which the group is following his each and every word.]

Next he touched on the high rents and said: "You mothers know that
sooner or later you have to take in roomers to help pay that rent, and
after a while you take in Tom, Dick, or Harry, or anybody who's got
the money regardless of who or what they are, and you mothers know the
danger that spells for your daughters." (At this point he was
interrupted by a chorus of "amens" from women all over the great
hall.) He continued: "Now, you take the 'old man' aside an' tell him
straight, you're not going to have any more roomers hanging round your
house--that he's got to hustle for a better job or go into some little
business for himself, or move out into some little cottage in the
country, or do something to get rid of those Tom, Dick, and Harry
roomers."

In short, in this speech Mr. Washington showed that he knew just as
intimately the lives of his people in the flats of Greater New York as
on the farms of southwestern Georgia.

In spite of his grasp of details Mr. Washington never became so
immersed in them as to lose sight of his ultimate goal, and conversely
he never became so blinded by the vision of his ultimate goal as to
overlook details. The solution of the so-called Negro problem in
America, he felt, is to be found along these lines: As his people have
more and more opportunity for training and become better and better
trained they become more and more self-sufficient. They are developing
their own carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, farmers, merchants, and
bankers as well as lawyers, teachers, preachers, and physicians. These
trained people naturally, for the most part, serve their own race, and
to them the members of the race naturally turn for the service that
each is equipped to render. As they acquire wealth, education, and
cultivation, the persons possessing these advantages naturally
intermingle socially and build up a society from which the rough,
ignorant, and uncouth of their own race are as inevitably excluded as
are such persons from all polite social intercourse of whatever
people. These Negroes of education and cultivation no more desire to
force themselves into the society of the other race than do any
persons of real education and cultivation desire to go where they are
not wanted. As the race increases in wealth and culture it becomes
more and more easy and natural for its successful members to satisfy
their social desires and ambitions in their