MEETING HIGH AND LOW IN EUROPE
I have gotten an education by meeting all classes of people in the
United States. I have been fortunate in getting much education by coming
into contact with different classes of people in Europe.
In the course of my journey across Europe I visited, in the fall of
1910, the ancient city of Cracow, the former capital of Poland. It was
evening when we reached our destination, and, as we had been travelling
all day without sighting an American or any one who spoke English, I
began to feel more at sea than I had ever felt before in my life. I was
a little surprised, therefore, as I was getting out of the omnibus, to
hear some one say in an unmistakable American accent: “Excuse me, but
isn’t this Booker T. Washington?”
I replied that it was, and added that I was very glad to hear that kind
of a voice in this remote corner of Europe. In a few minutes I was
exchanging notes with a man who once lived, he said, in the same part of
the country I came from, in West Virginia. He had come originally from
Poland and was, I suspect, a Polish Jew, one of that large number of
returned immigrants whom one meets in every part of Eastern and Southern
Europe.
The next day I met a very intelligent American lady, though of Polish
origin, who turned out to be the wife of the Polish count who was the
owner and proprietor of the hotel. It was this lady who advised me to go
and visit, while I was in Cracow, the tomb of the Polish patriot,
Kosciuszko, whose name I had learned in school as one of those
revolutionary heroes who, when there was no longer any hope of liberty
for their own people in the old world, had crossed the seas to help
establish it in the new.
I knew from my school history what Kosciuszko had done for America in
its early struggle for independence. I did not know, however, until my
attention was called to it in Cracow, what Kosciuszko had done for the
freedom and education of my own people.
After his second visit to this country in 1797 Kosciuszko, I learned,
made a will in which he bequeathed part of his property in this country
in trust to Thomas Jefferson to be used for the purpose of purchasing
the freedom of Negro slaves and giving them instruction in the trades
and otherwise.
Seven years after his death a school of Negroes, known as the Kosciuszko
school, was established in Newark, N. J. The sum left for the benefit of
this school amounted to thirteen thousand dollars.
The Polish patriot is buried in the cathedral at Cracow, which is the
Westminster Abbey of Poland, and is filled with memorials of the
honoured names of that country. Kosciuszko lies in a vault beneath the
marble floor of the cathedral. As I looked upon his tomb I thought how
small the world is after all, and how curiously interwoven are the
interests that bind people together. Here I was in this strange land,
farther from my home than I had ever expected to be in my life, and yet
I was paying my respects to a man to whom the members of my race owed
one of the first permanent schools for them in the United States.
When I visited the tomb of Kosciuszko I placed a rose on it in the name
of my race.
A few days later I took a day’s journey by train and wagon into a remote
part of the country districts of Poland in order to see something of the
more primitive peasant life of that region. Away up in the mountains we
stopped at a little group of thatched-roof cottages. As I wanted to see
what their homes looked like inside, I knocked at the door of one of
them and made some inquiry or other in English, not expecting to get a
reply that I could understand. I was surprised to hear a man answer me
in fairly good English. He told me that he had lived for a long time in
Detroit, Mich. My companion, Dr. Robert E. Park, who had also lived in
that city, was soon talking familiarly with him about a famous rebel
priest, Kolisinski, who had been a leader of the Polish colony in that
city.
A week before that I had visited, in the wildest part of Sicily, the
sulphur mines of Campo Franco. In the deepest part of these mines I
discovered a man who had been a miner in West Virginia, in the same
region in which, years before, I had myself learned to mine coal.
These incidents were characteristic of a kind of experience I had
everywhere in Europe. In the most remote parts of the country, where I
expected to meet people who had, perhaps, never heard of America, I
found people who not only spoke my own language, but welcomed me almost
as a fellow countryman. All this led me to realize, as I had not been
able to do before, the close and intimate way in which the life, the
problems, and the people of Europe were touching and influencing
America. But it led me also to notice and study the curious and to me
surprising reflex influence of America on Europe.
I have made in all three visits to Europe. On my first visit, a number
of years ago, I made the journey with no very definite purpose in mind.
I kept in the main line of travel and saw what I may call the polite and
official side of life in England and some portions of the continent. In
London, for example, I was entertained by the American ambassador, Hon.
Joseph H. Choate, had the privilege of attending one of the queen’s
luncheons at Windsor Castle, and made the acquaintance of Hon. James
Bryce, the present ambassador to the United States, besides meeting a
number of distinguished men whose names were familiar to me in
connection with some important phase of the world’s work in which they
were engaged.
On my last trip I made up my mind to leave, as far as possible, the main
highways of travel and see something of the condition of the poorer
people, whose lives are neither polite nor picturesque nor pleasant to
look at. My purpose in making this trip was to compare, as far as I was
able, the condition of the masses of my own people in this country with
the masses of the people in Europe, who are in relatively the same
situation in political and economic opportunity. I believed that if the
black people in America knew something of the burdens and difficulties
under which the masses of the people in Europe live and work they would
see that their own situation was by no means so hopeless as they have
been sometimes taught to believe.
I had another reason for desiring to get acquainted with the situation
of people at the bottom in Europe. For a number of years I have been
convinced that there is a very intimate relation between the work I have
been trying to do at Tuskegee Institute for the masses of the Negroes in
the South and the work that was being done for the poorer classes of the
people in the different parts of Europe. Different as has been the
history of the black man in the South and the white man in Europe, there
were, I was convinced, many points in which the life of the one would
compare with the life of the other. In the case of the Negro we have a
black people struggling up from slavery to freedom: in the other case we
have a white man making his way upward through a milder form of
subjection and servitude to a position of political and economic
independence; and, in each case, the means by which the long journey has
been made, in the one instance by a race, in the other by a class, has
been, in many respects, the same.
But aside from all that, I was interested in these people for their own
sake. An individual or a race that has come up from slavery cannot but
feel a peculiar interest and sympathy with any other individual or race
that has travelled that same journey or any part of it.
I arrived in London in the late summer. At that time all the polite
world, all the distinguished and all the wealthy people, were away in
some other part of the world upon their vacations, and the city, as far
as these people were concerned, was like a winter residence which had
been closed for the summer. But the other six million, whose
acquaintance I had determined to make upon this trip, were there.
In one way or another I saw a good deal of the life of the poorer
classes, particularly in that vast region inhabited almost wholly by
people of the poorer and working classes, which goes under the name of
East London. I tramped about at night, visiting the darkest corners of
the city I could find. One night I interviewed, on the Thames
Embankment, those dreary outcasts of the great city who wander up and
down the bank of the river all day and sleep upon the pavement at night.
At another time I visited the alehouses and the bar-rooms, where men and
women of the poorer classes congregate at night to drink and gossip. I
went several times to the police courts in some of the poorer parts of
the city, where I had a chance to observe the methods by which the
police courts of London deal with the failures and unfortunates of the
city who in one way or other fall into the hands of the police.
It had been my plan to give as large a part of my time as possible to
getting acquainted with the working classes in the farming regions of
Austria, Italy, and Denmark.
To a certain extent the condition of the urban labourers in London
connected itself in my mind with the condition of the rural population
in other countries I have mentioned, since London represents the largest
city population in the world, and England is the country in which the
masses of the people have been most completely detached from the land,
while Austria, Italy, and Denmark are distinctly agricultural countries,
and leaving out Russia, represent the parts of Europe where the people,
to a greater extent than elsewhere, live close to the soil.
It is impossible for me to describe in detail what I learned in regard
to the condition of the masses of the people in the different parts of
Europe I visited. As a rule I suppose the man on the soil has always
represented the most backward and neglected portion of the population.
This class has everywhere, until recent years, had fewer opportunities
for education than the similar classes in the cities and, where the
people who tilled the soil have not succeeded in getting possession of
the soil—as is especially true in certain parts of Austria-Hungary and
lower Italy—they have remained in a condition of greater or less
subjection to the landowning classes. In lower Italy, where the masses
of the farming population have neither land nor schools, they have
remained in a position not far removed from slavery. In Denmark, on the
contrary, where the farming class is, for the most part, made up of
independent landowners, not only has agriculture been more thoroughly
developed and organized than elsewhere, but farmers are a dominating
influence in the political life of the country.
In England, which is the home of political liberty, the working classes
have all the political privileges of other Englishmen, although the bulk
of the land is in the hands of a comparatively few landowners. On the
other hand, the majority of the labourers in the cities have not
increased their economic independence. In fact, the English city
labourer, from all that I could observe, seemed to be in a position of
greater dependence upon his employer and upon the capitalist than is
true of any other country I visited.
I recall one incident of my stay in London which emphasized this fact in
my mind: I noticed one day a man who was standing, with his hands in his
pockets, looking vaguely into the street, one of those types of the
casual labourer of whom one meets so many examples in London. I asked if
work was plentiful about this time of the year.
“No,” he replied. “It is hard to get anything to do, so many people are
out of town.”
This man looked to me like a dock labourer. I met him somewhere, I
think, on or near Mile End Road, in the East End, which is in the centre
of a district of over a million inhabitants made up entirely of working
people. I told him I could not understand how the absence of a few
hundred or a few thousand individuals from a great city like London
could make much difference to him. “It makes a great difference, sir,”
he replied. “Everything seems to stop when they go away.”
This man was, to be sure, a casual labourer, one who had, perhaps, been
crowded out by competition from the regular avenues of employment. But
there is an enormous number of these casual labourers in England. They
seem to be a product of the system.
[Illustration:
TOMPKINS MEMORIAL HALL, HAMPTON INSTITUTE
In the Tompkins Memorial Hall 1700 students during the school term
take their meals three times daily. The building cost approximately
$175,000, and is the largest building on the Institute Grounds.
]
[Illustration:
TRADE SCHOOL AT HAMPTON INSTITUTE
]
A week or ten days later I met at Skibo Castle in the Highlands of
Scotland, Lord John Morley, at that time secretary of state for India.
During the time that I was there the question of the condition of the
labouring classes was several times touched upon in conversation and
some reference was made to the condition I have referred to. I recall
that Lord Morley listened to the discussion for some time without making
any comment. Then he said very positively that, in spite of all that had
been said, the English labourer was, in his opinion, in a greatly better
position to-day than he had ever been before in his history. I was the
more impressed with this statement because it came from a man who has a
world-wide reputation as a scholar and a writer, and who is at the same
time a member of what is the most democratic government that has ever
ruled in England, a government, also, that has sought to do more than
any other to improve the living conditions of the labouring classes.
The experience I had among the poorer classes in London helped me to
realize, as I had not done before, the opportunity that the Negro, in
spite of the discriminations and injustices from which he suffers, has
in America to-day, and particularly in the Southern States, where there
is still opportunity to get land, to live in God’s open country and in
contact with simple, natural things, compared with that of the people in
the crowded English cities, where hundreds of thousands of them live
practically from hand to mouth and where one tenth of the population,
according to an investigation some years ago, are living either in
poverty or on the edge of destitution.
At the present moment the national government, in conjunction with the
city of London, is spending immense sums of money in laying out parks,
in building public baths, model tenements and lodging houses in some of
the poorer quarters of the city. Better than all else, they are building
out in the suburbs, on some of the vacant land outside the city,
beautiful garden cities, rows and rows of model houses, each with its
little garden in front of it, and each provided with every convenience
that modern invention and science can suggest to make it healthful,
convenient, and comfortable. As a result of this improvement, thousands
of working people are being removed every year from the dark, gloomy,
and unhealthy regions of the overcrowded city to these free, open
spaces, where they have an opportunity to get in contact with God’s free
air and sunlight.
I confess that I marvelled at the time and interest and money that have
been expended not only by the government, but by the philanthropic
people of London, in attempting to ameliorate and to raise the level of
life among the poorer working classes. I am convinced that if one half
or one tenth of the money, interest, and sympathy that have been
expended for the education and uplifting of the poorer classes in London
were spent upon the Negro in the South, the race problem in our country
would be practically solved.
After visiting London, I went, as I have said, to Austria and spent some
time in the city of Prague, in Bohemia; in Vienna, Austria, and
Budapest, Hungary. While there I had opportunity several times to go out
into the country districts and see something of the condition of the
farm labourers. From there I went to Sicily. I saw something of the
condition of the small farmers in the region of Palermo. I visited the
sulphur mines at Campo Franco in the mountainous region of the interior.
I passed several days at Catania and saw the grape harvest and the men
bare-legged treading the wine in the same way I have read in the Bible.
From there I returned and passed several days in Austrian Poland and
visited the salt mines. I went out into the country districts and saw
the condition of the people in the small country towns in the region
around Cracow. I crossed the frontier into Russian Poland and visited a
Russian village. From there I went to Copenhagen and gained new
acquaintance with the wonderful things that have been accomplished in
the way of organizing and developing agricultural life in that little
state.
In thinking over all that I saw and learned during my trip abroad, it
seemed to me that I could clearly discern, in all those parts of Europe
where the people are most backward, the signs of a great, silent
revolution. Everywhere, with perhaps the exception of lower Italy and
Sicily, I thought I could see that the man at the bottom was making his
way upward and, in doing so, was lifting the level of civilization.
Directly and indirectly this revolution has, to a very considerable
extent, been brought about through the influence of the United States.
For example, one of the results of the opening up of the great grain
fields in the central part of the United States was to break up the
whole system of agriculture in every part of Europe where the products
of American agriculture come in competition with those of Europe. It was
this same competition with American agriculture that provoked the
immigration from Austria, Hungary, and southern Italy. I found that
wherever the condition of farm labour was particularly bad in Southern
Europe the emigration from that part of Europe to America was especially
large and increasing. On the other hand, in Denmark, where the
agricultural crisis had been overcome by more intensive and intelligent
methods of farming, emigration to the United States had almost ceased.
A secondary effect has been to bring about a reorganization of
agriculture in such a way as to improve the condition of the farmer. In
several countries efforts have been made to break up the large estates
and increase the number of small landowners. There has been a very
general improvement in the character of the rural schools. The states of
Europe, having discovered that their rural population is one of the most
important of the natural resources, have begun to take practical
measures to educate and improve the neglected masses.
To a large extent it seemed to me that the older civilization had been
built up on the ignorance and the oppression of the masses of the people
who were at the bottom. The welfare of the few was obtained at the
expense of the many. On the other hand, at the present time, wherever
any of these countries are successful and are making progress, they are
seeking to do so, not by oppressing and holding down the masses of the
people, but by building them up, making them more intelligent, more
independent, better able to think and care for themselves.
It was, first of all, the competition with America which brought this
result about. It was, in the second place, the contact of the masses of
the people with life in America which has made the change. I met
everywhere in Southern Europe, among the labouring classes of the
people, those who had been to America and who had returned. Frequently
they had returned with money which they had earned at common labour in
America, and had bought and improved property. The number of small
landowners has increased greatly in Hungary, Poland, and in southern
Italy as the result of the emigration to America. These people came
back, sometimes with money, but always with new ideas and new ambitions.
They refused to work for the same wages that they had previously worked
for. The result was that the price of farm labour has greatly increased,
both in Italy and in other parts of Southern Europe.
On the other hand, this compelled the greater use of farm machinery,
compelled more intensive and rational methods of agriculture. But
nowhere did I find, as some people had expected, that this emigration
had had a deterrent effect upon the development of the country. For the
labouring masses, particularly in the rural parts of Southern Europe,
the journey to America has been a sort of higher education; it has
taught them not only to work better and more efficiently, but to have
confidence in themselves and to hope and believe in a better future for
themselves and their children. In this way the silent revolution to
which I refer in Europe has come about.
Now if there is any lesson to be drawn from these facts, it seems to me
it is this: that more and more, at the present day, education must take
the place of force in the affairs of men. The world is changing. The
greatest nation to-day is not the nation with the greatest army, not the
nation that can destroy the most, but the nation with the most efficient
labourers and the most productive machinery; the nation that can produce
the most.
But if labour is to be efficient, it must be trained and it must be
free. The school teacher to-day is more important to the state than the
soldier, and the aim of the highest statesmanship should be the
improvement not so much of the army as of the school.
Although I started out on my last visit to Europe with the determination
of getting acquainted with the people at the bottom and made that my
main business while I was there, I did, incidentally, have opportunity
to see something, also, of the people at the top. In fact, some of the
pleasantest and most profitable moments I had during my stay in Europe
were those spent in conversation with people who were either interested
or actively engaged in some kind of public service which connected
itself with the work that I have been trying to do for my own people in
America.
For example, I made the acquaintance through my friend, Mr. Jacob Riis,
of Mr. V. Cavling, the editor of one of the most important papers in
Denmark, the _Politiken_. It was largely through him that I was able to
see and learn as much as I did, during the short time that I was there,
of the life of the country people and of the remarkable schools that
have been established for their benefit in the country districts. While
I was in Copenhagen I was introduced by the American ambassador, Mr.
Maurice F. Egan, to the king and queen of Denmark. I learned to my
surprise that their majesties were perfectly familiar with the work that
we are doing at Tuskegee and I found them anxious to talk with me about
the possibility of a similar work for the Negroes in the Danish West
India Islands, where there are about thirty thousand people of African
descent. The queen told me that she had read not only my earlier book
“Up From Slavery,” but the volume I had just completed, “The Story of
the Negro.” What surprised me most was to find the king and queen of
Denmark so much better informed in regard to the actual condition and
progress of the Negro in America than so many Americans I have met.
At another time I was the guest of Mr. Andrew Carnegie at his summer
home in Scotland. Three of the most interesting and restful days I have
ever had were spent at Skibo Castle. Although Skibo is situated in the
wildest and most Northern part of Scotland, farther removed from the
world, it seemed to me, than any other place I had ever visited, I never
felt nearer the centre of things than I did while I was there.
All kinds of people find their way to Skibo Castle, and apparently any
one who has something really valuable to contribute to the world’s
welfare or progress finds a welcome there.
Naturally, among guests of that sort, conversation and discussion took a
wide range. For three days I had an opportunity of hearing great world
questions discussed familiarly by men who knew them at first hand. At
the time that I met Lord John Morley at Skibo Castle he was still
secretary of state for India. I had never been able to get any definite
conception, from what I had read in the newspapers, of the actual
situation as between the two races in India, the English and the native
Indians, and I was very glad to hear Lord Morley comment on that
puzzling and perplexing problem. What he said about the matter was the
more interesting because he was able to draw parallels between racial
conditions in the Eastern and the Western world, between the Indians in
India and the Negroes in the United States.
After I returned from the south of Europe I made two addresses in
London, one under the auspices of the Anti-slavery and Aborigines
Protection Society, and the other at the National Liberal Club. At these
meetings I had an opportunity to see face to face people who, as
missionaries, writers, or government officials, had, both in Africa and
at home, laboured for the welfare and the salvation of the members of my
race in parts of the world I had never seen.
For example, at the luncheon given me under the auspices of the
Anti-slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, Sir T. Folwell Buxton,
grandson of the noted abolitionist and statesman who did so much for the
abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, was the presiding
officer.
It happened that, at this time, the Society of Friends, which has been
from the beginning to the present day, both in England and America, the
best friend the Negro has ever had, was holding its annual meeting, and
many of the members of this sect were present the day I spoke. Among
others I remember who have distinguished themselves by what they have
done for the Negro in Africa were Sir Harry H. Johnston, the noted
African explorer; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mr. E. D. Morel, and Rev. J.
H. Harris, secretary of the Anti-slavery and Aborigines Protection
Society, all of whom have had so large a part in the struggle to bring
about reform in the Congo Free State.
Among the many pleasant surprises of this luncheon were a large number
of letters from distinguished persons who were unable to be present.
Among them, I remember, was a very cordial note from the Prime Minister
of England, the Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry Asquith, and among others were
two from distinguished personal friends which expressed so generous an
appreciation of the work I have attempted to do that I am tempted to
reproduce them here. These letters were addressed to John H. Harris,
secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, and
were as follows:
SKIBO CASTLE,
DORNECH
SUTHERLAND,
SEPT. 19th, 1910.
DEAR MR. HARRIS:
I regret exceedingly to miss any opportunity of doing honor to one of
the greatest men living, Booker Washington. Taking into account his
start in life, born a slave, and now the acknowledged leader of his
people, I do not know a parallel to the ascent he has made. He has
marched steadily upward to undisputed leadership, carrying with this
the confidence and approval of the white race, and winning the warm
friendship of its foremost members—a double triumph.
Booker Washington is to rank with the few immortals as one who has not
only shown his people the promised land, but is teaching them to prove
themselves worthy of it—a Joshua and Moses combined.
Very truly yours,
(Signed) ANDREW CARNEGIE.
The other letter, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, was as follows:
‘It is a great disappointment to me that paramount engagements far
away from London render it impossible for me to be present at the
gathering which is to give greeting and Godspeed to Mr. Booker T.
Washington’s acquaintance, and I share with all those who know the
facts, the appreciation of the services he has rendered and is
rendering to the solution of one of the gravest and most perplexing
problems of our time. He is a man who, in every sense, deserves well
of his contemporaries, and I believe that, when hereafter the story is
written of Christian people’s endeavor in our day to atone for and to
amend the racial wrongdoing of the past, Mr. Booker T. Washington’s
name will stand in the very forefront of those for whom the world will
give thanks.’
It was a great pleasure and satisfaction to me to meet and speak to
these distinguished people and the many others whom I met while I was in
London. What impressed me through it all was the wide outlook which they
had upon the world and its problems. Questions which we in America are
inclined to look upon as local and peculiar to our own country assume in
the eyes of Englishmen whose interests are not confined to any single
country or continent the character of world problems. I learned in
England to see that the race problem in the United States is, as Mr.
Herbert Samuels, the English postmaster-general said, “a problem which
faces all countries in which races of a widely divergent type are living
side by side.”
The success of the Negro in America and the progress which has been made
here in the solution of the racial problem gained wider and deeper
meaning for me as a result of my visit to Europe.