Chapter III: Part 3

Character is a power. If you want to be powerful in the world, if you want to be strong, influential and useful, you can be so in no better way than by having strong character; but you cannot have a strong character if you yield to the temptations about which I have been speaking.

Some one asked, some time ago, what it was that gave such a power to the sermons of the late Dr. John Hall. In the usual sense he was not a powerful speaker; but everything he said carried conviction with it. The explanation was that the character of the man was behind the sermon. You may go out and make great speeches, you may write books or addresses which are great literature, but unless you have character behind what you say and write, it will amount to nothing; it will all go to the winds.

I leave this question with you, then. When you are tempted to do what your conscience tells you is not right, ask yourself: "Will it pay me to do this thing which I know is not right?" Go to the penitentiary. Ask the people there who have failed, who have made mistakes, why they are there, and in every case they will tell you that they are there because they yielded to temptation, because they did not ask themselves the question: "Will it pay?"

Go ask those people who have no care for life, who have thrown away their virtue, as it were, ask them why they are without character, and the answer will be, in so many words, that they sought but temporary success. In order to find some short road to success, in order to have momentary happiness, they yielded to temptation. We want to feel that in every student who goes out from here there is a character which can be depended upon in the night as well as in the day. That is the kind of young men and young women we wish to send out from here. Whenever you are tempted to yield a hair's breadth in the direction which I have indicated, ask yourself the question over and over again: "Will it pay me in this world? Will it pay me in the world to come?"

EDUCATION THAT EDUCATES[1]

Perhaps I am safe in saying that during the last ten days you have not given much systematic effort to book study in the usual sense. When interruptions come such as we have just had, taking you away from your regular routine work and study, and the preparation of routine lessons is interrupted, the first thought to some may be that this time is lost, in so far as it relates to education in the ordinary sense; that it is so much time taken away from that part of one's life that should be devoted to acquiring education. I suppose that during the last few days the questions have come to many of you: "What are we gaining? What are we getting from the irregularity that has characterized the school grounds within the last week, that will in any degree compensate for the amount of book study that we have lost?"

To my mind I do not believe that you have lost anything by the interruption. On the other hand, I am convinced that you have got the best kind of education. I do not mean to say that we can depend upon it for all time to come for systematic training of the mind, but so far as real education, so far as development of the mind and heart and body are concerned, I do not believe that a single student has lost anything by the irregularity of the last week or more.

You have gained in this respect: in preparing for the reception and entertainment of the President of the United States and his Cabinet, and the distinguished persons who accompanied the party, you have had to do an amount of original thinking which you, perhaps, have never had to do before in your lives. You have been compelled to think; you have been compelled to put more than your bodily strength into what you have been doing. You could not have made the magnificent exhibition of our work which you have made if you had not been compelled to do original thinking and execution. Most of you never saw such an exhibition before; I never did. Those of you who had to construct floats that would illustrate our agricultural work and our mechanical and academic work, had to put a certain amount of original thought into the planning of these floats, in order to make them show the work to the best advantage; and two-thirds of you--yes, practically all of you--had never seen anything of the kind before. For this reason it was a matter that had to be thought out by you and planned out by you, and then put into visible shape.

Now compare that kind of education with the mere committing to memory of certain rules, or something which some one else thought out and executed a thousand years ago perhaps--and that is what a large part of our education really is. Education in the usual sense of the word is the mere committing to memory of something which has been known before us. Now during the last ten days we have had to solve problems of our own, not problems and puzzles that some one else originated for us. I do not believe that there is a person connected with the institution who is not stronger in mind, who is not more self-confident and self-reliant, so far as the qualities relate to what he is able to do with his mind or his hands, than he was ten or twelve days ago. There is the benefit that came to all of us. It put us to thinking and planning; it brought us in to contact with things that are out of the ordinary; and there is no education that surpasses this. I see more and more every year that the world is to be brought to the study of men and of things, rather than to the study of mere books. You will find more and more as the years go by, that people will gradually lay aside books, and study the nature of man in a way they have never done as yet. I tell you, then, that in this interruption of the regular school work you have not lost anything:--you have gained; you have had your minds awakened, your faculties strengthened, and your hands guided.

I do not wish to speak of this matter egotistically, but it is true that I have heard a great many persons from elsewhere mention the pleasure which they have received in meeting Tuskegee students, because when they come in contact with a student who has been here, they are impressed with the fact that he or she does not seem to be dead or sleepy. They say that when they meet a Tuskegee boy or girl they find a person who has had contact with real life. The education that you have been getting during the last few days, you will find, as the years go by, has been of a kind that will serve you in good stead all through your lives.

Just in proportion as we learn to execute something, to put our education into tangible form--as we have been doing during the last few days--in just the same proportion will we find ourselves of value as individuals and as a race. Those people who came here to visit us knew perfectly well that we could commit to memory certain lines of poetry, they knew we were able to solve certain problems in algebra and geometry, they understood that we could learn certain rules in chemistry and agriculture; but what interested them most was to see us put into visible form the results of our education. Just in proportion as an individual is able to do that, he is of value to the world. That is the object of the work which we are trying to do here. We are trying to turn out men and women who are able to do something that the world wants done, that the world needs to have done. Just in proportion as you can comply with that demand you will find that there is a place for you--there is going to be standing room. By the training we are giving you here we are preparing you for a place in the world. We are going to train you so that when you get to that place, if you fail in it, the failure will not be our fault.

It is a great satisfaction to have connected with a race men and women who are able to do something, not merely to talk about doing it, not merely to theorize about doing it, but actually to do something that makes the world better to live in, something that enhances the comforts and conveniences of life. I had a good example of this last week. I wanted something done in my office which required a practical knowledge of electricity. It was a great satisfaction when I called upon one of the teachers, to have him do the work in a careful, praiseworthy manner. It is very well to talk or lecture about electricity, but it is better to be able to do something of value with one's knowledge of electricity.

And so, as you go on, increasing your ability to do things of value, you will find that the problem which often now-a-days looks more and more difficult of solution will gradually become easier. One of the Cabinet members who were here a few days ago said, after witnessing the exhibition which you made here, that the islands which this country had taken into its possession during the recent war are soon going to require the service of every man and woman we can turn out from this institution. You will find it true, not only in this country but in other countries, that the demand will be more and more for people who can do something. Just in proportion as we can, as a race, get the reputation which I spoke to you about a few days ago, you will find there will be places for us. Regardless of colour or condition, the world is going to give the places of trust and remuneration to the men and women who can do a certain thing as well as anybody else or better. This is the whole problem. Shall we prepare ourselves to do something as well as anybody else or better? Just in proportion as we do this, you will find that nothing under the sun will keep us back.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This talk was given soon after the visit of President McKinley to Tuskegee Institute in the fall of 1898.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING RELIABLE.

I am going to call your attention this evening to a tendency of the people of our race which I had occasion to notice in the course of a visit recently made to certain portions of North Carolina and South Carolina.

I find that with persons who are the employers or who might be the employers of numbers of our people, there is a very general impression that as a race we lack steadiness--that we lack steadiness as labourers. Now you may say that this is not true, and you may cite any number of instances to show that we are not unreliable in that respect; whether it is true or not, the results are the same;--it works against us in the matter of securing paying employment.

Almost without exception, in talking with persons who are in a position to employ us, or who have been employing us, or who are thinking of employing us, I have found that this objection has been very largely in their minds,--that we cannot be depended upon, that we are unsteady and unreliable in matters of labour. I am speaking, of course, of that class of people of our race who depend mainly upon a day's work--working by the day, as we call it--for their living. These men with whom I talked gave several illustrations of this tendency. In the first place, I think they mentioned, without exception, this fact--that if the coloured people are employed in a factory, they work well and steadily for a few days, say until Saturday night comes, and they are paid their week's wages. Then they cannot be depended upon to put in an appearance the following Monday morning.

That special criticism was made without exception. The coloured people, these men said, would work earnestly, and give good satisfaction until they got a little money ahead, and got food enough assured to last them two or three weeks; then they would give up the job, or simply remain away from the factory until others had been put in their places. That was one of the statements that was made to me over and over again.

People also mentioned to me as an unfavourable tendency the inclination which the people of our race have to go on excursions. They said that if an excursion were going to Wilmington or Greensboro, or Charleston, and the coloured people had a little money on hand, you could not depend on their going to work instead of going on the excursion; that people would say that they must go on this or that excursion, and that nothing should stop them. A great many people lose employment and money because of this tendency to go on excursions.

Another thing that was mentioned to me was the Sunday dinners. Our people are too likely to starve all through the week, and then on Sunday invite all the neighbours to come in and eat up what they have made through the week. People say that we take our week's earnings on Saturday night, and go to the market and spend it all, and then invite all of our kindred and neighbours to come in on Sunday to have a great party. Then by Monday morning we have made ourselves so ill by overeating that we are unfit for work. This was given as one of the reasons which cause people to complain of our race for unsteadiness.

Then there was complaint of a general lack of perseverance, of an unwillingness to be steady, to put money into the bank, to begin at the bottom and gradually work toward the top. You can easily see some of the results of such a reputation as this. I have noticed some of the results in many of the places where our people have been securing paying employment. One result is a general distrust of the entire race in matters pertaining to industry. Another is that people are not going to employ persons on whom they cannot depend, to fill responsible positions. Employers are not likely to employ for responsible positions persons who are likely to go away unexpectedly on excursions.

Another result is loss of money. You will find many of our people in poverty simply because, in so large a measure, we have got this reputation of being unsteady and unreliable. Wherever our people are not getting regular, paying employment, it is largely on account of these things of which I have been speaking; and gradually the opportunities for employment are slipping into the hands of the people of other races. You can easily understand that where people are not getting steady employment--but a job this week and a job next week, and perhaps nothing the week after--it is impossible for them to put money in the bank, impossible to acquire homes and property, and to settle down as reliable, prosperous citizens.

Now, how are we going to change all these things? I do not see any hope unless we can depend upon you to change them, you young men and young women who are being educated in institutions of learning. It rests largely with you to change public sentiment among our people in all these directions, to a point where we shall feel that we must be as reliable and as responsible as it is possible for the people of any other race to be. But in order to do this it is necessary for you to learn how to control yourselves in these respects. Young men come here and want to work at this industry or that, for a while, and then get tired and want to change to something else. Some come with a strong determination to work, and stay until something happens that is not quite pleasant, and then they want to leave and go to some other school or go back home. Now we cannot make the leaders and the examples of our people that we should make, if we are going to be guilty of these same weaknesses in these institutions. Let each of you take control of himself or herself, and determine that whatever you plan to be you are going to be; you are going to keep driving away, pegging away, moving on and on each hour, each day, until you have accomplished the purpose for which you came here.

Such are the persons, the men and women, that the world is looking for. These are the men and women we want to send to North Carolina and South Carolina, to Georgia, to Mississippi, and about in our own State of Alabama, to reach hundreds and thousands of our people, and to bring about such a sentiment that these people can control themselves in the directions I have mentioned and become steady and reliable along all the avenues of industry.

I have spoken very plainly about these things, because I believe that they are matters to which as a race we ought to give more attention. No race can thrive and prosper and grow strong if it is living on the outer edges of the industrial world, is jumping here and there after a job that somebody else has given up. At the risk of repeating myself, I say that we must give attention to this matter,--we must be more trustworthy and more reliable in matters of labour. As you go home, and go into your churches, your schools and your families, preach, teach and talk from day to day the doctrine that our people must become steady and reliable, must become worthy of confidence in all their occupations.

I am sorry to say that it is too often true of young people that they overlook these matters in their conversation. We are always ready to talk about Mars and Jupiter, about the sun and moon, and about things under the earth and over the earth--in fact about everything except these little matters that have so much to do with our real living. Now if we cannot put a spirit of determination into you to go out and change public sentiment, then the future for us as a race is not very bright.

But I have faith in you to believe that you are going to set a high standard for yourselves in all these matters, and that if you can stay here two, four, five years, some of you will control yourselves in all these respects, and will bring yourselves to be examples of what we hope and expect the people whom you are going to teach are to become. If you will do this you will find that in a few years there will be a decided change for the better in the things of which I have spoken, a change in regard to these matters that will make us as a race firmer and stronger in these important directions.

THE HIGHEST EDUCATION

It may seem to some of you that I am continually talking to you about education--the right kind of education, how to get an education, and such kindred subjects--but surely no subject could be more pertinent, since the object for which you all are here is to get an education; and if you are to do this, you wish to get the best kind possible.

You will understand, then, I am sure, if I speak often about this, or refer to the subject frequently, that it is because I am very anxious that all of you go out from here with a definite and correct idea of what is meant by education, of what an education is meant to accomplish, what it may be expected to do for one.

We are very apt to get the idea that education means the memorizing of a number of dates, of being able to state when a certain battle took place, of being able to recall with accuracy this event or that event. We are likely to get the impression that education consists in being able to commit to memory a certain number of rules in grammar, a certain number of rules in arithmetic, and in being able to locate correctly on the earth's surface this mountain or that river, and to name this lake and that gulf.

Now I do not mean to disparage the value of this kind of training, because among the things that education should do for us is to give us strong, orderly and well developed minds. I do not wish to have you get the idea that I undervalue or overlook the strengthening of the mind. If there is one person more than another who is to be pitied, it is the individual who is all heart and no head. You will see numbers of persons going through the world whose hearts are full of good things--running over with the wish to do something to make somebody better, or the desire to make somebody happier--but they have made the sad mistake of being absolutely without development of mind to go with this willingness of heart. We want development of mind and we want strengthening of the mind.

I have often said to you that one of the best things that education can do for an individual is to teach that individual to get hold of what he wants, rather than to teach him how to commit to memory a number of facts in history or a number of names in geography. I wish you to feel that we can give you here orderliness of mind--I mean a trained mind--that will enable you to find dates in history or to put your finger on names in geography when you want them. I wish to give you an education that will enable you to construct rules in grammar and arithmetic for yourselves. That is the highest kind of training.

But, after all, this kind of thing is not the end of education. What, then, do we mean by education? I would say that education is meant to give us an idea of truth. Whatever we get out of text books, whatever we get out of industry, whatever we get here and there from any sources, if we do not get the idea of truth at the end, we do not get education. I do not care how much you get out of history, or geography, or algebra, or literature, I do not care how much you have got out of all your text books:--unless you have got truth, you have failed in your purpose to be educated. Unless you get the idea of truth so pure that you cannot be false in anything, your education is a failure.

Then education is meant to make us just in our dealings with our fellow men. The man or woman who has learned to be absolutely just, so far as he can interpret, has, in that degree, an education, is to that degree an educated man or woman. Education is meant to make us change for the better, to make us more thoughtful, to make us so broad that we will not seek to help one man because he belongs to this race or that race of people, and seek to hinder another man because he does not belong to this race or that race of people.

Education in the broadest and truest sense will make an individual seek to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of colour, regardless of condition. And you will find that the person who is most truly educated is the one who is going to be kindest, and is going to act in the gentlest manner toward persons who are unfortunate, toward the race or the individual that is most despised. The highly educated person is the one who is the most considerate of those individuals who are less fortunate. I hope that when you go out from here, and meet persons who are afflicted by poverty, whether of mind or body, or persons who are unfortunate in any way, that you will show your education by being just as kind and just as considerate toward those persons as it is possible for you to be. That is the way to test a person with education. You may see ignorant persons, who, perhaps, think themselves educated, going about the street, who, when they meet an individual who is unfortunate--lame, or with a defect of body, mind or speech--are inclined to laugh at and make sport of that individual. But the highly educated person, the one who is really cultivated, is gentle and sympathetic to everyone.

Education is meant to make us absolutely honest in dealing with our fellows. I don't care how much arithmetic we have, or how many cities we can locate;--it all is useless unless we have an education that makes us absolutely honest.

Education is meant to make us give satisfaction, and to get satisfaction out of giving it. It is meant to make us get happiness out of service for our fellows. And until we get to the point where we can get happiness and supreme satisfaction out of helping our fellows, we are not truly educated. Education is meant to make us generous. In this connection let me say that I very much hope that when you go out from here you will show that you have learned this lesson of being generous in all charitable objects, in the support of your churches, your Sunday schools, your hospitals, and in being generous in giving help to the poor.

I hope, for instance, that a large proportion of you--in fact all of you--will make it a practice to give something yearly to this institution. If you cannot give but twenty-five cents, fifty cents, or a dollar a year, I hope you will put it down as a thing that you will not forget, to give something to this institution every year. We want to show to our friends who have done so much for us, who have supported this school so generously, how much interest we take in the institution that has given us so nearly all that we possess. I hope that every senior, in particular, will keep this in mind. I am glad to say that we have many graduates who send us such sums, even if small, and one graduate who for the last eight or ten years has sent us ten dollars annually. I hope a number of you in the senior class that I see before me will do the same thing.

Education is meant to make us appreciate the things that are beautiful in nature. A person is never educated until he is able to go into the swamps and woods and see something that is beautiful in the trees and shrubs there, is able to see something beautiful in the grass and flowers that surround him, is, in short, able to see something beautiful, elevating and inspiring in everything that God has created. Not only should education enable us to see the beauty in these objects which God has put about us, but it is meant to influence us to bring beautiful objects about us. I hope that each one of you, after you graduate, will surround himself at home with what is beautiful, inspiring and elevating. I do not believe that any person is educated so long as he lives in a dirty, miserable shanty. I do not believe that any person is educated until he has learned to want to live in a clean room made attractive with pictures and books, and with such surroundings as are elevating.

In a word, I wish to say again, that education is meant to give us that culture, that refinement, that taste which will make us deal truthfully with our fellow men, and will make us see what is beautiful, elevating and inspiring in what God has created. I want you to bear in mind that your text books, with all their contents, are not an end, but a means to an end, a means to help us get the highest, the best, the purest and the most beautiful things out of life.

UNIMPROVED OPPORTUNITIES

Several of the things which I shall say to you to-night may not sound very agreeable or encouraging to many of you, yet I think you will agree with me that they are facts that cannot be denied.

We must recognize the fact, in the first place, that our condition as a race is, in a large measure, different from the condition of the white race by which we are surrounded; that our capacity is very largely different from that of the people of the white race. I know we like to say the opposite. It sounds well in compositions, does well in rhetoric, and makes a splendid essay, for us to make the opposite assertion. It does very well in a newspaper article, but when we come down to hard facts we must acknowledge that our condition and capacity are not equal to those of the majority of the white people with whom we come in daily contact.

Of course that does not sound very well; but to say that we are equal to the whites is to say that slavery was no disadvantage to us. That is the logic of it. To illustrate. Suppose a person has been confined in a sick room, deprived of the use of his faculties, the use of his body and senses, and that he comes out and is placed by the side of a man who has been healthy in body and mind. Are these two persons in the same condition? Are they equal in capacity? Is the young animal of a week old, although he has all the characteristics that his mother has, as strong as she? With proper development he will be, in time, as strong as she, but it is unreasonable to say that he is as strong at present. And so, I think, this is all that we can say of ourselves--with proper development our condition and capacity will be the same as those of the people of any other race.

Now, the fact that our capacity as a people is different, and that the conditions which we must meet are different, makes it reasonable for us to believe that, when the question of education is considered, we shall find that different educational methods are desirable for us from those which would be appropriate to the needs of a people whose capacity and conditions are different from ours. What we most need, in my opinion, for the next few generations, is such an education as will help us most effectually to conquer the forces of nature;--I mean in the general sense of supplying food, clothing, homes, and a substantial provision for the future.

Do not think that I mean by this that I do not believe in every individual getting all the education, he or she can get,--for I do. But since for some years to come, at least, it must of necessity be impossible for all of our young people to get all the education possible, or even all they may want to get, I believe they should apply their energies to getting such a training as will be best fitted to supply their immediate needs.

In Scotland, for instance, where higher education has been within reach of the people for many years, and where the people have reached a high degree of civilization, it is not out of place for the young people to give their time and attention to the study of metaphysics and of law and the other professions. Of course I do not mean to say that we shall not have lawyers and metaphysicians and other professional men after a while, but I do mean to say that I think the efforts of a large majority of us should be devoted to securing the material necessities of life.

When you speak to the average person about labor--industrial work, especially--he seems to get the idea at once that you are opposed to his head being educated--that you simply wish to put him to work. Anybody that knows anything about industrial education knows that it teaches a person just the opposite--how not to work. It teaches him to make water work for him,--air, steam, all the forces of nature. That is what is meant by industrial education.

Let us make an illustration. Yesterday I was over in the creamery and became greatly interested in the process of separating the cream. The only energy spent was that required to turn a crank. The apparatus had been so constructed as to utilize natural forces. Now compare the old process of butter-making with the new. Before, you had to go through a long process of drudgery before the cream could be separated from the milk, and then another long process before the cream could be turned into butter, and then, even after churning three or four hours at a time, you got only a small portion of butter. Now what we mean by giving you an industrial education is to teach you so to put brains into your work that if your work is butter-making, you can make butter simply by standing at a machine and turning a crank.

If you are studying chemistry, be sure you get all you can out of the course here, and then go to a higher school somewhere else. Become as proficient in the science as you can. When you have done this, do not sit down and wait for the world to honour you because you know a great deal about chemistry--you will be disappointed if you do--but if you wish to make the best use of your knowledge of chemistry, come back here to the South and use it in making this poor soil rich, and in making good butter where the farmers have made poor butter before. Used in this way you will find that your knowledge of chemistry will cause others to honour you.

During the last thirty years we, as a race, have let some golden opportunities slip from us, and partly, I fear, because we have not had enough plain talk in the direction I am following with you to-night. If you ever have an opportunity to go into any of the large cities of the North you will be able to see for yourselves what I mean. I remember that the first time I went North--and it was not so very many years ago--it was not an uncommon thing to see the barber shops in the hands of coloured men. I know coloured men who in that way could have become comfortably rich. You cannot find to-day in the city of New York or Boston a first-class barber shop in the hands of coloured men. That opportunity is gone, and something is wrong that it is so. Coming nearer home; go to Montgomery, Memphis, New Orleans, and you will find that the barber shops are gradually slipping away from the hands of the coloured men, and they are going back into dark streets and opening little holes. These opportunities have slipped from us largely because we have not learned to dignify labour. The coloured man puts a dirty little chair and a pair of razors into a dirtier looking hole, while the white man opens his shop on one of the principal streets, or in connection with some fashionable hotel, fits it up luxuriously with carpets, handsome mirrors and other attractive furniture, and calls the place a "tonsorial parlour." The proprietor sits at his desk and takes the cash. He has transformed what we call drudgery into a paying business.

Still another instance. You can remember that only a few years ago one of the best paying positions that a large number of coloured men filled was that of doing whitewashing. A few years ago it would not have been hard to see coloured men in Boston, Philadelphia or Washington carrying a whitewash tub and a long pole into somebody's house to do a job of whitewashing. You go into the North to-day, and you will find very few coloured men at that work. White men learned that they could dignify that branch of labour, and they began to study it in schools. They gained a knowledge of chemistry which would enable them to understand the mixing of the necessary ingredients; they learned decorating and frescoing; and now they call themselves "house decorators." Now that job is gone, perhaps to come no more; for now that these men have elevated this work, and introduced more intelligent skill into it, do you suppose any one is going to allow some old man with a pole and a bucket to come into the house?

Then there is the field occupied by the cooks. You know that all over the South we have held--and still hold to a large extent--the matter of cooking in our hands. Wherever there was any cooking to be done, a coloured man or a coloured woman did it. But while we still have something of a monopoly of this work, it is a fact that even this is slipping away from us. People do not wish always to eat fried meat, and bread that is made almost wholly of water and salt. They get tired of such food, and they desire a person to cook for them who will put brains into the work. To met this demand white people have transformed what was once the menial occupation of cooking into a profession; they have gone to school and studied how to elevate this work, and if we can judge by the almost total absence of coloured cooks in the North, we are led to believe that they have learned how. Even here in the South coloured cooks are gradually disappearing, and unless they exert themselves they will go entirely. They have disappeared in the North because they have not kept pace with the demand for the most improved methods of cooking, and because they have not realized that the world is moving forward rapidly in the march of civilization. A few days ago, when in Chicago, I noticed in one of the fashionable restaurants a fine-looking man, well dressed, who seemed to be the proprietor. I asked who he was, and was told that he was the "chef," as he is called--the head cook. Of course I was surprised to see a man dressed so stylishly and presenting such an air of culture, filling the place of chief cook in a restaurant, but I remembered then, more forcibly than ever, that cooking had been transformed into a profession--into dignified labour.

Still another opportunity is going, and we laugh when we mention it, although it is really no laughing matter. When we think of what we might have done to elevate it in the same way that white persons have elevated it, we realize that it was an opportunity after all. I refer to the opportunity which was in boot-blacking. Of course, here in the South, we have that yet, to a large extent, because the competition here is not quite so sharp as in the North. In too many Southern towns and cities, if you wish your shoes blacked, you wait until you meet a boy with a box slung over his shoulder. When he begins to polish your shoes you will very likely see that he uses a much-worn shoe brush, or, worse still, a scrubbing brush, and unless you watch him closely there is a chance that he will polish your shoes with stove polish. But if you go into a Northern city you will find that such a boy as this does not stand a chance of making a living. White boys and even men have opened shops which they have fitted up with carpets, pictures, mirrors, and comfortable chairs, and sometimes their brushes are even run by electricity. They have the latest newspapers always within reach for their patrons to read while their work is being done, and they grow rich. The man who owns and runs such a place as that is not called a "boot-black"; he is called the proprietor of such and such a "Shoe-blacking Emporium." And that chance is gone to come no more. Now there are many coloured men who understand about electricity, but where is the coloured man who would apply his knowledge of that science to running brushes in a boot-black stand?

In the South it was a common thing when anybody was taken ill to notify the old mammy nurse. We had a monopoly of the nursing business for many years, and up to a short time ago it was the common opinion that nobody could nurse but one of those old black mammies. But this idea is being dissipated. In the North, when a person gets ill, he does not think of sending for any one but a professional nurse, one who has received a diploma from some nurse-training school, or a certificate of proficiency from some reputable institution.

I hope you have understood me in what I have been trying to say of these little things. They all tend to show that if we are to keep pace with the progress of civilization, we must pay attention to the small things as well as the larger and more important things in life. They go to prove that we must put brains into what we do. If education means anything at all, it means putting brains into the common affairs of life and making something of them. That is just what we are seeking to tell to the world through the work of this institution.

There are many opportunities all about us where we can use our education. You very rarely see a man idle who knows all about house-building, who knows how to draw plans, to test the strength of materials that enter into the making of a first-class house. Did you ever see such a man out of a job? Did you ever see such a man as that writing letters to this place and that place applying for work? People are wanted all over the world who can do work well. Men and women are wanted who understand the preparation and supplying of food--I don't mean in the small menial sense--but people who know all about it. Even in this there is a great opportunity. A few days ago I met a woman who had spent years in this country and in Europe studying the subject of food economics in all its details. I learn that this person is in constant demand by institutions of learning and other establishments where the preparation and the serving of food are important features. She spends a few months at each institution. She is wanted everywhere, because she has applied her education to one of the most important necessities of life.

And so you will find it all through life--those persons who are going to be constantly sought after, constantly in demand, are those who make the best use of their opportunities, who work unceasingly to become proficient in whatever they attempt to do. Always be sure that you have something out of which you can make a living, and then you will not only be independent, but you will be in a much better position to help your fellow-men.

I have spoken about these matters at this length because I believe them to be the foundation of our future success. We often hear a man spoken of as having moral character. A man cannot have moral character unless he has something to wear, and something to eat three hundred and sixty-five days in a year. He cannot have any religion either. You will find at the bottom of much crime the fact that the criminals have not had the common necessities of life supplied them. Men must have some of the comforts and conveniences--certainly the necessities of life--supplied them before they can be morally or religiously what they ought to be.

KEEPING YOUR WORD

I do not want to speak to you continually upon subjects that tend to show up the weaker traits of character which our race has, but there are some characteristic points in our life so important that it seems to me well that we emphasize those which are specially weak just now.

A few weeks ago I mentioned two or three examples which had come under my own personal observation, of the unreliability of the race, and to those I now add one or two more.

On three distinct occasions, while travelling, I have found it necessary to make engagements with hackmen to call at a certain hour in the morning to take me to an early train, and on no one of these occasions has the hackman kept his word. In the first case the man disappointed me entirely, so that I had to walk to the station, a distance of a mile or more. In the second instance the hackman was to come at six o'clock, and did not come until half-past six. By that time I had started to walk, and had gone two or three squares, meeting him on the way to the place where I had stopped. In the third case the man was at least an hour late when we met him, after we had walked over half the distance to the station.

I have spoken at another time of the fact that men who employ coloured workmen have complained to me that after these men had drawn a week's pay, they could not be depended upon to return to work the next Monday morning. In the city of Savannah, Georgia, there are a great many coloured men employed as stevedores--men who load and unload ships. If you have read the newspapers carefully you will have noticed that recently the persons who employ these men have made a new rule, by which they refuse to pay the stevedores all of their wages at the end of the week, but retain two days' pay out of each week, from every individual who works for them, to be paid to them at the end of the next week. Of course the men do not lose anything in the end by this method; it simply means that so long as they work for one employer there are at least two days' pay due them. Of course the labourers whose wages were thus kept back have made a great noise about it, but when their employers were asked for an explanation, they said: "We find by experience that if we pay you all that we owe you on Saturday night, we cannot depend upon your returning on Monday morning to continue your work. You are apt to get drunk, or to debauch yourselves on Sunday so that you are unfitted for your work the next day." This is the decision these men have arrived at after having employed these men for a number of years.

Now think of the things I have spoken to you about. You may say with regard to the last, that to a great extent this action on the part of the Savannah employers was due to prejudice, to a desire to use the money withheld for their own selfish purposes, and because they had the power to do so, but you can very easily understand that if a person goes on being disappointed month after month in his business, he will soon conclude that it is best for him to try a hackman of some other colour and disposition, and that if these Savannah employers find year after year that they cannot depend on coloured men to give them thorough, regular, systematic labour, they are going to look out for persons of another race who will do their work properly.

It is not necessary for me to continue in this strain, and to call attention to other incidents of this kind, to show, as I have told you before, that one of the weak points which we as a race must fight against, is that of not being reliable. Of course I understand that it is not always possible for a person to keep an engagement, but if he cannot, it is very rarely the case that he cannot send word to the person with whom he has made the engagement of his inability to keep his part of it. In the case of the hackmen who disappointed me, if they had sent word two or three hours ahead of the time, that they could not come, or if they had sent another hackman to fill the engagement for them, I should have thought nothing about it. In the case of those Savannah labourers, when they found they could not go back to their work promptly, if they had sent word to that effect, their absence, perhaps, could have been excused. But it is this habit of disappointing people in business matters without apparent care or concern that has given the race the damaging reputation which it has for unreliability.

I speak of these things repeatedly and so plainly because I am constantly meeting persons who are employers or who would be employers of our people, and they tell me every time when I speak to them about work, that their only objection to employing coloured labour is this very matter I have been speaking of, its unreliability. Many of them say that they want to employ coloured people, would be glad to give them places of responsibility, but that they cannot find men who will stick to their work.

You may say that it is impossible for us to grow and develop, to get positions of trust and responsibility that will pay good wages, simply because we are coloured. I will give you an example on this very point. A few days ago I was in New Orleans, visiting a large sugar refinery. The firm which operates this refinery employs from two hundred to three hundred men. I found the young man who has charge of all the bookkeeping of the firm, through whose hands all the business and cash of the firm pass--I found this man to be coloured, and that all the other persons filling responsible positions under him were white.

I remember some two or three years ago having met one of the partners of this firm in the White Mountains, and he told me at that time of this young man. He told me that a great many persons came to him and said: "You ought not to have this coloured man filling this position when there are so many white persons who want the place." He told me that he said to these persons: "This young man does my work better than any one else I have yet found, and so long as he does this, so long shall I employ him." This gentleman has since died, but the business is in the hands of his widow, who has so much confidence in the ability of this young coloured man to manage the affairs of a great business--Mr. Lewis is his name; perhaps some of you know him--that he is retained, practically at the head of this great establishment. This single instance shows that notwithstanding his colour a man can rise for what is in him; that he can advance when he shows that he can be depended upon.

Remember that whether you are hackmen, or business men, it pays whenever you cannot fill an engagement to explain beforehand why you cannot, and that unless you make a practice of doing this, it will be impossible for you to get ahead or to attain to places of trust and responsibility, no matter how much education you may have.

As I have so often said before, if we cannot send out from Tuskegee and similar schools young men and women who can be depended upon, our reputation as a race, for the years that are to come, is not going to be very bright. On the other hand, if we can succeed in sending out young men and women with a high sense of responsibility, who can at all times be relied upon to be prompt in business matters, we shall have gone a long way in redeeming the character of the race and in lifting it up. In this important matter all of you can help. Do not wait until you go out from Tuskegee, but begin to-morrow morning, every boy and girl, to be reliable and to keep at it until reliability becomes a part of you.

SOME LESSONS OF THE HOUR