o do skilful work,
as men of all the races that have risen have worked,--responsible work,
which IS education and character; and most of all when Negroes so teach
Negroes to do this that they will teach others with a missionary zeal
that puts all ordinary philanthropic efforts to shame,--this is to
change the whole economic basis of life and the whole character of a
people.

The plan itself is not a new one. It was worked out at Hampton
Institute, but it was done at Hampton by white men. The plan had, in
fact, been many times theoretically laid down by thoughtful students of
Southern life. Handicrafts were taught in the days of slavery on most
well-managed plantations. But Tuskegee is, nevertheless, a brand-new
chapter in the history of the Negro, and in the history of the knottiest
problem we have ever faced. It not only makes "a carpenter of a man; it
makes a man of a carpenter." In one sense, therefore, it is of greater
value than any other institution for the training of men and women that
we have, from Cambridge to Palo Alto. It is almost the only one of which
it may be said that it points the way to a new epoch in a large area of
our national life.

To work out the plan on paper, or at a distance--that is one thing. For
a white man to work it out--that too, is an easy thing. For a coloured
man to work it out in the South, where, in its constructive period,
he was necessarily misunderstood by his own people as well as by the
whites, and where he had to adjust it at every step to the strained race
relations--that is so very different and more difficult a thing that the
man who did it put the country under lasting obligations to him.

It was not and is not a mere educational task. Anybody could teach boys
trades and give them an elementary education. Such tasks have been done
since the beginning of civilization. But this task had to be done with
the rawest of raw material, done within the civilization of the dominant
race, and so done as not to run across race lines and social lines that
are the strongest forces in the community. It had to be done for the
benefit of the whole community. It had to be done, moreover, without
local help, in the face of the direst poverty, done by begging, and done
in spite of the ignorance of one race and the prejudice of the other.

No man living had a harder task, and a task that called for more wisdom
to do it right. The true measure of Mr. Washington's success is, then,
not his