the
hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

During the last twenty years of his life Mr. Washington came more and
more to be regarded as the representative and spokesman of his race,
and was invited to represent and speak for them at such national and
international gatherings as the annual conventions of the National
Negro Business League, of which he was the president and founder; the
great meeting in honor of the brotherhood of man, held in Boston in
1897; the Presbyterian rally for Home Missions, at which President
Grover Cleveland presided; the International Sunday-school Convention
held in Chicago in 1914; the meeting of the National Educational
Association in St. Louis in 1904; the Thanksgiving Peace Jubilee in
the Chicago Auditorium at the close of the war with Spain in 1898,
with President McKinley and his Cabinet in attendance; the
Commencement exercises at Harvard in 1896, when President Eliot
conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts; the International
Conference on the Negro, held at Tuskegee in 1912, with
representatives present from Europe, Africa, the West Indies, and
South America, as well as all sections of the United States. Dartmouth
College conferred his Doctorate upon him in 1901.

At Harvard in 1896 President Eliot, with these words, conferred upon
Mr. Washington the first honorary degree ever conferred by a great
university upon an American Negro: "Teacher, wise helper of his race;
good servant of God and country." In his speech delivered at the
Alumni Dinner on the same day Mr. Washington brought this message to
Harvard: "If through me, an humble representative, seven millions of
my people in the South might be permitted to send a message to
Harvard--Harvard that offered up on death's altar young Shaw, and
Russell, and Lowell, and scores of others, that we might have a free
and united country--that message would be: 'Tell them that the
sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by the way of the shop, the
field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of
industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up,
working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust
discrimination, and prejudice, but through them all we are coming up,
and with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power
on earth that can permanently stay our progress!'"

The next year at the great meeting in honor of the brotherhood of man
held in Music Hall, Bost