win Farms," the
farming community for the graduates of the agricultural department of
Tuskegee, which also has been previously described.

These, then, are some of the tangible means which Booker Washington
developed during a period of thirty years for keeping in touch with
his people and for keeping his people in touch with one another and
with all the things which go to make up wholesome and useful living.

CHAPTER SEVEN

BOOKER WASHINGTON AND THE NEGRO FARMER

Booker T. Washington was a great believer in the experience meeting,
and the Tuskegee Negro Conference, which he started in 1891, is
nothing more nor less than an agricultural experience meeting. He
placed his faith in the persuasive power of example--in the contagion
of successful achievement. He once said: "One farm bought, one house
built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the
largest taxpayer or has the largest bank account, one school or church
maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden
profitably cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon
well preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived--these
will tell more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can
be summoned to plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the
soil, up through swamps, up through forests, up through the streams,
the rocks, up through commerce, education, and religion."

Nothing delighted Mr. Washington more than the successful Negro
farmers who had started in life without money, friends, influence, or
education--with literally nothing but their hands. At one of the
Tuskegee conferences not many years ago his keen eyes spotted such a
man in the audience and he called to him in his straight from the
shoulder manner: "Get up and tell us what you have been doing as a
farmer."

A tall, finely built, elderly man, looking almost like a Nubian giant,
arose in his place, his face wreathed in smiles, and showing his white
teeth as he spoke: "Doctor, I done 'tended one o' yore conferences
here 'bout ten year ago. I heard you say dat a man ain't wurth nuthin'
as a man or a citizen 'less he owns his home, 'least one mule, and has
a bank account, an' so I made up my mind dat I warn't wuth nuthin',
an' so I went home an' talked de whole matter over wid de ol' woman.
We decided dat we would make a start, an' now I's proud to tell you
dat I's not only got a bank account, but I's got two bank accounts,
a