ed degrading. This was especially mischievous in its effects on
the poor whites. The South is only slowly coming to believe that one who
works for a living can be qualified for good society. In many of the
industrial schools already established, students are beginning to take
pride in their command of tools, in their well-planned and executed
mechanical work, and in the thorough, clean tillage, the enlarged and
varied products, and the improved stock and buildings of the farms
attached to these schools.... The ability to plan or build a church, a
schoolhouse, or a dwelling, or to carry on a farm as it should be
carried on, gives a man's opinion about purely professional matters
greater weight in all struggling communities. A teacher, minister or
physician could hardly have, aside from his mental and moral qualities,
a more effective passport to the confidence and respect of coloured
people."

It was well both for himself no less than for those who were dependent
upon him for guidance and education, that Booker Washington harboured
the notions he did concerning the worth of labour. Anyone who had
visited the institution he was building up at Tuskegee, during the first
and second year of its struggling existence, would have seen that if the
work eventually succeeded order would have to be brought out of chaos.
This was emphatically true of all things connected with the daily life
of the students on the estate; but beyond that the hereditary prejudices
of the students and their family connections had to be overcome. There
seems to have been a deeply rooted opinion that, if school learning did
not lift a man up above the necessity to labour, it was hardly worth
having. Parents and students alike tenaciously held this notion, so
that, besides looking after his growing institute, Booker Washington had
to travel about the State of Alabama to show that such prejudices were
no less false than mischievous. At the same time he had what would
generally be regarded as his own prejudices, but, come what would, he
was determined to hold his idea, and to give it practical expression.
When buildings had to be put up on the estate, he took care that none
save the students themselves should have any hand in building them.
These coloured aspirants had even to dig the clay, to make and burn the
bricks that were needed; and it was only after three dismal failures in
trying to form a kiln on scientific principles that this enterprise,
which d