Booker T. Washington Part 18

Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's patient, circ.u.mstantial, and constructively informative reply is characteristic of his method of rejoinder. It also ill.u.s.trates his habit of placing his reliance on facts and not on adjectives, and of so marshalling his facts that they fought his battles for him. He replied thus:

_Tuskegee Inst.i.tute, Alabama,_ _May 26, 1913._

MY DEAR SIR: Our Treasurer has shown me your letter of May 10th, in which you inquire as to why it should be necessary for Tuskegee to appeal to the public for additional funds, also stating that the Indians receive much less than Negroes in money and care.

Under the circ.u.mstances, I thought you would not object to my making the following report to you, covering the inquiries suggested in your letter.

The Indians from a financial standpoint are better off than any other race or cla.s.s of people in this country. The 265,863 Indians in the United States own 72,535,862 acres of land, which is 273 acres for each Indian man, woman, and child. If all the land in the country were apportioned among the inhabitants there would be 20 acres per person. The value of property and funds belonging to Indians is $678,564,253, or $2,554 per capita, or about $10,000 per family. The Negroes, but lately emanc.i.p.ated, are by contrast poor and are struggling to rise.

The Indians are carefully looked after by the United States Government. In addition to the elaborately organized Indian Bureau at Was.h.i.+ngton, there are six thousand (6,000) persons in the Indian field service, to especially look after and supervise them. There is one director, supervisor, or teacher for each 44 Indians.

Some of the things that the Government does for the Indians are:

(1) Look after the health of the Indians; for this purpose there are in the field one Medical Supervisor, 100 regular and 60 contract physicians, 54 nurses, and 88 field matrons.

(2) Supervise their farming and stock raising. For the 24,489 Indians engaged in farming there are two general supervisors, 48 expert farmers, that is, men with experience and scientific knowledge, and 210 men in subordinate farming positions.

Over $7,000,000 have been spent in irrigating lands for Indians. Congress in 1911 appropriated $1,300,000 for this purpose. For the 890,000 Negro farmers in the South, the United States Government maintains 34 Agricultural Demonstration Agents.

For the supervision of the 44,985 Indians engaged in stock raising, the Government maintains 22 superintendents of live stock. For the 700,000 Negro farmers engaged in live stock raising there is only one Government expert working especially among them.

(3) A system of schools is maintained by the Government for Indian children. For this purpose there are 223 day schools, 79 reservation boarding schools, and 35 boarding schools away from reservations. In these schools in 1911 there were 24,500 pupils. For the support of these schools the United States Government for 1912 appropriated $3,757,495. To a.s.sist in teaching the 1,700,000 Negro children in the South there was received in 1911 from the United States Government $245,518.

In general the Indians are not taxed for any purpose. On the other hand, the Negroes are taxed the same as other persons and in this way contribute a considerable amount for their own education and the education of the whites. In this connection, I call your attention to the enclosed pamphlet "Public Taxation and Negro Schools."

I enclose herewith copy of my Last Annual Report, giving information as to the various activities of the Inst.i.tution.

Yours very truly,

[Signed] BOOKER T. WAs.h.i.+NGTON.

On October 25, 1915, a few weeks before he died, Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton delivered an address before the delegates to the National Council of Congregational Churches, in New Haven, Conn., in which he well ill.u.s.trated his belief already quoted, "that a large part of the mission of both Hampton and Tuskegee is to keep the cause of Negro education before the country." He said in part:

"There is sometimes much talk about the inferiority of the Negro. In practice, however, the idea appears to be that he is a sort of super-man. He is expected with about one-fifth or one-tenth of what the whites receive for their education to make as much progress as they are making. Taking the Southern States as a whole, about $10.23 per capita is spent in educating the average white boy or girl, and the sum of $2.82 per capita in educating the average black child.

"In order to furnish the Negro with educational facilities so that the 2,000,000 children of school age now out of school and the 1,000,000 who are unable to read or write can have the proper chance in life _it will be necessary to increase the $9,000,000 now being expended annually for Negro public school education in the South_ to about $25,000,000 or $30,000,000 annually."

And in conclusion he said: "At the present rate, it is taking not a few days or a few years, but a century or more to get Negro education on a plane at all similar to that on which the education of the whites now is. To bring Negro education up where it ought to be will take the combined and increased efforts of all the agencies now engaged in this work. The North, the South, the religious a.s.sociations, the educational boards, white people and black people, all will have to cooperate in a great effort for this common end."

These were the last words he ever spoke at a great public meeting.

They show his acute realization of the immensity of the task to which he literally gave his life, and his dread lest what had been accomplished be over-estimated with a consequent slackening of effort.

A very cordial friends.h.i.+p existed between Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton and his Trustees. Every man among them was his selection and joined the Board on his invitation. In the year 1912 they manifested their friends.h.i.+p and interest in the most practical of ways by volunteering to raise a guarantee fund of $50,000 a year for five years to help bridge the ever-widening gap between the income of the school and its unavoidably mounting expenses. To do this, aside from contributing handsomely themselves, almost all went out and "begged" of their friends. Mr.

Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, for instance, after making his own liberal personal contribution, and soliciting funds among his Chicago friends, left his great and absorbing interests at a busy time of the year to go to New York and devote a week's time to "begging" money for Tuskegee among his friends and acquaintances, Messrs. Low, Willc.o.x, Trumbull, Mason, and others also personally solicited funds. Many men have gotten millionaires to give large sums of money, but how many men have ever gotten millionaires both to give large sums and personally to solicit large sums for a purely unselfish purpose?

In his final report Booker Was.h.i.+ngton said of this guarantee fund: "It is not possible to describe in words what a relief and help this $50,000 guarantee fund has proven during the four years it has been in existence.... We shall have to begin now to consider some method of replacing these donations. The relief which has come to us because of this guarantee fund has been marked and far reaching."

The same qualities which enabled Booker Was.h.i.+ngton to get close to the plain people helped him to win the confidence of the great givers.

Through his money-raising efforts he constantly added to his great stock of knowledge of human nature. Also the same qualities of heart and mind which enabled him to rise superior to the obstacles of race prejudice helped him to bear without discouragement or bitterness the many rebuffs of the money raiser. One cannot help speculating, however, on the loss to Tuskegee, to the Negro race, and to the general welfare, entailed by the necessity of his devoting two-thirds of his time, strength, and resourcefulness merely to the raising of money.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MANAGING A GREAT INSt.i.tUTION

Booker Was.h.i.+ngton's chief characteristic as an administrator was his faculty for attention to minute details without losing sight of his large purposes and ultimate ends. His grasp of every detail seems more remarkable when one realizes the dimensions of his administrative task. Besides leading his race in America, and to some extent throughout the world, and raising between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand dollars each year, he administered an inst.i.tution whose property and endowment are valued at almost four million dollars. Although the original property of the school was only a hundred acres of land with three small buildings, it now owns twenty-four hundred acres, with one hundred and eleven buildings, large and small, in its immediate vicinity. In addition to these twenty-four hundred acres of land the school now owns also about twenty thousand acres, being the unsold balance of a grant of twenty-five thousand acres of mineral land, made by the Federal Government as an endowment to the Inst.i.tute in 1899.

The organization of the Inst.i.tute ramifies throughout the entire county in which it is located. It has a resident student population of between fifteen hundred and two thousand boys and girls, with a teaching force of about two hundred men and women. It enrolls in its courses throughout the year from thirty-five hundred to four thousand persons. The receipts of its post office exceed those of the entire postal service of the Negro Republic of Liberia in Africa. In a given year the revenues of Liberia were $301,238 and the expenditures $314,000. In the same year the receipts from all sources of Tuskegee Inst.i.tute were $321,864.87 and its expenditures $341,141.58.

Booker Was.h.i.+ngton so organized this great inst.i.tution that it ran smoothly and without apparent loss of momentum for the nine months out of the twelve, during the greater part of which he was obliged to be absent raising the funds with which to keep it going. The Inst.i.tute is in continuous session throughout the twelve months of the year. During the summer months a summer school for teachers is conducted in place of the academic department. For the purposes of this summer school all or most of the trades and industries are kept in operation.

The school is organized on this basis. There is, first, a Board of Trustees which holds the property in trust and advises the princ.i.p.al as to general policies, etc., and aids him in the raising of funds; second, the princ.i.p.al, who has sole charge of all administrative matters; third, an executive council, composed of the heads of departments, with the princ.i.p.al as its chairman. The following officers serve as members of this executive council: Princ.i.p.al, treasurer, secretary, general superintendent of industries, director mechanical industries, director department of research and Experiment Station, commandant, business agent, chief accountant, director agricultural department, registrar, medical director, dean women's department, director women's industries, chaplain, director extension department, superintendent buildings and grounds, dean Phelps Hall Bible Training School, director academic department.

The position of general superintendent of industries is held by John H. Was.h.i.+ngton, brother of Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton. Mrs. Booker T.

Was.h.i.+ngton fills the position of director women's industries.

After this executive council comes the faculty made up of the leading teachers who have charge of the instruction in the various divisions of the agricultural, industrial, and academic departments. This faculty Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton in turn subdivided into a series of standing and special committees having particular charge of certain phases of the work such as repairs, cleanliness, etc. The committee on cleanliness would, for instance, be expected to see that the boarding department was insisting upon the proper use of knives and forks and napkins--was serving the food hot and in proper dishes, and that the kitchens were at all times ready for inspection and models of cleanliness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Some of Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's humble friends. (_See page 136_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Soil a.n.a.lysis. The students are required to work out in the laboratory the problems of the field and the shop.]

In the same way he constantly appointed committees to go into the academic cla.s.ses and see that they were correlating their work with the trade work. The tendency to backslide is especially strong in an inst.i.tution which, like Tuskegee, is working out original problems.

It is fatally easy for the teachers in both academic and industrial cla.s.ses to slip away from the correlative method, for which the inst.i.tution stands, back to the traditional routine. The correlative method requires constant thought. As Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton well knew, the average person only thinks under constant prodding. Hence, the committees to do the prodding! It is so much easier to take one's problems from the textbooks than to dig them up in the shops or on the farm as to be practically irresistible unless one is being watched.

Then, in the shops it requires a constant effort to work the theory in with the practice. If the instructors in the trades tended to become mere unthinking mechanics a vigilant committee was at hand to keep them true to their better lights. And if the committees themselves ever became slack, the all-seeing eye of the princ.i.p.al soon detected it and they in turn were "jacked up." Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton himself had a way of leisurely strolling about day or night into shop, cla.s.sroom, or laboratory with a stenographer at his elbow. If he thus came upon a recitation in which no ill.u.s.trative material was used, that teacher would receive within the next few hours a note such as this:

_December 8, 1914._

MR. ----: After a visit to your cla.s.s yesterday, I want to make this suggestion--that you get into close contact with some of the teachers here like Mrs. Jones of the Children's House, and Mrs. Ferguson, Head of the Division of Education, and Mr. Whiting of the Division of Mathematics, who understand our methods of teaching and try to learn our methods.

Your work yesterday was very far from satisfactory, _not based upon a single human experience or human activity_.

[Signed] BOOKER T. WAs.h.i.+NGTON, Princ.i.p.al.

Three days before he had sent the following note to the head of the academic department:

_Mr. Lee, Director of the Academic Department:_

I was very glad to see the wideawake cla.s.s conducted by Mr.

Smith this morning. His methods are certainly good.

On asking questions of the individual members of the cla.s.s, I found that about half of the cla.s.s did not know just what was to be found out from the measurements. If Mr. Smith will go to the new Laundry Building, in case he has not done so, he will find an opportunity to teach the same lessons in connection with a real building. I hope you will make this suggestion to him. Nothing takes the place of reality wherever we can get something real.

[Signed] BOOKER T. WAs.h.i.+NGTON, Princ.i.p.al.