in connection with various educational and business projects in the South, white men and colored men meet on common grounds, and the way has been opened to a wider mutual understanding. And it is common enough now, where it was unheard of a few years ago, for both white men and negroes to speak from the same platform in the South. I have attended a number of such meetings. Thus slowly, awkwardly at first for two centuries of prejudice are not easily overcome the white man and negro are coming to know each other, not as master and servant, but as co-workers. These things cannot be forced.

One reason why the white man and the negro have not got together more rapidly in the South than they have, is because they have tried always to meet at the sorest points. When sensible people, who must live together whether or no, find that there are points at which they cannot agree, it is the part of wisdom to avoid those points, and to meet upon other and common interests. Upon no other terms, indeed, can a democracy exist, for in no imaginable future state will individuals cease to disagree with one another upon something less than half of all the problems of life.

"Here we all live together in a great country," say the apostles of this view, "let us all get together and develop it. Let the negro do his best to educate himself, to own his own land, and to buy and sell with the white people in the fairest possible way.”

Now, buying and selling, land ownership, and common material pursuits may not be the highest points of contact between man and man, but they are real points, and they help to give men an idea of the worth of their fellows, white or black. How many times, in the South, I have heard a white man speak in high admiration of some negro farmer who had been successful, or of some negro blacksmith who was a worthy citizen, or some negro doctor who was a leader of his race.

It is curious once a man (any man, white or black) learns to do his job well how he finds himself in a democratic relationship with other men. I remember asking a prominent white citizen of a town in central Georgia if he knew anything about Tuskegee. He said:

Yes; I had rather a curious experience last fall. I was building a hotel and could n't get anyone to do the plastering as I wanted it done. One day I saw two negro plasterers at work in a new house that a friend of mine was building. I watched them for an hour. They seemed to know their trade. I invited them to come over and see me. They came, took the contract for my work, hired a white man to carry mortar at a dollar a day, and when they got through it was the best job of plastering in town. I found that they had learned their trade at Tuskegee. They averaged four dollars a day each in wages. We tried to get them to locate in our town, but they went back to school.

Out of such crude points of contact will grow an ever finer and finer spirit of association and of common and friendly knowledge. And that will lead inevitably to an extension upon the soundest possible basis of negro franchise. I know cases where white men have urged intelligent negroes to cast their ballots, and have stood sponsor for them out of genuine respect. To-day, negroes who vote in the South are, as a class, men of substance and intelligence, fully equal to the tasks of citizenship.

Thus I have confidence not only in the sense of the white man in the South but in the innate capability of the negro- and that once these two really come to know each other, not at sore points of contact, nor as mere master and servant, but as workers for a common country, the question of suffrage will gradually solve itself in the interest of true democracy.

Another influence also will tend to change the status of the negro as a voter. That is the pending break-up of the political solidarity of the South. All the signs point to a political realignment upon new issues in this country, both South and North. Old party names may even pass away. And that break-up, with the attendant struggle for votes, is certain to bring into politics thousands of negroes and white men now disfranchised. The result of a real division on live issues has been shown in many local contests in the South, as in the fight against the saloons, when every qualified negro voter, and every negro who could qualify, was eagerly pushed forward by one side or the other. With such a division on new issues the negro will tend to exercise more and more political power, dividing not on the color line, but on the principles at stake. Still another influence which is helping to solve the problem is the wider diffusion of negroes

throughout the country. The proportion of negroes to the whites in most of the Southern States is decreasing, thereby relieving the fear of negro domination, whereas negroes are increasing largely in Northern communities, where they take their place in politics not as an indigestible mass, but divide along party lines even more readily than some of the foreign-American groups in our population. A study of the negro vote in November, 1912, would show that many negroes broke their historic allegiance with the Republican party and voted for Roosevelt, while some even cast their votes for Wilson; and in local elections the division is still more marked.

Thus in spite of the difficulties which now confront the negro, I cannot help looking upon the situation with a spirit of optimism. I think sometimes we are tempted to set a higher value upon the ritual of a belief than upon the spirit which underlies it. The ballot is not democracy; it is merely the symbol or ritual of democracy, and it may be full of passionate social significance, or it may be a mere empty and dangerous formalism. What we should look to, then, primarily, is not the shadow, but the substance of democracy in this country. Nor must we look for results too swiftly; our progress toward democracy is slow of growth and needs to be cultivated with patience and watered with faith.

CHAPTER XIX

THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO

Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition address, 765. — Industrial education and the public schools, 769. — Argument for the higher education of the negro, 774. - A brief for the higher education of the negro, 777.- The problem from an ethnologist's point of view, 784.

73. ATLANTA EXPOSITION ADDRESS1

One third of the population of the South is of the negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

1 By Booker T. Washington. From Up from Slavery, pp. 218-225. Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, 1901. This Address, delivered September 18, 1895, at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition at Atlanta, Georgia, was instantly hailed all over the country as the expression of a new and workable standard of relations between blacks and whites in the South.

་་

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, Cast down your bucket where you are.' are." And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are" -cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, in mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity