Booker T. Washington Part 11

Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton challenged: "How's that?"

The old woman continued: "I got a little pig from dat little puppy dog an' I got my prosperity from dat pig!"

Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton and the whole company in amazement hung upon the old woman's words as she continued: "It was dis way: Dat little puppy dog when she growed up had some little puppies herself. One day one o' my fren's come by an' as' me for one o' dem puppies. I tol' him 'No,' I would not gib him dat puppy, but dat he had a little pig an' I would 'change a puppy for a pig. I had heard you tell ober heah so much 'bout hogs an' pigs dat I thought dis was a good chance to get started. He give me de pig an' I give him de puppy. In de course o'

time dat little pig dun bring me in some mo' pigs. I sol' some an'

kep' some. I had to feed de pig, so I had begun savin'. I den begun to find out dat I could git on wid less den I had ben gettin' on wid, an'

so I kep' on savin' an' kep' on raisin' pigs 'til I was able to supply most o' my neighbors wid pigs, an' den I got me a cow, an den I begun to supply my neighbors wid milk, an' den I started me a little garden.

Den I sol' my neighbors greens an' onions, an' so I went on fum time to time 'til I dun paid for de lot an' de house in which I lib, an' I keeps my pigs about me an' keeps my garden goin', an' dat's why I says all I is I owes to dat little puppy dog an' to dis heah conference."

At these conferences the most elementary subjects are discussed.

Booker Was.h.i.+ngton would tell and have told to these farmers matters which one would naturally a.s.sume any farmers, however ignorant, must already know. He never tried to deceive himself as to the woful ignorance of the Negro ma.s.ses, and still he was never discouraged, but always said ignorance was not a hopeless handicap because it could be overcome by education. While he frankly although sadly acknowledged the lamentable ignorance of the rank and file of his race, particularly those on the soil and dependent for education upon the short-term, ill-equipped, and poorly taught rural Negro school, he as stoutly denied and constantly disproved the a.s.sertion that these ignorant ma.s.ses were not capable of profiting by education. He earnestly strove and signally succeeded in attracting to these great annual agricultural conferences the most pathetically ignorant of the Negro farmers as well as the leading scientific agriculturists of the race. But he always insisted that the meetings be conducted for the benefit of the ignorant and not in the interests of the learned.

He would, for instance, tell the attendants at the conferences what to plant and when to plant it, and what live stock to keep and how to keep it. He would have printed and distributed among them a "Farmer's Calendar" which gave the months in which the various standard vegetables should be planted and what crops should be used in rotation. He constantly insisted that the Experiment Station at Tuskegee Inst.i.tute, supported by the State of Alabama, should not be used for scientific experiments of interest only to experts, but should deal with the fundamental problems with which the Negro farmers of Alabama were daily confronted. The t.i.tles of some of the Experiment Station Bulletins selected at random suggest the homely and practical nature of the information disseminated. Half a dozen of them read as follows: "Possibilities of the Sweet Potato in Macon County, Alabama,"

"How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing It for Human Consumption," "How to Raise Pigs with Little Money," "When, What, and How to Can and Preserve Fruits and Vegetables in the Home," "Some Possibilities of the Cowpea in Macon County, Alabama," "A New and Prolific Variety of Cotton." And all of these bulletins, so many of which deal with the problems of the home, are written by an old bachelor of pure African descent, without a drop of white blood, who in himself refutes two popular fallacies: the one that bachelors cannot be skilled in domestic affairs, and the other, that pure-blooded Africans cannot achieve intellectual distinction. This man is George W. Carver, who is not only the most eminent agricultural scientist of his race in this country, but one of the most eminent of any race. His work is so well known in scientific circles in his field throughout the world that when leading European scientists visit this country, particularly the Southern States, they not infrequently go out of their way to look him up. They are usually very much surprised to find their eminent fellow-scientist a black man.

The last of these conferences over which Booker Was.h.i.+ngton presided was held at Tuskegee, January 20 and 21, 1915. A woman, the wife of a Negro farmer, was testifying when she said: "Our menfolks is foun' out dat they can't eat cotton." As the outburst of laughter which greeted this remark died down, Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton said in his incisive way: "What do you mean?" The woman replied: "I mean dat we womenfolks been tellin' our menfolks all de time dat they should raise mo to eat."

She then displayed specimens of canned fruits and told how she had put up enough of them to supply her family until summer. She told of having sold thirty-six turkeys and of selling two and three dozen eggs each week, with plenty left over for her family. She said that she and her husband had raised and sold hogs, and still had for their own use more than enough pork to last them until the next hog-killing time.

"How often do you eat chicken?" asked Dr. Was.h.i.+ngton.

"We can eat chicken every day if we want it," she replied.

When she had finished Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton explained that all this had been done on 178 acres of the poorest land in Macon County.

In his opening address at this conference Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton denounced "petty thieving, pistol-toting, c.r.a.p-shooting, the patronizing of 'blind tigers,' and unnecessary lawsuits" as some of the weights and enc.u.mbrances which are keeping the Negro from running well the race which is set before him.

These are some of the basic questions which Booker Was.h.i.+ngton placed before the conference for discussion:

"How and why am I so hard hit by the present hard times?"

"What am I doing to meet present conditions?"

"How may I, after all, get some real benefit from present difficulties?"

The most spectacular feature of the exercises was the parade. It extended for almost a mile and included a score or more of floats, hundreds of men and women in appropriate costumes, and dozens of horses, mules, and other live stock.

There were a large number of colored preachers in attendance who showed that they had adopted the Was.h.i.+ngton slogan of trying to make a heaven on earth and whose testimony showed that they were now giving as much time to soil salvation as to soul salvation. One of them told of a flouris.h.i.+ng Pig Club which he had organized among his paris.h.i.+oners after reading Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's open letter, "Pigs and Education; Pigs and Debts," the circulating of which will be later described.

[Ill.u.s.tration: This old woman was a regular attendant at the Tuskegee Negro Conference and idolizingly watched Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton during the whole four hours that he would preside over one of the Conference sessions.]

After the awarding of prizes for the best floats the declarations of the conference were read by Major R.R. Moton of Hampton Inst.i.tute, who then little realized that before the year was out he was to be chosen to succeed the leader of his race as the Princ.i.p.al of Tuskegee Inst.i.tute.

The following were the especially significant paragraphs of these declarations:

"It is found that for every dollar's worth of cotton we grow, we raise only forty-nine cents' worth of all other crops. An investigation has shown that there are 20,000 farms of Negroes on which there are no cattle of any kind; 270,000 on which there are no hogs; 200,000 on which no poultry is raised; 140,000 on which no corn is grown; on 750,000 farms of Negroes no oats are grown; on 550,000 farms no sweet potatoes are grown, and on 320,000 farms of Negroes there are no gardens of any sort. These hundreds of thousands of farms without cattle, grain, or gardens are for the most part operated by tenants.

In their behalf, the Tuskegee Negro Conference respectfully requests of the planters, bankers, and other representatives of the financial interests of the South that more opportunities be given Negro tenants on plantations to grow crops other than cotton."

After the regular conference the usual Conference of Workers was held.

This conference is composed of people such as heads of schools and colleges, preachers, teachers, and persons generally holding responsible positions of leaders.h.i.+p in their respective communities.

These leaders discuss the larger community problems in distinction from individual problems. At this gathering, for instance, the princ.i.p.al of the County High School at Cottage Grove, Ala., explained how through diversified farming the parents of his students had been able to live while holding their cotton for higher prices.

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

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

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

"PIGS AND EDUCATION; PIGS AND DEBTS"

_To the Editor:_

Our race is in constant search of means with which to provide better homes, schools, colleges, and churches, and with which to pay debts. This is especially true during the hard financial conditions obtaining on account of the European War. All of this cannot be done at once, but great progress can be made by a good strong pull together in a simple, direct manner. How?

There are 1,400,000 colored families who live on farms or in villages, or small towns. Of this number, at the present time, 700,000 have no pigs. I want to ask that each family raise at least one pig this fall. Where one or more pigs are already owned, I want to ask that each family raise one additional pig this fall.

As soon as possible, I want to ask that this plan be followed by the organization of a Pig Club in every community where one does not already exist. I want to ask that the matter be taken up at once through families, schools, churches, and societies, Farmers' Inst.i.tutes, Business Leagues, etc.

The average pig is valued at about $5. If each family adds only one pig, in a few months at the present price for hogs, $10 would be added to the wealth of the owner, and $14,000,000 to the wealth of the colored people. If each family adds two pigs, it would have in a few months $20 more wealth, and $28,000,000 would be added with which to promote the welfare of the race during the money stringency created by the European War.

Let us not put it off, but organize Pig Clubs everywhere.

Give each boy and girl an opportunity to own and grow at least one pig.

[Signed] BOOKER T. WAs.h.i.+NGTON, Tuskegee Inst.i.tute, Alabama.

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

Booker Was.h.i.+ngton was not only interested in black farmers but white farmers. He always emphasized the responsibility of the farmer as the builder of the foundations of society. He was constantly inviting the white farmers of the surrounding country to visit the school and see what was being done on the school farms and by the Experiment Station.

And the white farmers availed themselves freely of this opportunity and profited by it. The school's veterinarian is probably the only one in the county, and this division was established very largely for the purpose of bringing the school and the community--both white and black--into closer relation. In dealing with farmers, even more perhaps than with other cla.s.ses of people, Was.h.i.+ngton would appeal to their pride and even to their vanity. He was fond of telling them that they were the salt of the earth. One of his favorite stories was about the farmer who keeps his best potatoes for himself and his family and sends the speckled ones to town; keeps his tender young chickens and sends the old tough ones to town; keeps his rich milk and sends his skimmed milk to town. While there may never have been quite such a farmer the story had its element of truth, and helped to make the farmer appreciate his good fortune and his importance in the scheme of things.

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

When Booker Was.h.i.+ngton came to Macon County and founded Tuskegee Inst.i.tute, in 1881, the soil was worn out, and cotton, the chief crop, was selling for an almost constantly lowering price. Although there were few counties with a lower yield of cotton per acre, one-quarter of a bale, over 42 per cent. of the tilled land of the county was devoted exclusively to this crop. Very little machinery was used in the farming, the antique scooter plow and hoe being the main reliance.

The soil was rarely tilled more than three or four inches deep. There was, in fact, a superst.i.tion among whites as well as blacks that deep plowing was injurious to the soil. Two-horse teams were seldom used.

Sub-soiling, fall plowing, fallowing, and rotation of crops were little known and less practised. The county was producing per capita per year only about five pounds of b.u.t.ter, four dozen eggs, and less than three chickens.

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

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

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

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

The next day the dedication exercises were held on a specially constructed platform piled high with the finest specimens of every product known to that section of the South. On this platform, with the Secretary and Doctor Curry, were the State Commissioner of Agriculture and several other high State officials and many other prominent white citizens. This was the formal launching of the Agricultural Department of the school. George W. Carver, the full-blooded African and eminent agricultural scientist, of whom mention has already been made, had recently been placed in charge of this department. He had come from the Agricultural Department of Iowa State College, of which Secretary Wilson had been the head.

The annual budget of this department alone is now nearly fifty thousand dollars a year, and more than a thousand acres of land are cultivated under the supervision of the agricultural staff. The modest building which Secretary Wilson helped to dedicate has long since been outgrown and the department is now housed in a large, impressive brick building known as the Millbank Agricultural Building.

Under the provisions of the Smith-Lever Act, pa.s.sed by Congress in 1914 for the purpose of aiding the States in Agricultural Extension Work, Booker Was.h.i.+ngton secured for Tuskegee a portion of the funds allotted to the State of Alabama for such work. With the aid of these funds Agricultural Extension Schools have been organized. These schools are conducted in cooperation with the Agricultural Department of the Alabama Polytechnic Inst.i.tute and the farm demonstration work of the United States Department of Agriculture. They are really a two days' Short Course in Agriculture carried out to the farmers on their own farms. These schools have the advantage over the Short Course given to the farmers on the Inst.i.tute grounds in that they have the farmers' problems right before them, to be diagnosed and remedies applied at once. Through such schools farm instruction is being carried to the Negroes of every Black Belt County of Alabama.