On October 25, 1915, a few weeks before he died, Mr. Washington delivered an address before the delegates to the National Council of Congregational Churches, in New Haven, Conn., in which he well illustrated 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 associations, the educational boards, white people and black people, all will have to coöperate 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 friendship existed between Mr. Washington and his Trustees. Every man among them was his selection and joined the Board on his invitation. In the year 1912 they manifested their friendship 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, Willcox, 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 Washington 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 Washington 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.