a series
of letters calling attention to ragged tablecloths, unclean napkins,
and uncleanliness in other forms in kitchens, bakery, and dining-rooms
without the desired result, he personally took charge of the
situation, organized a squad of workers, put things in proper
condition, and then insisted that they be kept in such condition.

His passion to utilize every fraction of time to its maximum advantage
led him even to smuggle a stenographer into the formal annual
exercises of the Bible Training School so that he might during the
exercises clandestinely dictate notes for the head of the Bible school
as to those features in which the program was weak, failed "to get
across," did not hold the interest of the people, seemed to be over
their heads, or whatever might be his diagnosis of the difficulty. He
was not interested in the program for and of itself, but was keenly
interested in its effect upon the people. If it interested and helped
them, it was a good program; if it did not, it was a poor program and
no amount of learning or technical perfection could redeem it. He
sometimes reduced his more scholarly teachers to the verge of despair
by his insistence that there should be nothing on the program at any
exercise to which the public was invited which the every-day man and
woman could not understand and appreciate.

In opening the chapter we mentioned Booker Washington's faculty for
giving attention to apparently trivial details without losing sight of
his large policies and purposes. This was part of his habit of taking
nothing for granted. He never assumed that people would do or had done
what they should do or should have done any more than he assumed they
would not or had not done what they should. He neither trusted nor
distrusted them. He kept himself constantly informed. Every person
employed by the institution from the most important department heads
down to the men who removed ashes and garbage were under the
stimulating apprehension that his eye might be upon them at any
moment. He harassed his subordinates by continually asking them if
this or that matter had been attended to. He would sometimes ask three
different people to do the same thing. This resulted in wasted effort
on somebody's part, but it always accomplished the result, which was
all that interested him. He took nothing for granted himself and he
insisted that his subordinates take nothing for granted. He was a task
master and a "driver" but