BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. THE EX-SLAVE WHO DINED WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2509, 16 April 1902, Page 65

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. THE EX-SLAVE WHO DINED WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

By Zon-a G.vlk. The story, of mine own people, as Booker T. Washington tells it. is all tragedy and promi.-e and humanity. But the pait ot which lie mean 1 ? to speak is on'y the promise. The man who is giving his life to raise his lace ii 1 * a scholar, with the soft voice of the South and the accent and manner of the cultivated North. He is a powerfullybuilt mail, with shouldeis big for burden, and a glare, stiong face. His features aie large, his eye* aie searching, his hair is growing gray. His silenc- and reserve and his unwillingness to speak of what he is doing stand for -ome of the qualities that have wrested Lib «uccoss from material in which he devoutly believes. H's reserve is almost sadness. Foi in his work and hih position he is unlike eieryone el-e jd tlie world, and he stands, lonely, at the meeting of the two laces. Tt w.>s abcut this loneliness of the negro in the Un.ted State-, that I n.*«ed him firs), and whethei lie find- thai people really c.ire enough whit become- of his people to extend other help than woids. "Do you think t lie white people at lie.ii t aie \our fuencK.' I , t «-ktd him, " <'.id believe in yout woik?" 'Ilieic v..i- .1 ihanre f<n M' W.i-hii'ytoii to say what ewynne who has w. itched hi« " ork know- to br true — that white people. t >ditK uldi :\: \ in tin South. h;uv. with -erne exceptions m" Mib-tjuti.il gifts, confined then mteie^t to wi«-lnn<: him well "We have had inoie visits tins veil than we e\ei have had fiom Southern people." he -.nd a little wi-tful ; y 'T-i. tLe whole — m the whole." he upe.itfd. '"the attitude of the wh'te people toward us is fnend'v *s, Id IMI sorrifhßN GIRL. I lemembeied a leitiin woman willi Southern speech who <--« d. speaking of a 'it tie Welle-k\ gnl who hid ionic to lie! Alabama home to ljw "Of cotiise we couldn t iecn\>j hoi Shj w.i- one ol the i-e_rro teachei- — and I :t-k< d hni! anoth i question i.i make '•vie"'The Sou'li"in vr 1111 1 1 (if to dij " 1 s;nd 'i- si. i' \ (Mil ii'eiid, oi - -he -t 11 s< urn fill?" Mr Washington was silent foi ,i uiome"t .ird lliei; he bjwed a liule and saw] -imply • "Tliil. if \ on do not mind. I would i ithe • net di-cu--'1 I.* 1 1- iff i uf left wh to people seviiely run nt i hi ih-c li-Mop, ..lid so struck whit

is the keynote of Mr Washington's wonderful success — the work of the coloured people for coloured people, and not the fancied missionary work of the white people that has &o long crippled race development. And there is no pioblem or shadow of problem about his race of which one can speak to which he has not given serious thought before. The one greatest means of theii culture, their greatest need, the fashion in which their growth is finding expression, their comparative morals, the possibilities of theii women, those who are their best missionaries, the cause of his slow development, his greatest temptation, his nearest approach to cultivation, his feeling for nature, all these he has at hi* finger ends, because he has them so in his heart, and of all this he spoke with a tenderness for detail and a breadth of view that were the best comment in the world upon the possibilities of those of his own race. His grasp of the peculiar conditions and the special mode of treatment which they require is one of the most wonderful examples obtainable of specialised study. But his depth of feeling for the men and women for whom h- stands is more wonderful still. "As to the morals of the negro?" I asked him. '"Is their condition due to long disadvantages or to inherent inability to be good?" "It is due to their environment," he said ; "at least that lias much to do with their morals. I believe the negroes who live in the country are better than those who live in the city. This is partly because those who live 111 town have the town temptations — partly because — and this is vital — those in the country live richer to nature, and the soil seems to teach them. I believe strongly in the value of country life for the negro ; in, so to speak, the ethics of agriculture." There it wa. c — the gieatest mission try doctrine in the world on the lips of one of the great missionaries. The doctrine that the voice of the law shall come to a ■ people through the toilers of the earth, and not alone through the sons of inspiration. Tills is the gosjoel of Booker Washington That the negro shall teach the negio, and that herhall do it by (he work of his hands, understanding that in his labour lies his claim to dignity. " Agriculture." said Mr Washington. " That is what is going to be one of the greates-t means to progress of the coloured people. It is the work they can most easily be made to love, and therefore it is the work that best trains and develops them. They say to me : ' You have people who write very well, I hear. Mr Washington,' or people who paint or 'build or sing. Well, so we haye — and very wonderfully, too. they do all this, but these are great . helps and not the chief impulse. The future of the negro lies in Lis "bands — lies with the men who work with tfoeir bands. And of these the men -who till the ioil are imong the greatest." Then he told the story of tlie negro in the South' and of his own first connection with the work which has so marvellously giown. It was a story all old, discouragement between the lines, all hope and present fulfilment in its general import. And he prefaced it by an expression of t.he new hope which thi* year has brought. " There has not been." he said, " a year since freedom came to the negro that' has witnessed such wide discussion, north and south, of the phases of Lis condition. Much of this — even, I think, all of it — is brought about as a means to his progress. And his last 40 years are a story of his increasing progress* and development. "How did I begin the little I have been able to do?" he continued. "I taught school. I taught school to earn my living. But I do not believe my one can come in contact with the receptive minds of many of my people without longing to .help them more, and in the South to help, because the opportunities lie ;-t the dooi <.-; every cabin. " Comparison of the condition of the pupils of tlie age I was teaching with white, students the same age led me to believe that only special study of peculiar conditions, was neces-ary to give them the chance they could, I believed, so well improve. And I thought then that I saw what my experience has proved — that the secret lay in interesting manual labour — hand in hand", of course, with the study, but promisor g an immediate future on leaving school fitch as merely books did no; 1 fiord them " Why not bricklaying as a special means to culture?" asked Mr" Washington. 11UST I-KIXCITLK TO StT< Cl.ss. fins is one of the points. curiou-ly enough, upon winch Booker T. Washington, mos-t healthful-minded of men. expie--c j s himself like a deuident. "If you have anything to s.iy. wl>\ nol s.iy it as a curved chair or a mosaic"' ' tlie people who like to b modem go quoting "If yo'i have .mything to sa\. why not say it in bi i< kl.i\ ing"' " say- Bookei Washington in substance At le,i-t. he pjovtd th.it it could 'o be -did. and in teims of plumbing ;«r.d stonecuttnii; and carpentn and reaping and sowing — f or all the-e thing 1 - he inriodiic-ed in his wonderful little school one at a time, j and l.iid the foundation for the Fuske- | iree School, which is l-ke no other 111 the 1 world \ " I believed " said Mi Washington, "that -ome definite interest was needed before progre-- could begin My people needed to be tdtight the dignity of work. That is one of the fir-t principles of civilisation .md of s-iiec-ess. I introduced the branches one at a time, s we!! a* I could with the means at my command I could not teach bricklaying myself — nor much ybout agriculture. But I could talk work, and the bo\ - hejid nothing but woik, and they be^an gradually to ■believe in work Mr Washington talks- as if teaching a ntiiio to b« industrious, were a- simple js te." lung him the alphabet I had a veiy definite idea of a certain besetting sin among co'ouied people and 1 a^kr-d him to verify 't. 'I^n't the m-'_'.o- woi-t teniptcit.on !jzi-ne-s"' "No" Le b.ud piomptly. " Ne^roet me

not lazy when they have a real leason fo? work. Give a strong healthy negro an interest and he can work all day and night. Slic-w him what work will do for 'his, family, for his cabin, for his comfort-, foi' i his self-respect, and you have be-^un his progress for him." I It sounded so like East Aurora and Elbertf I Hubbard that 1 almost shut my eyes and' clothed Booker Washington in a flowing tie and long hair like Fra Elbertus himself. And yet he is so simple, and identical as are the aims of the man in the East Aurora 'book shop and this other man from among the cotton fields and the log cabins, their methods are wide worlds apart. And the great point of difference is one that makes one marvel at the understanding of the man who so fearlessly preaches what he thinks. Booker T. Washington does not believ^ in Ihe value of art or ot literature as (vt assistance, .'it least, at present, in the de j velopment of the negro. i '' Do not misunderstand me," he said. { " I do not depreciate what these things niaj" ido at the right time. But I hold that tha • way to bring the negro from his present condition is not to preach 'beauty to him — which he does not understand except in : the simple forms, which there is no need Jto teach him — but to prepch work. We have Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Burleigh and a dozen poets and artists and architects whose hold on these forms of culture are signs of what will be done by the negro race. But the hope of the coloured people, as I have said, is out in the fields." To people who are fond of talking about the love of simple poetry and colour and song among the negroes, and arguing that some time they must come out of the dark because ot this hold on what is highest, this doctrine of Mr Washington's is a surprise. Set side by side with the old dim idea that because a negro responds to red and to rhythm there is hope for him, thia stern doctrine of the man who knows most about it all is invigorating. His development of his theory is simple and logical. " By this insistence upon the dignity of work the negroes are trained to find beauty for themselves. For instance, one of the greatest signs of development among the coloured people is the improvement in their cabins. The one-room cabins aie disappearing. The bqualor and neglect and uncleanliness of their places to live are giving wa}- to clean, simple home. Not very many families in our county, foi instance, live in one room. They have saved and added to their cabins, they have improved the ground about them and added flower plots — their fondness for flowers is unfailing. And now they have begun trying to beautify ihe interior of their homejfr.; Carpetb have come and pictures have found their way fo the' walls! ' r And here- I, illustrated the unbalanced idea of outsidejakas to what this "special foim of development can take. "Pictures of what?" I asked, and without being conscious of~lt. I had floating ideas of cheap prints of good things and even a Madonna. ' Mr Washington smiled. "Are you not missing the point?"' he asked -imply. "'They have pictures.' That is enough. The mere desire to decorate their homes is the cause for I congratulation. And the foim it takes: — whether that of Parthenon frieze reproduci tions or studies of watermelon and possum ' — is, for the present, all one. It is- this delicate and symiwthetic per- ' ception of the woiking of a great principle in humble ways that gives to Booker Washington his magnetic understanding of the inner life of those for whom he works. One doesn't see this at first. At first one is inclined to judge his estimate of the negroes.' progress by the statistics he blithely talks about.* When he had told me that the new chapel at Tuskegee had been done- — carpentry and plumbing and stone woik and iron work and decorating — by -tudent 'abour, and when he added the number of his graduates who were practising like trades for a living and doing well, I inclined to judge his woik in terms of men who could hew stones and break giound. But while he talks on and throws half-tones and side-lights about ll! he toucLed upon, the statistics dim away and the spint of this work he is doing pervade- everything ne says. From slavery to a doctorate of laws, snch is the unprecedented record of Booker T. Washington, President oi the Tuskegee Institute, recipient of honorary degiees at both Va'e and Harvard, and recently the dinnei jruest of President Roosevelt, 414 1 the White House. For the first half-dozen years of his life this mo.-t remarkable of In ing negioes was a chattel on a Virginia plantation His mother was the plantation cook Of his fdthfi he knew oi.ly rumoui Friend 1 -, moiiex, naming of any sort, he lackej utter h Yet uov, .it 42. Booker Washington is one of the most distinguished of Americans .in authoi. an oi.itoi, an fducatot , an influence The steps of thia wonderful tian.->;tion are nitere-ting to tiace. They may be gathered in uio<-i compact form in Mr Washington's dehghrful autobiogriphy, 'Up fiom N'aveiy." published la-t year.* "Most miserable, desolate, and disci.ur.iging" aie the teims Mi Washington applies to his eailv surrounding.-. H-« horn" was a cabin. Lis bed "'a bundle of ulthv iag»,"