psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having
bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its
energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial education,
conciliation of the South, and submission and silence as to civil and
political rights, was not wholly original; the Free Negroes from 1830
up to war-time had striven to build industrial schools, and the
American Missionary Association had from the first taught various
trades; and Price and others had sought a way of honorable alliance
with the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first
indissolubly linked these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited energy,
and perfect faith into his programme, and changed it from a by-path
into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods by which he
did this is a fascinating study of human life.

It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme
after many decades of bitter complaint; it startled and won the
applause of the South, it interested and won the admiration of the
North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did
not convert the Negroes themselves.

To gain the sympathy and cooperation of the various elements comprising
the white South was Mr. Washington's first task; and this, at the time
Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for a black man, well-nigh impossible.
And yet ten years later it was done in the word spoken at Atlanta: "In
all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and
yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." This
"Atlanta Compromise" is by all odds the most notable thing in Mr.
Washington's career. The South interpreted it in different ways: the
radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil
and political equality; the conservatives, as a generously conceived
working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved it, and
to-day its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since
Jefferson Davis, and the one with the largest personal following.

Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington's work in gaining place
and consideration in the North. Others less shrewd and tactful had
formerly essayed to sit on these two stools and had fallen between
them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South from birth and
training, so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the spirit of
the age which was dominating the North. And so thoroug