ply help to
balance your account. (Applause.) The world is moving on, and it is a
glorious thing to-day to find that, instead of stepping
backward--contrary to the predictions of some--you are making such
splendid strides forward under the fine leadership of Dr. Booker T.
Washington--(applause)--as evidenced in this Business League
Convention.

"In closing I want not only to pay just tribute to what you have
achieved in music, in education, and religious life, but I think it
fitting, on this occasion, and I have planned to show you a fine
painting from the brush of the greatest artist of your race--the son
of Bishop Tanner. I have seen his handiwork in some of the art
galleries of the first rank in Europe. For the most part his paintings
are religious in conception, and the peculiar beauty of them is that
they deal with the heart, even as they are fine expressions of art.
(Applause.) Before you leave I have planned to show you several other
pictures of real merit that members of your race have produced.
(Applause.)

"And oh--when I consider all these things, and when I gazed upon this
vast and beautiful audience a few minutes ago, as you were singing so
fervently our national anthem, 'America,' as I looked over the sea of
earnest, intelligent faces, I wondered how on earth we could sing that
song for a hundred years or more--I wondered how it was possible to
keep a race like yours enslaved while, for years and years, the people
of this nation sang that last line of that song, 'Let freedom
ring!!!'" (Prolonged applause, tumultuous cheering, and the waving of
countless handkerchiefs as Mr. Wanamaker resumed his seat.)

Aside from having the successful colored men and women tell one
another and their less-successful fellows how they had achieved their
success at these sessions of the league, Booker Washington also
arranged to have one or more prominent white men speak. His reason for
this, aside from the obvious one of helping to foster friendly feeling
between the races, was, it may safely be hazarded, to impress upon his
people that white people succeed by the possession and the application
of the same qualities which bring success to colored people. At the
Chicago meeting of the league in 1912 Julius Rosenwald spoke--Julius
Rosenwald, the Jewish philanthropist who has done and is doing so much
to help the Negro. It was he who offered $25,000 to any city in the
United States which would raise $75,000 for a Young Men'