Part 11 (1/2)

Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton challenged: ”How's that?”

The old woman continued: ”I got a little pig from dat little puppy dog an' I got my prosperity from dat pig!”

Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton and the whole company in amazement hung upon the old woman's words as she continued: ”It was dis way: Dat little puppy dog when she growed up had some little puppies herself. One day one o' my fren's come by an' as' me for one o' dem puppies. I tol' him 'No,' I would not gib him dat puppy, but dat he had a little pig an' I would 'change a puppy for a pig. I had heard you tell ober heah so much 'bout hogs an' pigs dat I thought dis was a good chance to get started. He give me de pig an' I give him de puppy. In de course o'

time dat little pig dun bring me in some mo' pigs. I sol' some an'

kep' some. I had to feed de pig, so I had begun savin'. I den begun to find out dat I could git on wid less den I had ben gettin' on wid, an'

so I kep' on savin' an' kep' on raisin' pigs 'til I was able to supply most o' my neighbors wid pigs, an' den I got me a cow, an den I begun to supply my neighbors wid milk, an' den I started me a little garden.

Den I sol' my neighbors greens an' onions, an' so I went on fum time to time 'til I dun paid for de lot an' de house in which I lib, an' I keeps my pigs about me an' keeps my garden goin', an' dat's why I says all I is I owes to dat little puppy dog an' to dis heah conference.”

At these conferences the most elementary subjects are discussed.

Booker Was.h.i.+ngton would tell and have told to these farmers matters which one would naturally a.s.sume any farmers, however ignorant, must already know. He never tried to deceive himself as to the woful ignorance of the Negro ma.s.ses, and still he was never discouraged, but always said ignorance was not a hopeless handicap because it could be overcome by education. While he frankly although sadly acknowledged the lamentable ignorance of the rank and file of his race, particularly those on the soil and dependent for education upon the short-term, ill-equipped, and poorly taught rural Negro school, he as stoutly denied and constantly disproved the a.s.sertion that these ignorant ma.s.ses were not capable of profiting by education. He earnestly strove and signally succeeded in attracting to these great annual agricultural conferences the most pathetically ignorant of the Negro farmers as well as the leading scientific agriculturists of the race. But he always insisted that the meetings be conducted for the benefit of the ignorant and not in the interests of the learned.

He would, for instance, tell the attendants at the conferences what to plant and when to plant it, and what live stock to keep and how to keep it. He would have printed and distributed among them a ”Farmer's Calendar” which gave the months in which the various standard vegetables should be planted and what crops should be used in rotation. He constantly insisted that the Experiment Station at Tuskegee Inst.i.tute, supported by the State of Alabama, should not be used for scientific experiments of interest only to experts, but should deal with the fundamental problems with which the Negro farmers of Alabama were daily confronted. The t.i.tles of some of the Experiment Station Bulletins selected at random suggest the homely and practical nature of the information disseminated. Half a dozen of them read as follows: ”Possibilities of the Sweet Potato in Macon County, Alabama,”

”How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing It for Human Consumption,” ”How to Raise Pigs with Little Money,” ”When, What, and How to Can and Preserve Fruits and Vegetables in the Home,” ”Some Possibilities of the Cowpea in Macon County, Alabama,” ”A New and Prolific Variety of Cotton.” And all of these bulletins, so many of which deal with the problems of the home, are written by an old bachelor of pure African descent, without a drop of white blood, who in himself refutes two popular fallacies: the one that bachelors cannot be skilled in domestic affairs, and the other, that pure-blooded Africans cannot achieve intellectual distinction. This man is George W. Carver, who is not only the most eminent agricultural scientist of his race in this country, but one of the most eminent of any race. His work is so well known in scientific circles in his field throughout the world that when leading European scientists visit this country, particularly the Southern States, they not infrequently go out of their way to look him up. They are usually very much surprised to find their eminent fellow-scientist a black man.

The last of these conferences over which Booker Was.h.i.+ngton presided was held at Tuskegee, January 20 and 21, 1915. A woman, the wife of a Negro farmer, was testifying when she said: ”Our menfolks is foun' out dat they can't eat cotton.” As the outburst of laughter which greeted this remark died down, Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton said in his incisive way: ”What do you mean?” The woman replied: ”I mean dat we womenfolks been tellin' our menfolks all de time dat they should raise mo to eat.”

She then displayed specimens of canned fruits and told how she had put up enough of them to supply her family until summer. She told of having sold thirty-six turkeys and of selling two and three dozen eggs each week, with plenty left over for her family. She said that she and her husband had raised and sold hogs, and still had for their own use more than enough pork to last them until the next hog-killing time.

”How often do you eat chicken?” asked Dr. Was.h.i.+ngton.

”We can eat chicken every day if we want it,” she replied.

When she had finished Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton explained that all this had been done on 178 acres of the poorest land in Macon County.

In his opening address at this conference Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton denounced ”petty thieving, pistol-toting, c.r.a.p-shooting, the patronizing of 'blind tigers,' and unnecessary lawsuits” as some of the weights and enc.u.mbrances which are keeping the Negro from running well the race which is set before him.

These are some of the basic questions which Booker Was.h.i.+ngton placed before the conference for discussion:

”How and why am I so hard hit by the present hard times?”

”What am I doing to meet present conditions?”

”How may I, after all, get some real benefit from present difficulties?”

The most spectacular feature of the exercises was the parade. It extended for almost a mile and included a score or more of floats, hundreds of men and women in appropriate costumes, and dozens of horses, mules, and other live stock.

There were a large number of colored preachers in attendance who showed that they had adopted the Was.h.i.+ngton slogan of trying to make a heaven on earth and whose testimony showed that they were now giving as much time to soil salvation as to soul salvation. One of them told of a flouris.h.i.+ng Pig Club which he had organized among his paris.h.i.+oners after reading Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's open letter, ”Pigs and Education; Pigs and Debts,” the circulating of which will be later described.

[Ill.u.s.tration: This old woman was a regular attendant at the Tuskegee Negro Conference and idolizingly watched Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton during the whole four hours that he would preside over one of the Conference sessions.]

After the awarding of prizes for the best floats the declarations of the conference were read by Major R.R. Moton of Hampton Inst.i.tute, who then little realized that before the year was out he was to be chosen to succeed the leader of his race as the Princ.i.p.al of Tuskegee Inst.i.tute.

The following were the especially significant paragraphs of these declarations:

”It is found that for every dollar's worth of cotton we grow, we raise only forty-nine cents' worth of all other crops. An investigation has shown that there are 20,000 farms of Negroes on which there are no cattle of any kind; 270,000 on which there are no hogs; 200,000 on which no poultry is raised; 140,000 on which no corn is grown; on 750,000 farms of Negroes no oats are grown; on 550,000 farms no sweet potatoes are grown, and on 320,000 farms of Negroes there are no gardens of any sort. These hundreds of thousands of farms without cattle, grain, or gardens are for the most part operated by tenants.

In their behalf, the Tuskegee Negro Conference respectfully requests of the planters, bankers, and other representatives of the financial interests of the South that more opportunities be given Negro tenants on plantations to grow crops other than cotton.”

After the regular conference the usual Conference of Workers was held.