In making the point that, in spite of race prejudice, the handicaps to which his people were subjected in the South were after all superficial and did not interfere with their chance to work and earn a living, he told the experience of an old Negro who was accompanying him on one of his Southern educational tours. At a certain city they were obliged to wait several hours between trains, so this old man took advantage of the opportunity to stroll about and see the sights of the place. After a while he pulled out hiswatch and found he had barely time to get back to the station before the train was due to leave. Accordingly he rushed to a hack stand and called out to the first driver he came to, who happened to be a white man: "Hurry up an' take me to the station, I's gotta get the 4:32 train!" To which the white hack driver replied: "I ain't never drove a nigger in my hack yit an' I ain't goin' ter begin now. You can git a nigger driver ter take ye down!"
To this the old colored man replied with perfect good nature: "All right, my frien', we won't have no misunderstanding or trouble; I'll tell you how we'll settle it: you jest hop in on der back seat an' do der ridin' and I'll set in front an' do der drivin'." In this way they reached the station amicably and the old man caught his train. Like this old Negro, Mr. Washington always devoted his energies to catching the train, and it made little difference to him whether he sat on the front or the back seat.
A few months later, to the five thousand people of his own race in the Harlem Casino in New York City, he described their daily lives, their problems, perplexities, and temptations in terms as homely, as picturesque, and as vivid as he used in talking to the Georgia farmers. He urged them, just as he did the farmers, to stop moving about and to settle down—"to stopstayinghere and there and everywhere and begin tolivesomewhere." He urged them to leave the little mechanical job of window washing, or what not, and go into business for themselves, even if they could only afford a few newspapers or peanuts to start with. He told of a certain New York street where he hadfound all the people on one side of a row of push carts were selling something, while all the people on the other side were buying something. Those that were selling were white people, while those that were buying were colored people. That, he said, was a color line they had drawn themselves. He reminded them of the high cost of living, and by way of example he commented upon the expense of having to buy so many shoes. He said: "Up here you not only have to have good, expensive shoes, but you have to wear them all the time." And then he reminded them how back in the country down South, before they came to the city, they would buy a pair of shoes at Christmas and after Christmas put them away in the "chist" and not take them out again until "big meeting day," and then wear them only in the meeting and not walking to and from the church. And as he concluded with the words, "Under those conditions shoes last a long time," people all over the audience were chuckling and nudging and winking at one another as people will when characteristic incidents in their past lives are graphically recalled to them.
Then he described the almost innumerable temptations to spend money which the city offers. Some of the store windows are so enticing that, as he said, "the dollars almost jump out of your pockets as you go by on the sidewalk." "Then you men working for rich men here in the city smell the smoke of so many twenty-five-cent cigars that after a while you feel as though you must smoke twenty-five-cent cigars. You don't stop to think that when the grandfathers of those very men first came fromthe country a hundred years ago they smoked two-for-five cigars." Then he told of a family he had found living on the tenth story of an electric-lighted, steam-heated apartment house with elevator service, and this very family only two years before was living in a two-room cabin in the Yazoo Valley on the Mississippi bottoms. And he commented: "Now, that family's in danger. No people can change as much and as fast as that without great danger!"
A study in black
A study in black. Note the tensity of expression with which the group is following his each and every word.
Next he touched on the high rents and said: "You mothers know that sooner or later you have to take in roomers to help pay that rent, and after a while you take in Tom, Dick, or Harry, or anybody who's got the money regardless of who or what they are, and you mothers know the danger that spells for your daughters." (At this point he was interrupted by a chorus of "amens" from women all over the great hall.) He continued: "Now, you take the 'old man' aside an' tell him straight, you're not going to have any more roomers hanging round your house—that he's got to hustle for a better job or go into some little business for himself, or move out into some little cottage in the country, or do something to get rid of those Tom, Dick, and Harry roomers."
In short, in this speech Mr. Washington showed that he knew just as intimately the lives of his people in the flats of Greater New York as on the farms of southwestern Georgia.
In spite of his grasp of details Mr. Washington never became so immersed in them as to lose sight of his ultimate goal, and conversely he never became so blinded by thevision of his ultimate goal as to overlook details. The solution of the so-called Negro problem in America, he felt, is to be found along these lines: As his people have more and more opportunity for training and become better and better trained they become more and more self-sufficient. They are developing their own carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, farmers, merchants, and bankers as well as lawyers, teachers, preachers, and physicians. These trained people naturally, for the most part, serve their own race, and to them the members of the race naturally turn for the service that each is equipped to render. As they acquire wealth, education, and cultivation, the persons possessing these advantages naturally intermingle socially and build up a society from which the rough, ignorant, and uncouth of their own race are as inevitably excluded as are such persons from all polite social intercourse of whatever people. These Negroes of education and cultivation no more desire to force themselves into the society of the other race than do any persons of real education and cultivation desire to go where they are not wanted. As the race increases in wealth and culture it becomes more and more easy and natural for its successful members to satisfy their social desires and ambitions in their own society. Already in the centres of Negro prosperity and culture it would be almost, if not quite, as impossible for a white man to be received into the best Negro society as it would for a Negro to be received into the best white society. This growing independence and self-sufficiency in the trades, the professions, and social intercourse leadsinevitably, as he pointed out, to a form of natural segregation based upon economic needs and social preferences, and in conformity to the laws of nature, which is a very different matter from the artificial and arbitrary segregation forced upon unwilling people by the laws of men. Under these conditions the disputes as to whether the best society of the blacks is inferior or superior to the best society of the whites becomes as academic and futile as would be similar contentions as to whether the best society of Constantinople is inferior or superior to that of Boston.
While Negroes are more and more drawing apart from the whites into their own section of the city, town, or county they nevertheless find it a source of strength to live near the whites in order that they may have the benefit of their aid in those matters in which the older and stronger race excels. Nor is this an entirely one-sided advantage, as there are not a few matters in which the Negroes have natural advantages over the whites and hence may render them useful service. Thus the two races, socially separated but economically interdependent, may to mutual advantage live side by side.
Some persons claim that any such plan of race adjustment, while theoretically plausible and ideally desirable, is nevertheless practically impossible. They contend that no so radically different races have ever lived side by side in harmony and each aiding the other. However that may be, there remains the fact that such a harmonious and mutually helpful relationship between the two races does already exist in the town of Tuskegee, throughout MaconCounty, and in many other of the more progressive localities throughout the South to-day. And at the same time, the lynchings and riots and other manifestations of racial conflict are continuously if slowly growing less frequent. Whatever may be the relative strength of the two theories, the facts are lining up in support of the Booker Washington prophecy at the Atlanta Exposition when he said: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."
During the last twenty years of his life Mr. Washington came more and more to be regarded as the representative and spokesman of his race, and was invited to represent and speak for them at such national and international gatherings as the annual conventions of the National Negro Business League, of which he was the president and founder; the great meeting in honor of the brotherhood of man, held in Boston in 1897; the Presbyterian rally for Home Missions, at which President Grover Cleveland presided; the International Sunday-school Convention held in Chicago in 1914; the meeting of the National Educational Association in St. Louis in 1904; the Thanksgiving Peace Jubilee in the Chicago Auditorium at the close of the war with Spain in 1898, with President McKinley and his Cabinet in attendance; the Commencement exercises at Harvard in 1896, when President Eliot conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts; the International Conference on the Negro, held at Tuskegee in 1912, with representatives present from Europe, Africa, the West Indies,and South America, as well as all sections of the United States. Dartmouth College conferred his Doctorate upon him in 1901.
At Harvard in 1896 President Eliot, with these words, conferred upon Mr. Washington the first honorary degree ever conferred by a great university upon an American Negro: "Teacher, wise helper of his race; good servant of God and country." In his speech delivered at the Alumni Dinner on the same day Mr. Washington brought this message to Harvard: "If through me, an humble representative, seven millions of my people in the South might be permitted to send a message to Harvard—Harvard that offered up on death's altar young Shaw, and Russell, and Lowell, and scores of others, that we might have a free and united country—that message would be: 'Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by the way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust discrimination, and prejudice, but through them all we are coming up, and with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our progress!'"
The next year at the great meeting in honor of the brotherhood of man held in Music Hall, Boston, which concluded with the unveiling of the monument of Robert Gould Shaw, Booker Washington in concluding his address turned to the one-armed color bearer of Colonel Shaw's regiment and said: "To you, to the scarred andscattered remnants of the Fifty-fourth, who with empty sleeve and wanting leg have honored this occasion with your presence—to you, your commander is not dead. Though Boston erected no monument, and history recorded no story, in you and the loyal race which you represent Robert Gould Shaw will have a monument which time cannot wear away."
In his speech at the Peace Jubilee exercises after the war with Spain, Mr. Washington said: "When you have gotten the full story of the heroic conduct of the Negro in the Spanish-American War—heard it from the lips of Northern soldiers and Southern soldiers, from ex-abolitionist and ex-master—then decide within yourselves whether a race that is thus willing to die for its country should not be given the highest opportunity to live for its country." And again in the same speech, after rehearsing the successes of American arms, he said: "We have succeeded in every conflict, except the effort to conquer ourselves in the blotting out of racial prejudices.... Until we thus conquer ourselves, I make no empty statement when I say that we shall have, especially in the Southern part of our country, a cancer gnawing at the heart of the Republic that shall one day prove as dangerous as an attack from an army without or within." Note this as the language of a man on a great national occasion who has been accused of a time-serving acquiescence in the injustices which his race suffers!
In his address before the National Educational Association in St. Louis, in 1904, he made the following remarks which are typical of points he sought to emphasize whenaddressing audiences of white people: "Let me free your minds, if I can, from possible fear and apprehension in two directions: the Negro in this country does not seek, as a race, to exercise political supremacy over the white man, nor is social intermingling with any race considered by the Negro to be one of the essentials to his progress. You may not know it, but my people are as proud of their racial identity as you are of yours, and in the degree that they become intelligent, racial pride increases. I was never prouder of the fact that I am classed as a Negro than I am to-day.... I can point you to groups of my people in nearly every part of our country that in intelligence and high and unselfish purpose of their school and church life, and in the purity and sweetness of their home life and social intercourse, will compare favorably with the races of the earth. You can never lift any large section of people by continually calling attention to their weak points. A race, like a child in school, needs encouragement as well as chastisement."
In his address before the annual session of 1914 of the National Negro Business League at Muskogee, Oklahoma, Mr. Washington made the following remarks which are typical of his points of chief emphasis in addressing his own people: "Let your success thoroughly eclipse your shortcomings. We must give the world so much to think and talk about that relates to our constructive work in the direction of progress that people will forget and overlook our failures and shortcomings.... One big, definite fact in the direction of achievement and construction will go farther insecuring rights and removing prejudice than many printed pages of defense and explanation.... Let us in the future spend less time talking about the part of the city that we cannot live in, and more time in making that part of the city that we can live in beautiful and attractive."
It is characteristic of the kind of criticism to which Mr. Washington was subjected that a certain element of the Negro press violently denounced this comment as an indirect endorsement of the legal segregation of Negroes. Probably the last article written by Mr. Washington for any publication was the one published posthumously by theNew Republic, New York City, December 4, 1915, entitled, "My View of Segregation Laws," in which he stated in no uncertain terms his views on the segregation laws which were being passed in the South. In concluding his article, he said:
"Summarizing the matter in the large, segregation is ill-advised because:
1. It is unjust.
2. It invites other unjust measures.
3. It will not be productive of good, because practically every thoughtful Negro resents its injustice and doubts its sincerity. Any race adjustment based on injustice finally defeats itself. The Civil War is the best illustration of what results where it is attempted to make wrong right or seem to be right.
4. It is unnecessary.
5. It is inconsistent. The Negro is segregated from hiswhite neighbor, but white business men are not prevented from doing business in Negro neighborhoods.
6. There has been no case of segregation of Negroes in the United States that has not widened the breach between the two races. Wherever a form of segregation exists it will be found that it has been administered in such a way as to embitter the Negro and harm more or less the moral fibre of the white man. That the Negro does not express this constant sense of wrong is no proof that he does not feel it.
"It seems to me that the reasons given above, if carefully considered, should serve to prevent further passage of such segregation ordinances as have been adopted in Norfolk, Richmond, Louisville, Baltimore, and one or two cities in South Carolina.
"Finally, as I have said in another place, as white and black learn daily to adjust, in a spirit of justice and fair play, these interests which are individual and racial, and to see and feel the importance of those fundamental interests which are common, so will both races grow and prosper. In the long run, no individual and no race can succeed which sets itself at war against the common good; for in the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim."
In concluding his Muskogee speech he said: "If there are those who are inclined to be discouraged concerning racial conditions in this country we have but to turn our minds in the direction of the deplorable conditions in Europe, growing largely out of racial bitterness and friction. When we contrast what has taken place there with the peaceful manner in which black people and white people are living together in this country, notwithstanding now and then there are evidences of injustice and friction, which should always be condemned, we have the greatest cause for thanksgiving. Perhaps nowhere else in the world can be found so many white people living side by side with so many of dark skin in so much of peace and harmony as in the United States."
This concluding observation was particularly characteristic of him. Somewhere, or somehow, he always turned to account all significant events for weal or woe from the most trivial personal happenings to the titanic world war.
Like all great leaders, Booker Washington did the bulk of his work quietly in his own office and not on dramatic historic occasions before great audiences. He received every day, for instance, a huge and varied mail which required not only industry to handle, but much judgment, patience, and tact to dispose of wisely and adequately. We will here mention and quote from a sheaf of letters taken at random from his files which partially illustrate the range of his interests and the variety of the calls which were constantly made upon him.
A railroad official in Colorado asked his opinion on the question of separate schools for white and black children apropos of a movement to amend the State constitution so as to make possible such separate schools. In his reply Mr. Washington said: "As a rule, colored people in the Northern States are very much opposed to any plans forseparate schools, and I think their feelings in the matter deserve consideration. The real objection to separate schools, from their point of view, is that they do not like to feel that they are compelled to go to one school rather than the other. It seems as if it was taking away part of their freedom. This feeling is likely to be all the stronger where the matter is made a subject of public agitation. On the other hand, my experience is that if this matter is left to the discretion of the school officials it usually settles itself. As the colored people usually live pretty closely together, there will naturally be schools in which colored students are in the majority. In that case, the process of separation takes place naturally and without the necessity of changing the constitution. If you make it a constitutional question, the colored people are going to be opposed to it. If you leave it simply an administrative question, which it really is, the matter will very likely settle itself."
We next find a courteous reply to the letter of some poor crank who wanted to secure his backing for a preparation which he had concocted for taking the curl out of Negroes' hair. Then comes a letter to a man who wants to know whether it is true that the Negro race is dying out. To him Mr. Washington quoted the United States census figures for 1910, which indicate an increase of 11-3/10 per cent. in the Negro population for the decade.
Next, we come upon a letter written to a man who is interested in an effort of the Freedman's Aid Society to raise a half a million dollars for Negro schools in the South.Since this letter so well describes an important phase of Booker Washington's leadership we give it almost in full. It was written in 1913 and runs thus:
"I think the most interesting work that Tuskegee has done in recent years is its work in rural schools in the country surrounding the Institute. During the last five or six years forty-seven school buildings have been erected in Macon County by colored people themselves. At the same time the school term has been lengthened in every part of the county from five to eight months. This work has been done under the direction of a supervising teacher working in connection with the extension department of the Institute.
"Among other things that have been attempted to encourage the people to improve their schools has been a model country school started in a community called Rising Star, a few miles from the Institute. The school at Rising Star is an example of the rural school that Tuskegee is seeking to promote. It consists of a five-room frame house in which the teachers—a Tuskegee graduate and his wife—not only teach, but live. All the rooms are used by the school children. In the kitchen they are taught to cook, in the dining-room to serve a meal, in the bedroom to make the beds. In the garden they are taught how to raise vegetables, poultry, pigs, and cows. They recite in the sitting-room or on the veranda, and their lessons all deal with matters of their own every-day life.... Instead of figuring how long it will take an express train to reach the moon if it travelled at the rate of forty miles anhour, the pupils figure out how much corn can be raised on neighbor Smith's patch of land and how much farmer Jones' pig will bring when slaughtered.
"The pupils learn neatness and cleanliness by living in a decent home during their school hours. They carry the lesson home, and the result is seen in cleaner and better farmhouses. The model school has become the pattern on which the farmers and their wives are improving their homes...."
Then comes a letter from a poor woman who wants him in the course of his travels to look up her husband who abandoned her some years before. For purposes of identification she says: "This is the hith of him 5-6 light eyes dark hair unwave shave and a Suprano Voice his age 58 his name Steve...." Even though Mr. Washington did not agree to spend his spare time looking for a disloyal husband with a soprano voice, he sent the poor woman a kind reply and suggested some means of tracing her recreant spouse.
We come next upon a long letter written to a man who wishes to quote for publication in a magazine Booker Washington's opinion on the relation between crime and education. In the concluding paragraphs of his reply Mr. Washington says: "In nine cases out of ten the crimes which serve to unite and give an excuse for mob violence are committed by men who are without property, without homes, and without education except what they have picked up in the city slums, in prisons, or on the chain gang. The South is spending too much money in givingthe Negro this kind of education that makes criminals and not enough on the kind of schools that turn out farmers, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Other things being equal, it is true not only in America, in the South, but throughout the world, that there is the least crime where there is the most education. This is true of the South and of the Negro, just the same as it is true of every other race. Particularly is it true that the individuals who commit crimes of violence and crimes that are due to lack of self-control are individuals who are, for the most part, ignorant. The decrease in lynching in the Southern States is an index of the steady growth of the South in wealth, in industry, in education, and in individual liberty."
Then comes a letter to an individual who desires to know what proportion of the American Negroes can read and write now, and what proportion could at the time of the Civil War. The reply again quotes the 1910 census to the effect that 69.5 per cent. can now read and write as compared with only 3 per cent. at the close of the war. The letter also points out that the rate of illiteracy among American Negroes is now lower than the rate for all the peoples of Russia, Portugal, Brazil, and Venezuela, and almost as low as that of Spain.
There follows a sheaf of correspondence in which Mr. Washington agreed to speak at the unveiling of a tablet in Auburn, New York, to the memory of "Aunt Harriet" Tubman Davis, the black woman, squat of stature and seamed of face, who piloted three or four hundred slaves from the land of bondage to the land of freedom. Whilethere he also agreed to speak at Auburn prison in response to the special request of some of the prisoners.
Then we find a courteous but firmly negative reply to a long-winded bore who writes a six-page letter urging Mr. Washington to secure the acceptance by the Negro race of a flag which he has designed as their racial flag.
After this follows a group of letters which passed between him and the late Edgar Gardiner Murphy, author of "The Present South," "The Basis of Ascendency," and other important books. In one of these letters Mr. Washington agrees, as requested, to read the proofs of "The Basis of Ascendency," and in another he thus characteristically comments upon Mr. Murphy's fears that a pessimistic book on the status of the Negro written by a supposed authority (a colored man) would do wide-reaching harm: "Of course among a certain element it will have an influence for harm, but human nature, as I observe it, is so constructed that it does not take kindly to a description of a failure. It is hard to get up enthusiasm in connection with a funeral procession. No man, in my opinion, could write a history of the Southern Confederacy that would be read generally because it failed. I am not saying, of course, that the Negro race is a failure. Mr. —— writes largely from that point of view, hence there is no rallying point for the general reader."
In reply to a Western university professor who had asked his opinion of amalgamation as a solution of the race problem he wrote: "I have never looked upon amalgamation as offering a solution of the so-called race problem, andI know very few Negroes who favor it or even think of it, for that matter. What those whom I have heard discuss the matter do object to are laws which enable the father to escape his responsibility, or prevent him from accepting and exercising it, when he has children by colored women. I think this answers your question, but since there seems to be some misunderstanding as to how colored people feel about this subject, I might say in explanation of what I have already said: The Negroes in America are, as you know, a mixed race. If that is an advantage we have it; if it is a disadvantage, it is still ours, and for the simple reason that the product of every sort of racial mixture between the black man and any other race is always a Negro and never a white man, Indian, or any other sort of man.
"The Negro in America is defined by the census as a person who is classed as such in the community in which he or she resides. In other words, the Negro in this country is not so much of a particular color or particular racial stock as one who shares a particular condition. It is the fact that they all share in this condition which creates a cause of common sympathy and binds the members of the race together in spite of all differences."
To an embarrassing question put by the society editor of some paper Mr. Washington replied by merely telling a funny story the application of which to the impertinent inquiry was obvious. In another letter he summed up his opinion of the much-mooted question of the franchise in these two sentences: "There is no reason why every Negro who is not fitted to vote should not be disfranchised. Atthe same time, there is no good reason why every white man who is not fitted to vote should not also be disfranchised."
From the foregoing correspondence it will be seen that one of Booker Washington's many rôles was to act as a kind of plenipotentiary and interpreter between his people and the dominant race. For this part he was peculiarly fitted by his thorough understanding of and sympathy for each race.
Theodore Roosevelt, immediately after taking the oath of office as President of the United States, in Buffalo after the death of President McKinley, wrote Mr. Washington the following note:
[Copy]Executive MansionWashingtonBuffalo, N.Y.,Sept. 14, 1901.My Dear Mr. Washington:I write you at once to say that to my deep regret my visit South must now be given up.When are you coming North? I must see you as soon as possible. I want to talk over the question of possible appointments in the South exactly on the lines of our last conversation together.I hope that my visit to Tuskegee is merely deferred for a short season.Faithfully yours,(Signed)Theodore Roosevelt.Booker T. Washington, Esq.,Tuskegee, Alabama.
[Copy]
Executive Mansion
Washington
Buffalo, N.Y.,Sept. 14, 1901.
My Dear Mr. Washington:
I write you at once to say that to my deep regret my visit South must now be given up.
When are you coming North? I must see you as soon as possible. I want to talk over the question of possible appointments in the South exactly on the lines of our last conversation together.
I hope that my visit to Tuskegee is merely deferred for a short season.
Faithfully yours,
(Signed)Theodore Roosevelt.
Booker T. Washington, Esq.,Tuskegee, Alabama.
This deferred visit finally took place in 1905, not long after Colonel Roosevelt's triumphant election to the Presidency, when he came to Tuskegee accompanied by his secretary, William Loeb, Jr.; Federal Civil Service Commissioner, John McIlhenny; Collector of Revenue for the Birmingham District, J.O. Thompson; Judge Thomas G. Jones of Montgomery, and a fellow Rough Rider by the name of Greeneway.
In response to the above note Mr. Washington went to the White House and discussed with the President "possible future appointments in the South" along the lines agreed upon between them in a conference which they had had at a time when it had seemed possible that Mr. Roosevelt might be given the Republican Presidential nomination of 1900, that is, while Mr. Roosevelt was Governor of New York and a tentative candidate for the nomination.
Upon his return to Tuskegee after this talk with President Roosevelt, Mr. Washington found that the judgeship for the Southern District of Alabama had just become vacant through the death of the incumbent, Judge Bruce. Here was an opportunity for the President to put into practice in striking fashion the policy they had discussed—namely, to appoint to Federal posts in the Southern States the best men available and to reward and recognize conspicuous merit among Southern Democrats and Southern Negroes as well as among Southern white Republicans. Being unable at the moment to return to Washington, he sent his secretary with the following letter:
Tuskegee, Alabama,October 2, 1901.President Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, D.C.My Dear Mr. President: I send you the following information through my secretary, Mr. Emmett J. Scott, whom you can trust implicitly.Judge Bruce, the Judge of the Middle District of Alabama, died yesterday. There is going to be a very hard scramble for his place. I saw ex-governor T.G. Jones yesterday, as I promised, and he is willing to accept the judgeship of the Middle District of Alabama. I am more convinced now than ever that he is the proper man for the place. He has until recently been president of the Alabama State Bar Association. He is a Gold Democrat, and is a clean, pure man in every respect. He stood up in the Constitutional Convention and elsewhere for a fair election law, opposed lynching, and he has been outspoken for the education of both races. He is head and shoulders above any of the other persons who I think will apply for the position.Yours truly,Booker T. Washington.P.S.—I do not believe in all the South you could select a better man through whom to emphasize your idea of the character of a man to hold office than you can do through ex-governor Jones.[Copy]
Tuskegee, Alabama,October 2, 1901.
President Theodore Roosevelt, Washington, D.C.
My Dear Mr. President: I send you the following information through my secretary, Mr. Emmett J. Scott, whom you can trust implicitly.
Judge Bruce, the Judge of the Middle District of Alabama, died yesterday. There is going to be a very hard scramble for his place. I saw ex-governor T.G. Jones yesterday, as I promised, and he is willing to accept the judgeship of the Middle District of Alabama. I am more convinced now than ever that he is the proper man for the place. He has until recently been president of the Alabama State Bar Association. He is a Gold Democrat, and is a clean, pure man in every respect. He stood up in the Constitutional Convention and elsewhere for a fair election law, opposed lynching, and he has been outspoken for the education of both races. He is head and shoulders above any of the other persons who I think will apply for the position.
Yours truly,
Booker T. Washington.
P.S.—I do not believe in all the South you could select a better man through whom to emphasize your idea of the character of a man to hold office than you can do through ex-governor Jones.
[Copy]
Mr. Scott described what occurred on his delivery of this letter in the following report to his chief:
Washington, D.C.,October 4, 1901.My Dear Mr. Washington: I called to see the President this morning. I found him all cordiality and brimming over with good will for you. That pleased me much! He had received the telegram and had made an appointment for me. He read your letter, inquired if I knew the contents, and then launched into a discussion of it. Wanted to know if Governor Jones supported Bryan in either campaign. I told himno. He wanted to know how I knew. I told him of the letter wherein he (Governor Jones) stated to you that he was without political ambition because he had opposed Bryan, etc. Well, he said he wanted to hear from you direct as to whether he had or not, and asked me to write you to find out. I am now awaiting that wire so as to call again on him. As soon as I see him again I will wire you and write you as to what he says. He is going to appoint Governor Jones. That was made apparent. While I was waiting to see him Senator Chandler with the Spanish Claims Commission called. They saw him first. I heard the talk, however, which was mostly felicitation. Incidentally, however, Senator Chandler said that the Commission was afraid it would lose one of its members because of the vacancy in Alabama, referring to Hon. W.L. Chambers, who was present and who is a member of the Commission. The President laughed heartily. Said the Senator always sprung recommendations unexpectedly, and so forth and so forth. He did not inquire as to any of the others—the applicants—seemed interested only to find out about Governor Jones.... There were many correspondents there at the door, but I told them I was passing through to Buffalo, but had stopped over to invite the President to include Tuskegee in his itinerary when he goes South again.... Will write again when I see the President again.Yours sincerely,(Signed)Emmett J. Scott.
Washington, D.C.,October 4, 1901.
My Dear Mr. Washington: I called to see the President this morning. I found him all cordiality and brimming over with good will for you. That pleased me much! He had received the telegram and had made an appointment for me. He read your letter, inquired if I knew the contents, and then launched into a discussion of it. Wanted to know if Governor Jones supported Bryan in either campaign. I told himno. He wanted to know how I knew. I told him of the letter wherein he (Governor Jones) stated to you that he was without political ambition because he had opposed Bryan, etc. Well, he said he wanted to hear from you direct as to whether he had or not, and asked me to write you to find out. I am now awaiting that wire so as to call again on him. As soon as I see him again I will wire you and write you as to what he says. He is going to appoint Governor Jones. That was made apparent. While I was waiting to see him Senator Chandler with the Spanish Claims Commission called. They saw him first. I heard the talk, however, which was mostly felicitation. Incidentally, however, Senator Chandler said that the Commission was afraid it would lose one of its members because of the vacancy in Alabama, referring to Hon. W.L. Chambers, who was present and who is a member of the Commission. The President laughed heartily. Said the Senator always sprung recommendations unexpectedly, and so forth and so forth. He did not inquire as to any of the others—the applicants—seemed interested only to find out about Governor Jones.... There were many correspondents there at the door, but I told them I was passing through to Buffalo, but had stopped over to invite the President to include Tuskegee in his itinerary when he goes South again.... Will write again when I see the President again.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed)Emmett J. Scott.
As soon as he had received Dr. Washington's telegram in reply, Mr. Scott went again to the White House and wrote thus of his second call:
[Copy]Washington, D.C.,October 5, 1901.My Dear Mr. Washington: You have my telegram of to-day. I sent it as soon as I had seen the President. I had a three-hour wait to see him and it was tiresome, but I "camped with them." When admitted to the general reception room the President met me and was cordial and asked me to wait awhile, till he could dismiss two delegations, then he invited me into the office, or cabinet room, and read very carefully the telegram received from you last night—Friday night. His face was a study. He was greatly surprised to learn that the Governor voted for Bryan, and walked about considerably. At last he said, "Well, I guess I'll have to appoint him, but I am awfully sorry he voted for Bryan." He then asked me who Dr. Crum[1]is and I told him that he was a clean representative character, and that he was favorably considered by Harrison for the Charleston postmastership, etc. He did not know him and asked me what place was referred to. You had not discussed it with me, but I told him you most likely referred to the place made vacant by the death of Webster. He then called Mr. Cortelyou, Secretary, into the office and asked him if he knew Crum. He said he didn't but that he had heard ofhim and always favorably. The President then asked Cortelyou what place a man named B. was being considered for, and he said the place made vacant by Webster's death. He then turned to me and said that he was sorry, that he would certainly have considered the matter if he had had your word earlier. He asked me to tell you that if you wish Dr. Crum considered for any other place that he will be glad to have you communicate with him. I then asked him what I should tell you in the Governor Jones' matter, and he said: "Tell Mr. Washington without using my name that party will most likely be appointed—in fact I will appoint him—only don't make it that strong by wire." So I consider the matter closed.The colored brethren here are scared. They don't know what to expect, and the word has passed, they say, that you are the "Warwick" so far as they are concerned. I hope to find you well in Chicago.Sincerely yours,(Signed)Emmett J. Scott.
[Copy]
Washington, D.C.,October 5, 1901.
My Dear Mr. Washington: You have my telegram of to-day. I sent it as soon as I had seen the President. I had a three-hour wait to see him and it was tiresome, but I "camped with them." When admitted to the general reception room the President met me and was cordial and asked me to wait awhile, till he could dismiss two delegations, then he invited me into the office, or cabinet room, and read very carefully the telegram received from you last night—Friday night. His face was a study. He was greatly surprised to learn that the Governor voted for Bryan, and walked about considerably. At last he said, "Well, I guess I'll have to appoint him, but I am awfully sorry he voted for Bryan." He then asked me who Dr. Crum[1]is and I told him that he was a clean representative character, and that he was favorably considered by Harrison for the Charleston postmastership, etc. He did not know him and asked me what place was referred to. You had not discussed it with me, but I told him you most likely referred to the place made vacant by the death of Webster. He then called Mr. Cortelyou, Secretary, into the office and asked him if he knew Crum. He said he didn't but that he had heard ofhim and always favorably. The President then asked Cortelyou what place a man named B. was being considered for, and he said the place made vacant by Webster's death. He then turned to me and said that he was sorry, that he would certainly have considered the matter if he had had your word earlier. He asked me to tell you that if you wish Dr. Crum considered for any other place that he will be glad to have you communicate with him. I then asked him what I should tell you in the Governor Jones' matter, and he said: "Tell Mr. Washington without using my name that party will most likely be appointed—in fact I will appoint him—only don't make it that strong by wire." So I consider the matter closed.
The colored brethren here are scared. They don't know what to expect, and the word has passed, they say, that you are the "Warwick" so far as they are concerned. I hope to find you well in Chicago.
Sincerely yours,
(Signed)Emmett J. Scott.
This precedent-breaking appointment of a Southern Democrat by a Republican President, made primarily on the recommendation of Booker Washington and Grover Cleveland, was acclaimed with enthusiastic approval by all Democrats everywhere, and in fact there was no dissenting voice except from the officeholding Southern Republicans who naturally resented this encroachment upon what they regarded as their patronage rights. At first appreciation was almost universal of the efforts of the Negro leader in helping a Republican President to make this far-reaching change inthe Federal officeholding traditions of the South. Soon, however, some Southern newspapers began to question the wisdom of allowing a Negro to have even an advisory voice in political matters notwithstanding his advice had in this instance been so acceptable to the South. This criticism grew so insistent that Judge Jones found himself in an uncomfortable position because his appointment had been made, in large part, on the recommendation of a Negro. He tried to soften the situation by giving out a statement to the effect that his endorsement by representative white men would probably have assured his appointment even without the assistance of Booker Washington. Later, however, the Judge expressed to Mr. Scott privately, after listening with deep interest to the recital of all the incidents connected with his appointment, his appreciation of what Booker Washington had done for him.
Aside from this appointment, Booker Washington had a voice in many others, including those of Gen. R.D. Johnson as Receiver of Public Moneys at Birmingham, Colonel Thomas R. Roulhac as United States District Judge, and Judge Osceola Kyle of Alabama as United States District Attorney in the Panama Canal Zone. During the administrations of both Presidents Roosevelt and Taft hardly an office of consequence was conferred upon a Negro without first consulting Mr. Washington. He did not strive through his influence with Presidents Roosevelt and Taft to increase the number of Negro appointees, but rather to raise the personnel of Negro officeholders. During the period when his advice wasmost constantly sought at the White House, Charles W. Anderson was appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for the Second District of New York City; J.C. Napier of Nashville, Tenn., became Register of the Treasury; William H. Lewis of Boston was appointed successively Assistant United States District Attorney and Assistant Attorney-General of the United States; Robert H. Terrell was given a Municipal Judgeship of the District of Columbia; Whitefield McKinlay was made Collector of the Port for the Georgetown District, District of Columbia; Dr. W.D. Crum was appointed Collector of Customs for the Port of Charleston, S.C.; Ralph W. Tyler, Auditor for the Navy Department at Washington, D.C.; James A. Cobb, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the enforcement of the Pure Food Law for the District of Columbia, and Charles A. Cottrell, Collector of Internal Revenue for the District of Hawaii at Honolulu. In all these notably excellent appointments Mr. Washington had a voice.
In 1903, in commenting on a speech of Mr. Washington's in which he had emphasized the importance of quality rather than quantity in Negro appointments, President Roosevelt wrote him as follows:
My Dear Mr. Washington:That is excellent; and you have put epigrammatically just what I am doing—that is, though I have rather reduced the quantity I have done my best to raise the quality of the Negro appointments. With high regard.Sincerely yours,Theodore Roosevelt.
My Dear Mr. Washington:That is excellent; and you have put epigrammatically just what I am doing—that is, though I have rather reduced the quantity I have done my best to raise the quality of the Negro appointments. With high regard.
Sincerely yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.
THE Tuskegee Commencement exercises dramatize education. They enable plain men and women to visualize in the concrete that vague word which means so little to them in the abstract. More properly they dramatize the identity between real education and actual life. On the platform before the audience is a miniature engine to which steam has been piped, a miniature frame house in course of construction, and a piece of brick wall in process of erection. A young man in jumpers comes onto the platform, starts the engine and blows the whistle, whereupon young men and women come hurrying from all directions, and each turns to his or her appointed task. A young carpenter completes the little house, a young mason finishes the laying of the brick wall, a young farmer leads forth a cow and milks her in full view of the audience, a sturdy blacksmith shoes a horse, and after this patient, educative animal has been shod he is turned over to a representative of the veterinary division to have his teeth filed. At the same time on the opposite side of the platform one of the girl students is having a dress fitted by one of her classmates who is a dressmaker. She at length walks proudly from the platformin her completed new gown, while the young dressmaker looks anxiously after her to make sure that it "hangs right behind." Other girls are doing washing and ironing with the drudgery removed in accordance with advanced Tuskegee methods. Still others are hard at work on hats, mats, and dresses, while boys from the tailoring department sit crosslegged working on suits and uniforms. In the background are arranged the finest specimens which scientific agriculture has produced on the farm and mechanical skill has turned out in the shops. The pumpkin, potatoes, corn, cotton, and other agricultural products predominate, because agriculture is the chief industry at Tuskegee just as it is among the Negro people of the South.
This form of commencement exercise is one of Booker Washington's contributions to education which has been widely copied by schools for whites as well as blacks. That it appeals to his own people is eloquently attested by the people themselves who come in ever-greater numbers as the commencement days recur. At three o'clock in the morning of this great day vehicles of every description, each loaded to capacity with men, women, and children, begin to roll in in an unbroken line which sometimes extends along the road for three miles. Some of the teachers at times objected to turning a large area of the Institute grounds into a hitching-post station for the horses and mules of this great multitude, but to all such objections Mr. Washington replied, "This place belongs to the people and not to us." Less than a third of these eightto nine thousand people are able to crowd into the chapel to see the actual graduation exercises, but all can see the graduation procession as it marches through the grounds to the chapel and all are shown through the shops and over the farm and through the special agricultural exhibits, and even through the offices, including that of the principal. It is significant of the respect in which the people hold the Institute, and in which they held Booker Washington, that in all these years there has never been on these occasions a single instance of drunkenness or disorderly conduct.
Teams of farmers
Showing some of the teams of farmers attending the Annual Tuskegee Negro Conference.
In his annual report to the trustees for 1914 Mr. Washington said of these commencement exercises: "One of the problems that constantly confronts us is that of making the school of real service to these people on this one day when they come in such large numbers. For many of them it is the one day in the year when they go to school, and we ought to find a way to make the day of additional value to them. I very much hope that in the near future we shall find it possible to erect some kind of a large pavilion which shall serve the purpose of letting these thousands see something of our exercises and be helped by them."
The philosophy symbolized by such graduation exercises as we have described may best be shown by quoting Mr. Washington's own words in an article entitled, "Industrial Education and the Public Schools," which was published in theAnnals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciencefor September of the year 1913. In this article Mr. Washington says: "If I were askedwhat I believe to be the greatest advance which Negro education has made since emancipation I should say that it has been in two directions: first, the change which has taken place among the masses of the Negro people as to what education really is; and, second, the change that has taken place among the masses of the white people in the South toward Negro education itself.
"I can perhaps make clear what I mean by a little explanation: the Negro learned in slavery to work but he did not learn to respect labor. On the contrary, the Negro was constantly taught, directly and indirectly during slavery times, that labor was a curse. It was the curse of Canaan, he was told, that condemned the black man to be for all time the slave and servant of the white man. It was the curse of Canaan that made him for all time 'a hewer of wood and drawer of water.' The consequence of this teaching was that, when emancipation came, the Negro thought freedom must, in some way, mean freedom from labor.
"The Negro had also gained in slavery some general notions in regard to education. He observed that the people who had education for the most part belonged to the aristocracy, to the master class, while the people who had little or no education were usually of the class known as 'poor whites.' In this way education became associated in his mind with leisure, with luxury, and freedom from the drudgery of work with the hands....
"In order to make it possible to put Negro education on a sound and rational basis it has been necessary tochange the opinion of the masses of the Negro people in regard to education and labor. It has been necessary to make them see that education, which did not, directly or indirectly, connect itself with the practical daily interests of daily life could hardly be called education. It has been necessary to make the masses of the Negroes see and realize the necessity and importance of applying what they learned in school to the common and ordinary things of life; to see that education, far from being a means of escaping labor, is a means of raising up and dignifying labor and thus indirectly a means of raising up and dignifying the common and ordinary man. It has been necessary to teach the masses of the people that the way to build up a race is to begin at the bottom and not at the top, to lift the man furthest down, and thus raise the whole structure of society above him. On the other hand, it has been necessary to demonstrate to the white man in the South that education does not 'spoil' the Negro, as it has been so often predicted that it would. It was necessary to make him actually see that education makes the Negro not an idler or spendthrift, but a more industrious, thrifty, law-abiding, and useful citizen than he otherwise would be."
The commencement exercises which we have described are one of the numerous means evolved by Booker Washington to guide the masses of his own people, as well as the Southern whites, to a true conception of the value and meaning of real education for the Negro.
The correlation between the work of farm, shop, andclassroom, first applied by General Armstrong at Hampton, was developed on an even larger scale by his one-time student, Booker Washington. The students at Tuskegee are divided into two groups: the day students who work in the classroom half the week and the other half on the farm and in the shops, and the night students who work all day on the farm or in the shops and then attend school at night. The day school students pay a small fee in cash toward their expenses, while the night school students not only pay no fee but by good and diligent work gradually accumulate a credit at the school bank which, when it becomes sufficiently large, enables them to become day school students. In fact, the great majority of the day students have thus fought their way in from the night school. But all students of both groups thus receive in the course of a week a fairly even balance between theory and practice.
An academic class
An academic class. A problem in brick masonry. Mr. Washington always insisted upon correlation; that is, drawing the problem from the various shops and laboratories.
In a corner of each of the shops, in which are carried on the forty or more different trades, is a blackboard on which are worked out the actual problems which arise in the course of the work. After school hours one always finds in the shops a certain number of the teachers from the Academic Department looking up problems for their classes for the next day. A physics teacher may be found in the blacksmithing shop digging up problems about the tractive strength of wires and the expansion and contraction of metals under heat and cold. A teacher of chemistry may be found in the kitchen of the cooking school unearthing problems relating to the chemistry of food forher class the next day. If, on the other hand, you go into a classroom you will find the shop is brought into the classroom just as the classroom has been brought into the shop. For instance, in a certain English class the topic assigned for papers was "a model house" instead of "bravery" or "the increase of crime in cities," or "the landing of the Pilgrims." The boys of the class had prepared papers on the architecture and construction of a model house, while the girls' papers were devoted to its interior decoration and furnishing. One of the girls described a meal for six which she had actually prepared and the six had actually consumed. The meal cost seventy-five cents. The discussion and criticism which followed each paper had all the zest which vitally practical and near-at-hand questions always arouse.
When the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association met in Atlanta, Ga., in 1904, many of the delegates, after adjournment, visited the Tuskegee Institute. Among these delegates was Prof. Paul Monroe of the Department of History and Principles of Education of the Teachers' College of Columbia University. In recording his impressions of his visit, Professor Monroe says: "My interest in Tuskegee and a few similar institutions is founded on the fact that here I find illustrated the two most marked tendencies which are being formulated in the most advanced educational thought, but are being worked out slowly and with great difficulty. These tendencies are: first, the endeavor to draw the subject matter of education, or the 'stuff' ofschoolroom work, directly from the life of the pupils; and second, to relate the outcome of education to life's activities, occupations, and duties of the pupil in such a way that the connection is made directly and immediately between schoolroom work and the other activities of the person being educated. This is the ideal at Tuskegee, and, to a much greater extent than in any other institution I know of, the practice; so that the institution is working along not only the lines of practical endeavor, but of the most advanced educational thought. To such an extent is this true that Tuskegee and Hampton are of quite as great interest to the student of education on account of the illumination they are giving to educational theory as they are to those interested practically in the elevation of the Negro people and in the solution of a serious social problem. May I give just one illustration of a concrete nature coming under my observation while at the school, that will indicate the difference between the work of the school and that which was typical under old conditions, or is yet typical where the newer ideas, as so well grasped by Mr. Washington, are not accepted? In a class in English composition two boys, among others, had placed their written work upon the board, one having written upon 'Honor' in the most stilted language, with various historical references which meant nothing to himself or to his classmates—the whole paragraph evidently being drawn from some outside source; the other wrote upon 'My Trade—Blacksmithing'—and told in a simple and direct way of his day's work, the nature of the generalcourse of training, and the use he expected to make of his training when completed. No better contrast could be found between the old ideas of formal language work, dominated by books and cast into forms not understood or at least not natural to the youth, and the newer ideas of simplicity, directness, and forcefulness in presenting the account of one's own experience. Not only was this contrast an illustration of the ideal of the entire education offered at Tuskegee in opposition to that of the old, formal, 'literary' education as imposed upon the colored race, but it gave in a nutshell a concept of the new education. This one experience drawn from the life of the boy and related directly to his life's duration and circumstances was education in the truest sense; the other was not save as Mr. Washington made it so in its failure...."
Among the delegates was also Mr. A.L. Rafter, the Assistant Superintendent of Schools of Boston, who in speaking at Tuskegee said: "What Tuskegee is doing for you we are going to take on home to the North. You are doing what we are talking about." In general, these foremost educational experts of the dominant race looked to Booker Washington and Tuskegee for leadership instead of expecting him or his school to follow them.
Booker Washington not only practised at Tuskegee this close relation between school life and real life—and it is being continued now that he is gone—but preached it whenever and wherever opportunity offered. Some years ago, in addressing himself to those of his own students who expected to become teachers, he said on this subject amongother things: "... colored parents depend upon seeing the results of education in ways not true of the white parent. It is important that the colored teacher on this account give special attention to bringing school life into closer touch with real life. Any education is to my mind 'high' which enables the individual to do the very best work for the people by whom he is surrounded. Any education is 'low' which does not make for character and effective service.
"The average teacher in the public schools is very likely to yield to the temptation of thinking that he is educating an individual when he is teaching him to reason out examples in arithmetic, to prove propositions in geometry, and to recite pages of history. He conceives this to be the end of education. Herein is the sad deficiency in many teachers who are not able to use history, arithmetic, and geometry as means to an end. They get the idea that the student who has mastered a certain number of pages in a textbook is educated, forgetting that textbooks are at best but tools, and in many cases ineffective tools, for the development of man....
"The average parent cannot appreciate how many examples Johnny has worked out that day, how many questions in history he has answered; but when he says, 'Mother, I cannot go back to that school until all the buttons are sewed on my coat,' the parent will at once become conscious of school influence in the home. This will be the best kind of advertisement. The button propaganda tends to make the teacher a power in the community. Afew lessons in applied chemistry will not be amiss. Take grease spots, for example. The teacher who with tact can teach his pupils to keep even threadbare clothes neatly brushed and free from grease spots is extending the school influence into the home and is adding immeasurably to the self-respect of the home."[2]
The idea that education is a matter of personal habits of cleanliness, industry, integrity, and right conduct while of course not original with Booker Washington was perhaps further developed and more effectively emphasized by him than by any other American educator. Just as Matthew Arnold insisted that religion was a matter of conduct rather than forms and dogmas so Booker Washington held that education is a matter of character and not forms. He concluded one of his Sunday night talks to his students with these words: "I want every Tuskegee student as he finds his place in the surging industrial life about him to give heed to the things which are 'honest and just and pure and of good report,' for these things make for character, which is the only thing worth fighting for...." In another of these talks he said: "A student should not be satisfied with himself until he has grown to the point where, when simply sweeping a room, he can go into the corners and crevices and remove the hidden trash which, although it should be left, would not be seen. It is not very hard to find people who will thoroughly clean a room which is going to be occupied, or wash a dish which is to behandled by strangers; but it is hard to find a person who will do a thing right when the eyes of the world are not likely to look upon what has been done. The cleaning of rooms and the washing of dishes have much to do with forming characters."[3]
This recalls Booker Washington's own experience when as a ragged and penniless youth he applied for admission to Hampton and was given a room to sweep by way of an entrance examination. Indeed, one of Booker Washington's greatest sources of strength as a teacher lay in the fact that his own life not only illustrated the truth of his assertions, but illustrated it in a striking and dramatic manner. His life was, in fact, an epitome of the hardships, struggles, and triumphs of the successful members of his race from the days of slavery to the present time. A great believer in the power of example he lived a life which gave him that power in its highest degree. Because of his inherent modesty and good taste he never referred to himself or his achievements as examples to be emulated, and this merely further enhanced their power.
In concluding another Sunday night talk he said: "As a race we are inclined, I fear, to make too much of the day of judgment. We have the idea that in some far-off period there is going to be a great and final day of judgment, when every individual will be called up, and all his bad deeds will be read out before him and all his good deeds made known. I believe that every day is a day of judgment, that we reapour rewards daily, and that whenever we sin we are punished by mental and physical anxiety and by a weakened character that separates us from God. Every day is, I take it, a day of judgment, and as we learn God's laws and grow into His likeness we shall find our reward in this world in a life of usefulness and honor. To do this is to have found the kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of character and righteousness and peace."[4]
To quote once more from these Sunday night talks, in another he said: "There is, then, opportunity for the colored people to enrich the material life of their adopted country by doing what their hands find to do, minor duties though they be, so well that nobody of any race can do them better. This is the aim that the Tuskegee student should keep steadily before him. If he remembers that all service, however lowly, is true service, an important step will have been taken in the solution of what we term 'the race problem.'"
As is shown by these quotations Booker Washington used these Sunday night talks to crystalize, interpret, and summarize the meaning and significance of the kind of education which Tuskegee gives. He, the supreme head of the institution, reserved to himself this supremely important task. The heads of the manifold trades are naturally and properly concerned primarily with turning raw boys and girls into good workmen and workwomen. The academic teachers in the school are similarly interested in helping them as students to secure a mastery of their several subjects. The military commandants are concerned with their ability to drill, march, carry themselves properly, and take proper care of their persons and rooms. The physician is interested in their physical health and the chaplain in their religious training. Important as are all these phases of Tuskegee's training and closely as he watched each Mr. Washington realized that they might all be well done and yet Tuskegee fail in its supreme purpose: namely, the making of manly men and womanly women out of raw boys and girls. As he said in one of the passages quoted, "character is the only thing worth fighting for." Now, while the forming of character is the aim, and in some appreciable degree the achievement, of every worth-while educational institution, it is to a peculiar degree the aim and the achievement of Tuskegee. The ten million Negroes in the United States need trained leaders of their own race more than they need anything else. Whatever else they should or should not have these leaders must have character. Since Tuskegee is the largest of the educational institutions for Negroes, with the man at its head who was commonly recognized as the leader of leaders in his race, naturally the heaviest responsibility in the training of these leaders fell, and will continue to fall, upon Tuskegee. Consequently the task at Tuskegee is not so much to educate so many thousands of young men and women as to train as many leaders for the Negro people as can possibly be done and done well within a given space of time. These Tuskegee graduates lead bythe power of example and not by agitation. One runs a farm and achieves so much more success than his neighbors, through his better methods, that they gradually adopt these methods and with his help apply them to their own conditions. Another teaches a country school and does it so much better than the average country school teacher that his or her school comes to be regarded as a model to be emulated by the other schools of the locality. When a Tuskegee girl marries and settles in a community she keeps her house so much cleaner and in every way more attractive than the rank and file of her neighbors that gradually her house and her methods of housekeeping become the standard for the neighborhood. There is, however, nothing of the "holier than thou" or the complaisant about the true Tuskegee graduate and neither is there anything monopolistic. They have had the idea of service thoroughly drilled into their consciousness—the idea that their advantages of education are, as it were, a trust which they are to administer for the benefit of those who have not had such advantages.
Now such leaders as these must not only be provided if the so-called race problem is to be solved, but they must be provided speedily. In every community in which the black people are ignorant and vicious and without trained leaders among themselves they are likely at any time to come into conflict with the dominant race, and every such conflict engenders bitterness on both sides and makes just so much more difficult the final solution of the race problem. This is why Booker Washington labored so incessantly to increase the quantity of Tuskegee's output as well as to maintain the quality. He brought Tuskegee to the point where it reached through all its courses including its summer courses, short courses, and extension courses, more than 4,000 people in a single year, not counting the well-nigh innumerable hosts he counseled with on his State educational tours. In short, Booker Washington's task at Tuskegee was not only to turn out good leaders for his people, but to turn them out wholesale and as fast as possible. He was, as it were, running a race with the powers of ignorance, poverty, and vice. This in part accounted for the sense of terrific pressure which one felt at Tuskegee, particularly when he was present and personally driving forward his great educational machine. This also may have accounted for the seeming lack of finesse in small matters which occasionally annoyed critical visitors who did not understand that the great institution was racing under the spur of its indomitable master, and that just as in any race all but essentials must be thrown aside.
Long before the University of Wisconsin had, through its extension courses, extended its opportunities in greater or less degree to the citizens of the entire State, Booker Washington, through similar means, had extended the advantages of Tuskegee throughout Macon County in particular and the State of Alabama and neighboring States in general.
The extension work of Tuskegee began in a small way over twenty years ago. It preceded even the work of the demonstration agents of the United States Departmentof Agriculture. There was first only one man who in his spare time went out among the farming people and tried to arouse enthusiasm for better methods of farming, better schools, and better homes. He was followed by a committee of three members of the Tuskegee faculty, which committee still directs the work. One of the first efforts of this committee was to get the farmers to adopt deep plowing. There was not a two-horse plow to be found. There was a strong prejudice against deep plowing which was thus expressed by a Negro preacher farmer whom one of the committee tried to persuade: "We don't want deep plowing. You're fixin' for us to have no soil. If we plow deep it will all wash away and in a year or two we will have to clear new ground." Not long after this a member of the committee with a two-horse plow was practising what he had been preaching when a white planter who was passing stopped and said: "See here, its none of my business of course, but you're new here and I don't want to see you fail. But if you plow your land deep like that you'll ruin it sure. I know. I've been here."
After a time, however, the committee persuaded a few colored farmers to try deep plowing on a small scale as an experiment. One of the first of these was a poor man who had had the hardest kind of a struggle scraping a scant existence out of the soil for himself and his large family. He was desperate and agreed to try the new method. He got results the first year, moved on to better land and followed instructions. In a few years he bought 500 acres of land, gave each of his four sons 100 acres, and kept 100 acresfor himself. Since then father and sons alike have been prosperous and contented and have added to their holdings.
In short, these Negro farmers were no more eager to be reformed and improved in their methods than are any normal people. There is a shallow popular sentiment that unless people are eager for enlightenment and gratefully receive what is offered them they should be left unenlightened. Booker Washington never shared this sentiment. His agent reported that in response to their appeals for the raising of a better grade of cattle, hogs, and fowl the farmers replied that the stock they had was good enough. One of their favorite comments was, "When you eat an egg what difference does it make to you whether that egg was laid by a full-blooded fowl or a mongrel?" Instead of being discouraged or disgusted by this attitude on the part of the people he merely regarded it as what was to be expected and set about devising means to overcome it. As always he placed his chief reliance upon the persuasive eloquence of the concrete. He decided to send blooded stock and properly raised products around among the farmers so that they might compare them with their inferior stock and products and see the difference with their own eyes. This plan was later carried out through the Jesup Wagon contributed by the late Morris K. Jesup of New York. This wagon was a peripatetic farmers' school. It took a concentrated essence of Tuskegees' agricultural department to the farmers who could not or would not come to Tuskegee.
The wagon was drawn by a well-bred and well-fed mule.A good breed of cow was tied behind. Several chickens of good breeds, well-developed ears of corn, stalks of cotton, bundles of oats and seeds, and garden products, which ought at the time to be growing in the locality, together with a proper plow, for deep plowing, were loaded upon the wagon. The driver would pull up before a farmhouse, deliver his message, and point out the strong points of his wagonload and would finally request a strip of ground for cultivation. This request granted he would harness the mule to the plow, break the ground deep, make his rows, plant his seeds, and move on to the next locality. With a carefully planned follow-up system he would return to each such plot for cultivation and harvest, and, most important of all, to demonstrate the truths he had sought to impress upon the people by word of mouth. Where the first driver sent out was a general farmer, the second would be, let us say, a dairyman, the third a truck gardener, and finally a poultry raiser would go; usually a woman, since in the South women, for the most part, handle this phase of farming. These agents also distribute pamphlets prepared by the Agricultural Research Department of Tuskegee on such subjects as school gardening, twenty-one ways to cook cowpeas, improvement of rural schools, how to fight insect pests, cotton growing, etc. The constant emphasis upon practice by no means entails any neglect of theory.
Besides this work there is each January for two weeks at Tuskegee the regular Farmers' Short Course. Many of the country schools adjourn for this period so that both teachers and pupils may attend. In this course not onlyteachers and pupils, but fathers and mothers, sons and daughters sit side by side in the classrooms receiving instruction in stock raising, canning, poultry raising, and farming in all its branches. There are special courses for the women and girls in the care of children and in housekeeping. The following breezy announcement is taken from the prospectus of this course for the year 1914: