the service.

A few years ago there was a fine storm of protest from Northern Negroes
to the effect that Booker Washington was endeavoring to limit the Negro
to menial service--that is, thrust him back into servility. The first
ambition of the Negro was to get an education so that he might become a
Baptist preacher. To him, education meant freedom from toil, and of
course we do not have to look far to see where he got the idea. Then
when Tuskegee came forward and wanted to make blacksmiths, carpenters
and brick-masons out of black men, there was a cry, "If this means
education, we will none of it--treason, treason!" It was assumed that
the Negro who set other Negroes to work was not their friend. This phase
of the matter requires neither denial nor apology. We smile and pass on.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-seven, the Negro was practically
disenfranchised throughout the South, by being excluded from the
primaries. He had no recognized ticket in the field. For both the blacks
and the whites this has been well. To most of the blacks freedom meant
simply exemption from work. So there quickly grew up a roistering,
turbulent, idle and dangerous class of black men who were used by the
most ambitious of their kind for political ends. To preserve the peace
of the community, the whites were forced to adopt heroic measures, with
the result that we now have the disenfranchised Negro.

Early in the Eighties, Booker Washington realized that, politically,
there was no hope for his race. He saw, however, that commerce
recognized no color line. We would buy, sell and trade with the black
man on absolute equality. Life-insurance companies would insure him,
banks would receive his deposits, and if honest and competent, would
loan him money. If he could shoe a horse, we waived his complexion; and
in every sort and kind of craftsmanship he stood on absolute equality
with the whites. The only question ever asked was, "Can you do the
work?"

And Booker Washington set out to help the Negro win success for himself
by serving society through becoming skilled in doing useful things. And
so it became Head, Hand and Heart. The manual was played off against the
intellectual.

But over and beyond the great achievement of Booker Washington in
founding and carrying to a successful issue the most complete
educational scheme of this age, or any other, stands the man himself. He
is one without hate, heat or prejudice. No one can write on the lintels