visited
Boston, as an humble and obscure young Negro school teacher pleading
for his struggling school, he met Diggs, and Diggs succeeded in
interesting his employers in the sincere and earnest young Negro
teacher. When years afterward the Institute had grown to the dignity
of needing stewards, Mr. Washington employed his old friend as steward
of the Teachers' Home. In all the years thereafter hardly a day passed
when Mr. Washington was at the school without his having some kind of
powwow with Old Man Diggs regarding some matter affecting the
interests of the school.

To the despair of his family Booker Washington seemed to go out of his
way to find forlorn old people whom he could befriend. He sent
provisions weekly to an humble old black couple from whom he had
bought a tract of land for the school. He did the same for old Aunt
Harriet and her deaf, dumb, and lame son, except that to them he
provided fuel as well. On any particularly cold day he would send one
or more students over to Aunt Harriet's to find out if she and her
poor helpless son were comfortable. Also every Sunday afternoon, to
the joy of this pathetic couple, a particularly appetizing Sunday
dinner unfailingly made its appearance. And these were only a few of
the pensioners and semi-pensioners whom Booker Washington accumulated
as he went about his kindly way.

One means of keeping in touch with the masses of his people which he
never neglected was through attending the annual National Negro
Baptist Conventions. At these great gatherings he came in touch with
the religious leaders of two million Negroes. Notwithstanding the fact
that he practically collapsed at the annual meeting of the National
Negro Business League held in Boston in August, 1915, and had to be
nursed for some weeks following before he was even strong enough to
return to Tuskegee, he insisted in spite of the admonitions of
physicians and the pleadings of friends, family, and colleagues, in
keeping his engagement to speak before this great convention in
Chicago in September. To all protests he replied, "It would do me more
harm to stay away than to go." With these words, and rallying the
rapidly waning dregs of his once great strength he went and made an
address which ranks with the most powerful he ever delivered to his
people. A threatened split in the Baptist denomination in part
accounted for his insistence upon attending this convention. In this
address, delivered only two mont