Washington's heart when he testified: "When I first
started out I lived in a chicken house, 12 x 14 feet; now I own a
ten-room residence, comfortably furnished, and in a settlement where
we have a good school, a good church, and plenty of amusement,
including ten children."

After the laughter and applause had subsided Mr. Washington asked: "Do
you think there is the same kind of an opening out here in Oklahoma
for other and younger men of our race to do as you have done and to
succeed equally as well?"

To which Mr. Jake replied: "... I think I have succeeded with little
or no education, and it stands to reason that some of the graduates
from these industrial and agricultural schools ought to be able to do
better than I have done."

Which was, of course, just the answer Mr. Washington hoped he would
make.

Mr. Washington's instinct for keeping close to the plain people was
perhaps best illustrated by his tours through the far Southern States
for the improvement of the living conditions of his people, the tours
to which allusion has several times been made. His insistence upon
cleanliness, neatness, and paint became so well known that his
approach to a community frequently caused frantic cleaning up of
yards, mending of gates, and painting of houses. These sudden converts
to paint sometimes found out from which side the great man was to
approach their house and painted only that side and the front.

[Illustration: Mr. Washington in characteristic pose addressing an
audience.]

[Illustration: Mr. Washington silhouetted against the crowd upon one
of his educational tours.]

[Illustration: Mr. Washington in typical pose speaking to an audience
at Shreveport, La.]

When he spoke to his people on these trips he had the faculty of
becoming one of them. He described their daily lives in their own
language. He told them how much land they owned, how much of it was
mortgaged, how much and what they raised, and in fact every vital
economic and social fact about their lives and the conditions about
them. He praised them for what was creditable, censured and bantered
them for what was bad, and told them what conditions should be and how
they could make them so.

He made these tours through Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and portions of Alabama and
Georgia.

Besides these State tours he would, whenever he could take the time,
shoot out into the country surrounding T