ground while it was cheap and at a time when everything in
Jacksonville was at low tide; there were plenty of sick Yankees whose
investments had depreciated and I invested what money I had in some
land. I would build a house, then sell it; buy more land, build
another house and sell that; after a while I was able to build three
houses and sell two, build two and sell one and so on--(applause)--until
pretty soon I found myself in the real estate business, buying land
and building and selling houses. In this way I have gone on building
my own houses until now I have plenty to support myself and that dear
little red-headed woman who has a seat somewhere in this beautiful
audience. (Laughter and applause.) She doesn't have to keep a
boarding-house any more; she is on the retired list. (Laughter and
applause.) We have made enough to keep from doing that."
At this point Dr. Washington asked, "How many houses do you own?"
Mr. Blodgett replied: "I have been selling houses pretty rapidly
during the last few years, but I have built--and right here I want to
say that while my subject is 'Building and Contracting' I have never
built a house for anybody but myself. I build my own property. I have
built since the fire we had in Jacksonville in 1902 two hundred and
eight houses of my own. (Prolonged applause.) I have sold a good many
of them. When I realized that I was beginning to get old and not in
such good physical condition as I used to be, I was afraid I might get
afflicted with tuberculosis, or appendicitis, or some of these other
high-sounding diseases the doctors now talk about--(laughter)--and so
I thought it best to convert some of my estate into another form that
could be more easily handled by my better half when I had gone to
inhabit my mansion in the skies. (Laughter.) So I have begun to sell
off some of my property and get out of debt. I now have one hundred
and twenty-one houses, the rents from which amount to a little over
twenty-five hundred dollars a month. (Prolonged applause.) I have
invested my money in recent years in what I call 'grip-sack'
securities, so that if there should be any little unpleasantness among
the races, I can go to my safe and grab that grip-sack. (Prolonged
laughter and applause.) You see if there should ever be any friction
or trouble, I can grab my grip-sack, jump into a powerful machine, and
come up here around Philadelphia, 'The City of Brotherly Love' or over
here in Canada, and I can sit down at my leisure and read in the
papers what they are doing down there. (Prolonged laughter.)
"Dr. Washington has been in my home in Jacksonville; I have now had
the honor of not only shaking hands with him, but of having him as my
special guest. I know I am going to make one break here now, I'm going
to say something that my little modest wife may not like me to say,
but I hope she will excuse just this one time--(laughter)--for
everybody knows that I ain't very bright anyhow--not really
responsible. (Prolonged laughter.) I want to say this, not in a
boasting way--I live in the best home of any Negro in this country I
have so far seen. (Hearty applause.) I live in a home--we call it
'Blodgett Villa'; we have flowers and lawns and vines and shrubbery, a
nice greenhouse and all those things that go to make up for higher
civilization. I surrounded myself with all these things to show that
the Negro has the same taste, the same yearning for higher
civilization that the white man has whenever he has the money to
afford it. (Applause.) You know they have been saying all these years
that the Negro is coarse and vicious, that he is kin to the
monkey--(laughter)--and that we do not appreciate those things that
make for higher civilization such as flowers, hothouses, neatly kept
houses and lawns, automobiles, and such things, so I went and got
them. (Applause.) When you step inside of Mrs. Blodgett's home there
you will find art and music and literature, and if you can find
anything in there that does not tend toward the higher civilization,
you have my promise and consent to throw it outdoors. (Laughter and
applause.)...
"I remember when I was a drayman on the streets of Jacksonville; I was
a great big man, even heavier than I am now: I wore a pair of
magnificent feet appropriate to my size, and when I drove along
everybody whistled and called me 'Old Big One.' Since that time I have
graduated from a drayman to what the program calls me: a 'Builder and
Contractor,' and when they see me now riding through the streets of
Jacksonville in my $5,500 Packard automobile, if one of those Negroes
should call me 'Old Big One,' I would put him in jail. (Laughter and
applause.) I am interested in business with white men, and I tell you
when a Negro gets to the point where he makes cash deposits in a white
man's bank--say $5,000 this week, $2,000 next week, and so on, they
will begin to discover you, honor and respect you. If you deposit
$2,000 this week, the bank president will know about it, and when it
gets to the place that you have got in the bank $25,000, why this man
even (pointing to an ebony black man in the audience) will have become
a bright mulatto!"
Perhaps the most unique and impressive session of the National Negro
Business League was that held at the invitation of John Wanamaker in
his great department store in Philadelphia in 1913. One of the most
interesting talks at this meeting was that of Charles Banks of Mound
Bayou, Miss. Mr. Banks has been referred to in an earlier chapter. He
has often been called the J. Pierpont Morgan of his race. He said in
part: "I live in the little town of Mound Bayou, Miss., that was
founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery, an ex-slave of Jefferson Davis, the
President of the Southern Confederacy. Mr. Montgomery, the ex-slave in
question, is present at this meeting. We live in what is called the
'Black Belt of Mississippi' and our plantations embrace some of the
richest and most fertile land that can be found in the entire 'Delta.'
In some parts of the 'Delta' the Negro population outnumbers the white
population in a ratio of five to one. In the town in which I live
(Mound Bayou) we outnumber the white population in a ratio of five to
nothing. (Laughter and applause.)
"Instead of whining and lamenting our lot, and bemoaning the racial
prejudice which exists in our section of the country, we are taking
advantage of some of the opposition and the tendency to segregate us
and we are trying to show, through the leadership of this ex-slave of
Jefferson Davis, that it is possible for us to build up a Negro
community, a town owned and controlled by Negroes right there under
his direct supervision. And as a result, on the Yazoo and Mound Bayou
Branch of the Yazoo Central Railroad, we have one of the best-governed
and most prosperous towns on the whole line. We have something like
thirty to forty thousand acres of land in that rich and fertile
country owned and controlled exclusively by Negro men and women. We
have there the little town of Mound Bayou, which it is our privilege
to represent, and so far as its management or government is concerned,
we have control of everything. There we have a Negro Depot Agent, a
Negro Express Agent, a Negro Postmaster, a Negro Mayor, a Board of
Negro Aldermen and City Councilmen, and every other official of the
city administration is a full-fledged Negro. In that town I am the
banker, and I pass for a Negro." (Laughter and applause followed this
sally, as the speaker is the blackest of full-blooded Africans.)
In concluding his address of welcome on this occasion Mr. Wanamaker
said: "I do hope that meetings like this will come often and be held
in every large city in the North. In exhibiting to the world the
successful business men and women of your race, your league is doing
exactly what every good merchant legitimately does, that is--you are
showing your goods. (Laughter.) And you are delivering the goods.
(Prolonged applause.) Your league is making an 'Annual Report' as it
were; it is making a 'Yearly Inventory' of what your race has on hand,
and though this large hall has been the scene of many delightful
occasions (mainly connected with this business) your coming here
to-day is the first meeting of its kind. (Applause.) I believe that
this meeting ought to be put down as historical, and should serve as a
set-off--in striking contrast to the stoning of William Lloyd
Garrison, in the streets of Philadelphia, scarcely more than fifty
years ago. (Prolonged applause.) This meeting will simply help to
balance your account. (Applause.) The world is moving on, and it is a
glorious thing to-day to find that, instead of stepping
backward--contrary to the predictions of some--you are making such
splendid strides forward under the fine leadership of Dr. Booker T.
Washington--(applause)--as evidenced in this Business League
Convention.
"In closing I want not only to pay just tribute to what you have
achieved in music, in education, and religious life, but I think it
fitting, on this occasion, and I have planned to show you a fine
painting from the brush of the greatest artist of your race--the son
of Bishop Tanner. I have seen his handiwork in some of the art
galleries of the first rank in Europe. For the most part his paintings
are religious in conception, and the peculiar beauty of them is that
they deal with the heart, even as they are fine expressions of art.
(Applause.) Before you leave I have planned to show you several other
pictures of real merit that members of your race have produced.
(Applause.)
"And oh--when I consider all these things, and when I gazed upon this
vast and beautiful audience a few minutes ago, as you were singing so
fervently our national anthem, 'America,' as I looked over the sea of
earnest, intelligent faces, I wondered how on earth we could sing that
song for a hundred years or more--I wondered how it was possible to
keep a race like yours enslaved while, for years and years, the people
of this nation sang that last line of that song, 'Let freedom
ring!!!'" (Prolonged applause, tumultuous cheering, and the waving of
countless handkerchiefs as Mr. Wanamaker resumed his seat.)
Aside from having the successful colored men and women tell one
another and their less-successful fellows how they had achieved their
success at these sessions of the league, Booker Washington also
arranged to have one or more prominent white men speak. His reason for
this, aside from the obvious one of helping to foster friendly feeling
between the races, was, it may safely be hazarded, to impress upon his
people that white people succeed by the possession and the application
of the same qualities which bring success to colored people. At the
Chicago meeting of the league in 1912 Julius Rosenwald spoke--Julius
Rosenwald, the Jewish philanthropist who has done and is doing so much
to help the Negro. It was he who offered $25,000 to any city in the
United States which would raise $75,000 for a Young Men's Christian
Association Building for colored men. It is he also who is helping
Tuskegee in the building of rural schoolhouses as was explained in the
third chapter. He is one of Tuskegee's trustees.
The late Robert C. Ogden, the New York manager of the Wanamaker
business, addressed the convention of 1905 in New York. He was a man
whom Booker Washington delighted to hold up to his people as an
example of what a man could accomplish through his own unaided
efforts. He had begun his business career at a salary of $5 a week,
and from that as his starting-point he had risen to be the New York
head of the greatest department store business in the country. He was
for twenty-five years President of the Board of Trustees of Hampton, a
member of the Tuskegee Board, and the originator and host of the
annual educational pilgrimages which gave leading Northerners a first
hand and intelligent insight into the dire need of education for the
masses of the people both white and black throughout the South. Much
of the educational activity in the South to-day may be traced to the
early Ogden educational pilgrimages.
Theodore Roosevelt spoke at the New York meeting in 1910. He had just
returned from Africa. He said later that nothing connected with his
homecoming had touched him so deeply as the ovation given him by
these, his fellow-citizens of African descent. Among other white men
who have spoken before the league are Henry Clews, the banker; Dr.
H.B. Frissell, the Principal of Hampton Institute, and Dr. J.H.
Dillard, president of the Anna T. Jeanes Foundation of Negro Rural
Schools.
One of Mr. Washington's many methods for inspiring his people to
strive for business efficiency and success was to excite their
imaginations by holding up before them the achievements of such men as
John Wanamaker, Robert C. Ogden, William H. Baldwin, Jr., Henry H.
Rogers, Julius Rosenwald, the Rockefellers, and Andrew Carnegie.
Out of the National Negro Business League have developed the following
organizations which are affiliated with it:
The National Negro Funeral Directors' Association,
The National Negro Press Association,
The National Negro Bar Association,
The National Negro Retail Merchants' Association,
The National Association of Negro Insurance Men.
Booker Washington was able to speak with assurance and authority to
the business men of his race because he practised what he preached.
The business methods which he employed in conducting the business, in
distinction from the educational affairs, of Tuskegee Institute,
compare favorably with those of the best-managed industrial
corporations. He may even have appeared to be over-insistent upon
business accuracy, system, and efficiency, so anxious was he to belie
the popular notion that Negroes must of necessity, because they are
Negroes, be slipshod and unsystematic. In refutation of this familiar
accusation he built up an institution almost as large as Harvard
University which runs like clockwork without a single white man or
woman having any part in its actual administration. Tuskegee itself is
the most notable example of its founder's method of argument. No
person knowing the facts about Tuskegee can ever again honestly say
that Negroes are always and necessarily slipshod and unsystematic in
their business methods.
CHAPTER NINE
BOOKER WASHINGTON AMONG HIS STUDENTS
In spite of his absorption in guiding the destinies of his race Booker
Washington never lost interest in individuals however humble or in
their individual affairs however small. This was strikingly shown in
his relations to his students. He never wearied in his efforts to help
in the solution of the life problems of the hundreds of raw boys and
girls who each year flocked to Tuskegee and to Booker Washington with
little but hope and ambition upon which to build their careers. With
many of these newcomers he not infrequently had his initial talk
before they knew who he was. This was made easy by his simple and
unassuming manner, which was the exact opposite to what these
unsophisticated youths expected in a great man. One of the graduates
of Tuskegee in the book, "Tuskegee and Its People," thus describes his
first meeting with Booker Washington. His experience was almost
identical with that of many another entering student. He says:
"My first glimpse of Mr. Washington was had in the depot at
Montgomery, Ala., where a friend and I, on our way to Tuskegee, had
changed cars for the Tuskegee train. Two gentlemen came into the
waiting-room where we were seated, one a man of splendid appearance
and address, the other a most ordinary appearing individual, we
thought. The latter, addressing us, inquired our destination. Upon
being told that we were going to Tuskegee, he remarked that he had
heard that Tuskegee was a very hard place--a place where students were
given too much to do, and where the food was very simple and coarse.
He was afraid we would not stay there three months. We assured him
that we were not afraid of hard work, and meant to finish the course
of study at Tuskegee at all hazards. He then left us. Very soon after
the gentleman who had so favorably impressed us, and whom we afterward
found to be the treasurer of the Tuskegee Institute, Mr. Warren Logan,
came back and told us our interlocutor was none other than the
Principal of the school to which we were going."
Booker Washington was always keenly interested to get at the reasons
which had impelled the new students to come, and they would naturally
state these reasons more freely to a friendly unknown person than they
would to the Principal of the school. As previously mentioned, Booker
Washington always kept his ear to the ground. These raw boys and girls
brought him fresh and frank messages as to how the people were
thinking and feeling about Tuskegee and those things for which it
stands.
Some time after Mr. Washington's death the students of the Senior
Class were asked to write brief themes describing their first
impressions of him. In one of these themes the boy writer says, "His
general attitude did not bear out my idea of how a great man should
appear. I expected to see him with a diamond ring and riding in an
automobile on a pleasure trip, which most great men do. He was quiet,
not overdressed, nor yet self-conscious of the position he held and
the influence he wielded among the people. He seemed to me a man of
great thoughts, yet not realizing his greatness." Another boy writes:
"One of my first questions after arriving at Tuskegee, September 9,
1912, and registering as a student was to ask, where is Mr.
Washington? I was told that he hardly ever stayed here but was often
in the North. Two weeks later he came, and my first opportunity to see
him was one day on the street. I was so enthused over him that I went
to my room and wrote a letter home trying to describe him.
"The following Sunday night he lectured in the Chapel. His title was,
'Have a Place to Put Everything and Put Everything in That Place.' In
his talk he said: 'There are many people who have no system about
their work nor home. Often you visit persons' homes and every member
of the family is looking for the broom. The same is true of a match
when the time comes to light the lamp.'
"That talk was the most impressive one that I ever heard before or
since. From that talk I have reaped more benefit than any other. It
was the talk that I took in and began practising. I first started in
my room having a place to put everything and putting everything in
that place. After getting my room systematized I then began putting
this talk in practise at my work, etc...."
The next quotation is from the paper of a native African boy. He
says: "My first impression, or, at least, the first time I heard the
name of Booker T. Washington, was about the year 1902. I was then a
young boy, just arrived in one of the Native Training Institutions
existing in South Africa. These schools train young native boys
primarily to become teachers in their communities. As a native African
I had just acquired the elementary use of the English language, when
the following incident took place: One, a native teacher from the
upper part of the country, was announced and that he was to give a
lecture to the 'Boys' Saturday Evening Society.'
"The meeting assembled, and I at once heard that the lecture was about
a boy--Booker T. Washington--who obtained an education through his
struggles.... I did not hear or understand more. But it is strange to
say that this name was pinned in the bottom of my heart....
"It was during the coronation of King George V of England that I saw
this name. I had now finished that school and was teaching. It was
printed in a native paper that Booker T. Washington, an American
Negro, made an excellent speech. I cannot, however, say the exact
words of the editor, which were in greatest praise of that man, nor do
I recall the circumstances under which Mr. Washington had spoken.
"When I wanted to come to school in this country I made up my mind to
find the school--as I found later he was principal of one--where this
man was leader; and so I came to Tuskegee Institute. I found the
editor had well described the man's character and disposition."
Still another boy writes: "I first saw Dr. Washington at the
Appalachian Exposition held at Knoxville, Tenn., in 1912. It was Negro
Day and there were thousands of Negroes out to hear Dr. Washington
speak.... At times he would make the people laugh and then again he
would have a few crying. When I saw the tears in the eyes of his
listeners, I looked at Dr. Washington and thought of him with awe
because he was so highly honored. I thought of him with admiration
because he could speak so well, and I thought of him with pride
because he was a Negro.... His speech made me feel as if there were
really a few Negro men and women in the world who were making a mark,
and that there was a chance for more."
Booker Washington's interest in the lives of his students, as in all
things else, showed his combination of breadth of view and attention
to what less-thorough persons would have considered trivial details.
When, for instance, in 1913 Tuskegee was visited by one of the very
infrequent snowstorms which occur so far South, he himself went from
building to building to see that they were properly heated and to many
of the rooms, particularly of the poorer students, to make sure that
they had sufficient bed-clothes. During the last three winters of his
life he had a confidential agent make an early morning tour of all the
dormitories to make sure that they were so heated that the students
might dress in comfort on getting up in the morning.
Also when the weather was unusually cold he would make sure that the
boys who drove the teams that hauled wood and other supplies were
provided with gloves and warm clothing. One cold night he sent for Mr.
Palmer, the Registrar of the school, and said to him: "I wish you
would seek out the poor worthy students and see that it is made
possible for them to secure proper shoes and warm clothing. Some of
the most deserving of them will often actually suffer before they will
ask for assistance. We'll look out for the expense some way." He was,
in fact, as insistent that the students should have comforts as he was
that they should not have luxuries.
His attention to details and the comfort of the students was well
illustrated in the close watch he kept over the dining-rooms and
kitchens which he inspected every day he was on the grounds. Tomkins
dining-hall is the largest building on the Institute grounds and is
one of the largest dining-halls in America. It can seat over two
thousand persons at one time. Adjoining this hall is a spacious
dining-room for the teachers as well as extensive kitchens and a
bakery. Underneath it is a great assembly hall which seats twenty-five
hundred. Mr. Washington would usually appear before breakfast to
assure himself at first hand that the stewards, matrons, and cooks
were giving the students warm, nourishing, and appetizing food upon
which to begin the day's work on the farm and in the shops and
classrooms. Nothing made him more indignant than to find the coffee
served lukewarm and the cereal watery or the eggs stale. For such
derelictions the guilty party was promptly located and admonition or
discharge followed speedily. Probably in nothing was his instinct for
putting first things first better shown than in his insistence upon
proper food, properly prepared and served for both students and
teachers.