at once advising how to secure the building. The General did not recover from this stroke of paralysis, but lived about eight months after it. In January, 1893, that is, about four months before he died, he came to Tuskegee, or rather was brought to Tuskegee, because he was too weak to travel alone, and remained a guest at my home for three weeks. During these weeks he suffered intensely at times, but was always in good spirits and cheerful. His heart was so wrapped up in the elevation of the Negro that it seemed impossible to induce him to take any rest. Most of the time when he was not asleep he was planning or advising concerning the interest of the black man, and spent much time in writing articles for newspapers and to friends in the North. He was present during the session of our Negro Conference in February, 1893, and it was a memorable sight to see him carried by the strong arms of four students up the stairs of the chapel, and into the presence of the Conference. The impression that the sight of Gen. Armstrong made upon the members of the Conference is almost indescribable. All felt as though he was their most strong and helpful friend, and they had a confidence in him that they had in no other being on earth. It was at this Conference that Gen. Armstrong made his first attempt to speak in public after he was stricken with paralysis, and his success in being heard and understood was so encouraging that he spoke to audiences on several other occasions.

I must not neglect to mention the manner in which Gen. Armstrong and Mr. Howe, the farm manager at Hampton, were received at the school on the occasion of this visit, for this was the second visit that the General had made to the school. Both students and teachers were most anxious to do him all the honor possible, and for several weeks previous to his coming we were quite busily engaged in devising some plan to receive the General in a proper manner. At last it was decided to ask the authorities of the Tuskegee Railroad to run a special train from Tuskegee to Chehaw to meet the General. This request the railroad authorities very kindly granted. He arrived upon the school grounds at about nine o'clock at night. Each student and teacher had supplied himself with a long piece of light wood, or “litted,” as the colored people are in the habit of calling it. A long line was formed, and when he came upon the school grounds, the General was driven between two rows of students, each one holding one of these lighted torches. The effect was most interesting and gratifying. I think I never saw anything done for the General which seemed to make him so happy and give him such satisfaction as this reception.

The first public address that I delivered in the North was in Chicopee, a town not far from Springfield. I spoke in the Congregational Church in the morning, but was careful to commit my entire address to memory. I was a little embarrassed after the morning meeting was over when several of the members of the congregation, in congratulating me over my success, stated that they had enjoyed my morning address so much that they had planned to go to Chicopee Falls, an adjoining town, to hear me speak in the evening. As I had only the one address to deliver one can easily see that I was in rather an embarrassing position.

While the greater portion of my speaking has been before Northern white audiences, I also improved every opportunity to speak to my own people, both in the North and in the South. In fact, during the earlier years of the institution I carried on a regular campaign of speaking among the colored people in the South, going to their churches, Sunday-schools, associations, institutes, camp-meetings, conferences, etc. They did not, as I have stated, take kindly to the idea of industrial education at first, and it was largely by reason of my efforts in these public meetings that I succeeded in converting them to the idea of favoring it. At one time I hired a team and took one of the older students with me, and we drove for many miles, stopping at the homes of individuals and at churches to explain to them, the work of the school.

The first opportunity I had to speak to a Southern white audience was on the occasion of the gathering of the Christian Worker's Convention, which was held in Atlanta, in 1893. It seems that it was largely because of the impression that I made upon this audience in Atlanta that the authorities of the Atlanta Exposition were led to extend me an invitation to deliver an address at the opening of that exposition. I shall let an account given in the Christian World, published in New Haven, Conn., take the place of my own words in regard to this address before the Christian Worker's Convention:

“Booker T. Washington, principal of the Tuskegee, Ala., Normal and Industrial Institute, was given a place on the program at the Convention of Christian Workers held at Atlanta, Ga., in 1893, for a five minutes report of progress, the time being thus brief on account of the fact that a full report with questions and answers covering three-quarters of an hour had been given at the Convention the year previous, held in Tremont Temple, Boston. When he made the engagement he doubtless expected to be either at Tuskegee, which is not far from Atlanta, or spending the Convention days with other Christian Workers in Atlanta. It came about, however, that he found it necessary to make engagements in the North immediately before and after the date on which he was announced to speak at Atlanta. To keep his Atlanta engagement it was necessary that he should leave Boston for that city, reaching there on the last train arriving before he was announced to speak, and to return North on the first train leaving Atlanta after his brief address. It was a great sacrifice for a five minutes' address. Mr. Washington said simply that it was his duty to keep his appointment. It does not appear, that the fact that he would be compelled to travel about five hundred miles for every minute of his address, had much weight or even consideration. To do his duty was not small or unimportant. The results of this address were great, great beyond all human thought. Mr. Washington has since stated that he had never before made an address to the white people of the South. His audience of over 2,000 leading Christian people, ministers, business men, legislators, law makers, judges, officials, representatives of the press, from Atlanta, from Georgia and from other states of the South, were charmed by his personality and the passionate earnestness with which he set forth the magnificent scheme of Christian effort at Tuskegee, and pleaded for the upbuilding of his race under Southern skies. This representative audience saw before them a representative of his race such as they had not been wont to see. His address was flashed over the wires by sympathetic press agents through the South, and he probably never before spoke to a larger and more influential audience. But in the providence of God there were still greater results.”

I have always made it a rule to keep engagements of a public nature when I have once made a promise to do so. On one occasion I had an appointment to speak in a small country church not far from Boston. just before night a severe snow storm came up, and although I knew this storm would keep every one from the meeting, I made it a point to be present. When I got to the church there was no one present except the sexton. The minister himself did not come, and when I saw him later he was surprised to find that I had been at the church on the night appointed, and told me he felt sure I would not be present on account of the storm.

In the earlier days of the institution, of course, it was a difficult task to secure interviews with persons of prominence and wealth in the North, but Gen. Armstrong's recommendations, which he was always willing to give, in most cases served to secure me a hearing. It was equally difficult in our early history to secure opportunities from ministers and others to speak before their congregations. Such calls on ministers were, of course, very numerous, and one can hardly blame them for shutting out those with whom they were not well acquainted. I have often been surprised to note the number of irresponsible and unworthy colored men and women who spend their time in the North attempting to secure money for institutions that in many cases have no existence; or when they exist at all, are in such a feeble and unorganized condition as in no way to have a claim upon the generosity of the public. Many of these schools, of course, within a radius of a mile or two, do reasonably good work, but I am quite sure the time has come when the North should confine its gifts wholly to the larger and well organized institutions which are able to train teachers or industrial leaders who will go out and show these local communities how to build up schools for themselves. Three or four hundred dollars given to one local community may serve to help it for a time, but there are a hundred thousand other communities that need help just as much; scattering a few hundred dollars here and there among local communities amounts to little in putting the people upon their feet, but putting it into a teacher who will show the community how to help itself means much in the way of the solution of our problem.

The constant work of appealing to individuals, speaking before churches, Sunday-schools, etc., gradually served to make the institution known in most parts of the country. This was true to such an extent that in 1883 we received our first legacy Of $500 through the will of Mr. Frederick Marquand of Southport, Conn. This was a most pleasant and gratifying surprise to us, as we had no thought of any one's remembering us in this way. Since then, however, hardly a year has passed that we have not been remembered by a legacy. The largest sum that we have received in this manner has been $30,000 through the will of Mr. Edward Austin, of Boston. Mr. Austin's case is another one which shows, as I have already mentioned, that one should try to cultivate the habit of doing his duty to the full extent each day and not worry over results.

I remember that the first time I saw Mr. Austin was about the year 1885 when the late Dr. W. I. Bowditch, of Boston, gave me a letter to him. At that time Mr. Austin gave me his check for $50, but gave nothing between 1885 and 1896 and seemed to take little interest in the school, in fact I had supposed that he had forgotten all about us. I tried on several occasions to get another audience with him but did not succeed. In 1896, while in Boston, I was very much surprised to receive an invitation from Mr. Austin to call at his home. He was then very feeble, being over ninety years of age, but he told me that he had remembered us in his will, and that as it would not be possible for him to live much longer, we would likely come into possession of the money within a reasonably short time, which proved to be true.

On another occasion, I walked a long distance out into the country during a cold winter day, to see a gentleman who lived near Stamford, Conn. More than once, I was rather inclined to blame myself for exposing my body to the cold on what might prove a fruitless journey. When I arrived at the gentleman's house rather late in the evening, he gave me, after considerable hesitation, a small check, but did not seem to take a great deal of interest in the school. The following year, however, I succeeded in obtaining from him a check for a somewhat larger amount. His interest, however, continued to grow from year to year, so that in 1891 he surprised us all by sending a check for $10,000. Up to that time this was the largest single gift in cash that the institution had ever received, and my readers can well imagine that the receipt of this large sum caused a day of general rejoicing on the grounds at Tuskegee.

I have referred already to the gift of $400 from a friend who helped us when we were in an embarrassing position. I might add that the following year this same friend sent us a check for $3,000, and since that time she and her sister have given regularly to us $3,000 each year. These two friends have done as much, if not more, to keep the institution on a firm footing than any one else that I know of.

I have had, in my eighteen years of experience in collecting money for the Tuskegee Institute, some very interesting episodes. On the whole, collecting money is hard, disagreeable, wearing work, but there are some compensations that come from it. In the first place, it brings one into contact with some of the best people in the world, as well as some of the meanest and most narrow ones. Very often, when I have been in the North seeking money, I have found myself completely without cash. I remember one time while in Providence, R. I., that when I had spent all the money I had and was still without breakfast, when, in crossing the streets, I found twenty-five cents near the sidewalk. With this I bought my breakfast, and with the added strength and courage which that breakfast gave me, I went in quest of donations for Tuskegee, and was soon rewarded by several large gifts.

As an example of the way in which I have used my time from year to year, there have been many occasions when I have slept in three different beds in one night, while traveling through different portions of the country. I give here a portion of a schedule which I followed on a recent lecture tour in the West. This will enable my readers to judge whether or not to speak from night to night is the easy job that many people take it to be: I spoke at Mt. Vernon, Iowa, January 19, 1900, 8 P. M., then took the 11 o'clock train for Cedar Rapids, where I arrived in about twenty-five minutes. Laid over in Cedar Rapids until 3:15 o'clock, A. M., then took the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern railway for Columbus Junction, where I arrived about 5 o'clock in the morning, remaining in Columbus Junction until about 8 o'clock, when I took the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, railway for Centerville, Iowa where I arrived at 12:37, January 20, much fatigued and worn out from the long journey over three different railroads. At 8 o'clock I again spoke, and at 12:18 A. M. again took the train for Chicago, where I was billed to speak twice the same day, and on the following morning I took the train for a long journey westward, finally ending in Denver, and in returning stopped off at Omaha and other places.

During 1892 I was asked by Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D., editor of the Outlook, to write an article for his paper which would let the country know the exact condition and needs of the Negro ministry in the South. In this article I told as fully and frankly as I could, just what the condition of the ministry was mentally, morally and religiously. A very large proportion of the colored ministers throughout the country became greatly incensed at what I said, feeling that I had injured the Negro ministry very materially by my plain language. For almost a year after this article was written scarcely a Negro conference or association assembled in any part of the country that did not proceed to pass resolutions condemning me and the article which I had written. This went on for some time, but I was determined not to in any way yield the position which I had taken, for the reason that I knew that I was right, and had spoken the truth. At the time when the discussion and condemnation of myself were at the highest pitch, the late Bishop D. A. Payne, of the A. M. E. Church, wrote a letter endorsing all the statements which I had made, and adding on his own account that I had not told the whole truth, This of course added fresh fuel to the flames and the Bishop for several months came in for his share of the condemnation.

At the present time, after the lapse of eight years, I feel that the institution at Tuskegee and myself personally have no warmer friends than we have in the Negro ministers. Almost without exception at the present time they acknowledge that the article which I wrote has done the whole body of ministers a great deal of good; that bishops and other church officers were made to realize the importance of not only purifying the ministry as far as possible, but demanding a higher standard in the pulpit, so far as mental education was concerned. I scarcely ever go anywhere without receiving the thanks of ministers for my plain talk. They feel that they are greatly indebted to me for much of the improvement that has taken place within recent years. Of course when it is considered that at the time I wrote this article a very small proportion of the colored ministers had had an opportunity to secure systematic training that would give them mental strength, and moral and religious stamina, it could not have been expected that any large proportion would have been fitted in the highest degree for the office of ministers. The improvement at the present time is constantly going on, and within a few years I believe that the Negro church is going to be quite a different thing from what it has had the reputation of being in the past.

At all times, during the discussion and condemnation of myself, there were not wanting strong and prominent persons in different parts of the country among our own race who stood valiantly and bravely by the position which I had taken. Among them, as leader, was Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, the editor of the New York Age. Mr. Fortune in this matter, as in all other matters where he has considered my position the correct one, has defended and supported me without regard to his personal popularity or unpopularity. While he and I differ and have differed on many important public questions, we have never allowed our differences to mar our personal friendship. In all matters pertaining to the welfare of our race in the South I have always consulted him most freely and frankly. For example, in the preparation of the open letter to the Louisiana State Constitutional Convention, Mr. Fortune and myself sat up nearly one whole night at Tuskegee preparing this letter. I have seldom ever given any public utterances to the country that have not had his criticism and approval. His help and friendship to me in many directions have been most potent in enabling me to accomplish whatever I have been able to do.

In the same class with Mr. Fortune I would put my private secretary, Mr. Emmet J. Scott, who, for a number of years, has been in the closest and most helpful relations to me in all my work. Without his constant and painstaking care it would be impossible for me to perform even a very small part of the labor that I now do. Mr. Scott understands so thoroughly my motives, plans and ambitions that he puts himself into my own position as nearly as it is possible for one individual to put himself into the place of another, and in this way makes himself invaluable not only to me personally but to the institution. Such a man as Mr. Scott I have found exceedingly rare, only once or twice in a lifetime are such people discovered.

There is only one way for an individual to collect money for a worthy institution, as there is only one way for him to succeed in any line of work, and that is to make up his mind to do his duty to the fullest extent and let results take care of themselves.