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.

CHAPTERNINE

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.