Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization

by Emmett J. Scott; Lyman Beecher Stowe

[Signed] Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee Institute, 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' institutes 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 Washington 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 illustrated Booker Washington'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 Washington 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 classes of people, Washington 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 Washington'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 class 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, butter, and eggs. It will be seen that Booker Washington'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 Washington came to Macon County and founded Tuskegee Institute, 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 superstition 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 butter, four dozen eggs, and less than three chickens.

The Negroes were with few exceptions shiftless 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 molasses. Many meals consisted of corn bread mixed with salt water. This, then, was the raw material with which Booker Washington 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 butter, 7 dozen eggs, and 5 chickens. It must, of course, do more than this before it will actually feed itself.

Mr. Washington 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 illustrate 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 principal." It may be surmised that this type of money lender is not enthusiastic over Negro education.

It is significant of the importance which Booker Washington 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 Institute Band, rode between these two great masses 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.