Part 13

A little while ago I was in the city of New Bedford, the city which was formerly the home of Mrs. Hetty Green, who is said to be the richest woman in the world. I want to tell you a story about her that was told me by a gentleman who lived in New Bedford, and who knew Mrs. Green when she lived there. For many years they had in New Bedford no savings bank that would take a very small deposit. Finally a five-cent savings bank was opened there. Just after this had been done, Mrs. Green told this gentleman that she was glad they had opened a five-cent bank, so that now she would be able to put that amount in and have it draw interest. You who are here do not think about five cents as a sum to be saved. You think of it only as money to buy peanuts and candy, or cheap ribbons, or cheap jewellery.

On last Sunday evening I was in the home of a gentleman in New York who has in his family a girl who is now only eighteen years old, and who, when she came to this country a few years ago and went to work in this family as a maid, could not speak a word of English. This girl now has fifteen hundred dollars in the bank. Think of it! A young woman coming to this country poor, and unable to speak a word of English, has saved in a short time fifteen hundred dollars! I wonder how many of you, five years from now, will have fifteen hundred dollars in the bank or in some other safe kind of property.

The civilization of New England and of other such prosperous regions rests more, perhaps, upon the savings banks of the country than upon any other one thing. You ask where the wealth of New England is. It is not in the hands of millionaires. It is in the hands of individuals, who have a few hundreds or a few thousands of dollars put safely away in some bank or banks. You will find that the savings banks of New England, and of all countries that are prosperous, are filled with the dollars of poor people, dollars aggregating millions in all.

We cannot get upon our feet, as a people, until we learn the saving habit; until we learn to save every nickel, every dime and every dollar that we can spare.

GROWTH

I want to impress upon you this evening the importance of continued growth. I very much wish that each one of you might imagine, this evening, your father and your mother to be looking at you and examining into every act of your life while here. I wish that you might feel, as it were, their very heart throbs. I wish that you might realize, perhaps as you have never realized before, how anxious they are that you should succeed here. I wish that you could know how many prayers they send up, day after day, that your school life may be more and more successful as one day succeeds another, that you may grow to be successful, studious, strong men and women, who will reflect credit upon yourselves and honour upon your families.

Each one of you must have had some thoughts about those who are anxious about you, some thought for those persons whose hearts are very often bowed down in anxiety because they fear your school life here will not be successful. Not only for your own sake, but for the sake of those who are near and dear to you, those who have done more for you than anybody else, I want you to make up your minds that this year is going to be the best one of your lives.

I want you to resolve that you are going to put into this year the hardest and the most earnest work that you have ever done in your life, to resolve that this is going to be the greatest, the most courageous and the most sinless year of life that you have ever lived; I want you to make up your minds to do this; to decide that you are going to continually grow--and grow more to-morrow than to-day. There are but two directions in this life in which you can grow; backward or forward. You can grow stronger, or you can grow weaker; you can grow greater, or smaller; but it will be impossible for you to stand still.

Now in regard to your studies; your lessons. I want you to make up your minds that you are going to be more and more thorough in your lessons each day you remain here; that you are going to so discipline yourselves that each morning will find you in the recitation rooms with your lessons more thoroughly and more conscientiously prepared for the day's work than they were for the work of the day before. I want you to make up your minds that you are going to be more nearly perfect, are going to put more manly and womanly strength into the preparation of your lessons each day, that you may be more useful. Then you will find yourselves wanting to grow, I hope; will find yourselves learning the dignity of labour, and that no class of people can get up and stay up, can be strong and useful and respected, until they learn that there is no disgrace in any form of labour.

I hope you are learning that labour with the hand, in any form whatever, is not disgraceful. I hope that you are learning, day by day, that all kinds of labour--whether with the mind or with the hand--are honourable, and that people only disgrace themselves by being and keeping in idleness.

I want you to go forward by thoroughness in your work; by being more conscientious in your work; by loving your work more to-day than you did yesterday. If you are not growing in these respects--that is, if you are not going forward--you are going backward, and are not answering the purpose for which this institution was established, are not answering the purpose for which your parents sent you here.

I want to emphasize the fact that we want you to grow in the direction of character--to grow stronger each day in the matter of character. When I say character, here, I mean to use the word in its broadest sense. The institution wants to find you growing more polite to your fellows every day, as you come in contact with them, whether it be in the class-room, in the shop, in the field, in the dining-room, or in your bedroom. No matter where you are, I want you to find yourselves growing more polite and gentlemanly. Notice I do not say merely that I want your teachers--those who are over you--to find you growing more polite; I want you to find yourselves so. If you are not doing this, you are going backward, you are going in the wrong direction.

I want to find you each day more thoughtful of others, and less selfish. I want you to be more conscientious in your thoughts and in your work, and with regard to your duty toward others. This is growing in the right direction; not doing this is growing in the wrong direction. Nor do I want you to feel that you are to strive for this spirit of growth for this one year alone, or for the time that you are here. I hope that you will continue to grow in the forward direction.

Then, and this is more important still, we want you to take this habit of growth--this disposition to grow in the right direction--out with you from the school, and scatter it as an influence for good wherever you go. We want you to take it into your schools; for many of you are going to become teachers. We want you not only to begin it when you begin teaching in an humble way, but we want to see you grow and improve in it every year. We want to see you make your school-houses more attractive; to see you make everything in connection with your schools and your teaching better and stronger; to see you make a school more useful every year that you remain as its teacher.

Then, too, when you go out and get employment--no matter of what kind it may be--we want to see you grow better in that employment; we want to see you advance in ability, commanding always a larger salary, advancing in value to those who employ you. We want to see you grow in reputation for being honest, conscientious, intelligent, hard-working; no matter in what capacity you are employed.

Some of you are going out to establish homes and settle down in home life. We want to see you grow in that direction. Nothing is so disheartening--there is nothing so discouraging--as to see a man or woman settle down in a home, and then not to see that home grow more beautiful, inside and outside;--to see it, instead of this, each year grow dingy and dirty, because it each year receives less and less attention.

We want Tuskegee students to go out from here and establish homes that will be models in every respect for those about them--homes that will show that the lives of the persons who have established them are models for the lives of those who live about them. If you do this, your lives are going to be a constant going forward; for, I repeat, your lives are going to be one thing or the other, continually going backward or continually going forward.

LAST WORDS

We have come to the close of another school year. Some of you will go out from among us now, not to return. Others will go home for the summer vacation and return at the end of that for the next school year.

As you go out, there is one thing that I want to especially caution you about. Don't go home and feel that you are better than the rest of the folks in your neighbourhood because you have been away at school. Don't go home and feel ashamed of your parents because you think they don't know as much as you think you know. Don't think that you are too good to help them. It would be better for you not to have any education, than for you to go home and feel ashamed of your parents, or not want to help them.

Let me tell you of one of the most encouraging and most helpful things that I have known of in connection with the life of our students after they leave this institution. I was in a Southern city, and going about among the homes of the people of our race. Among these homes I noticed one which was so neat looking that it was conspicuous. I asked the person who was with me, "How is it that this house is in such good condition, looks so much better than some of the others in the neighbourhood?" "It is like this," said the man who was accompanying me. "The people who live there have a son whom they sent to your school, at considerable self-denial to themselves. This young man came home from school a few weeks ago. For some time after he came back he did not have work to keep him busy, and so he employed his spare time in fixing up his parents' home. He fixed the roof and chimney, put new palings in the fence where they were needed and did such things as that. Then he got a stock of paint and painted the house thoroughly, two coats, outside and in. That is why the place looks so neat."

Such testimony as that is very helpful. It shows that the students carry out from here the spirit which we try to inculcate.

Another thing. Go home and lead a simple life. Don't give the impression that you think education means superficiality and dress.

Be polite; to white and coloured people, both. It is possible for you, by paying heed to this, to do a great deal toward securing and preserving pleasant relations between the people of both races in the South. Try to have your manners in this respect so good that people will notice them and ask where you have been, at what school you learned to be so polite. You will find that politeness counts for a great deal, not only in helping you to get work, but in helping you to keep it.

Don't be ashamed to go to church and Sunday school, to the Young Men's Christian Association and the Christian Endeavour Society. Show that education has only deepened your interest in such things. Have no going backward. Be clean, in your person, your language and in your thoughts.

It seems appropriate during these closing days of the school year to re-emphasize, if possible, that for which the institution stands. We want to have every student get what we have--in our egotism, perhaps--called the "Tuskegee spirit"; that is, to get hold of the spirit of the institution, get hold of that for which it stands; and then spread that spirit just as widely as possible, and plant it just as deeply as it is possible to plant it.

In addition to the members of our graduating class, we have each year a large number of students who go out to spend their vacations. Some of these will return at the close of vacation, but some, for various reasons, will not return. Whether you go out as graduates, whether you go out to return or not to return, it is important that all of you get hold of the "Tuskegee spirit"; the spirit of giving yourselves, in order that you may help lift up others. In no matter how small a degree it may be, see that you are assisting some one else.

Now, after a number of years' experience, the institution feels that it has reached a point where it can, with some degree of authority, give advice as to the best way in which you can spend your life.

In the first place, as to your location--the place where you shall work. I very much hope that the larger part of the students who go out from Tuskegee will choose the country districts for their place of work, rather than the large cities. For one thing, you will find that the larger places are much better supplied with workers and helpers than is true of the towns, and especially of the country districts. The cities are better supplied with churches and schools, with everything that tends to uplift people; and they are at the same time much more prolific of those agencies which tend to pull people down. Notwithstanding this latter fact, the greater portion, by far, of those who need help live in the country districts. I think a census report will show that eighty per cent. of our people are to be found in the country and small towns. I advise you, then, to go into the country and the towns, rather than into the cities.

Then, as to the manner of work. You must make up your minds in the first place, as I have said before, that you are going to make some sacrifice, that you are going to live your lives in an unselfish way, in order that you may help some one. Go out with a spirit that will not allow you to become discouraged when you have opposition, when you meet with obstacles to be overcome. You must go with a determination that you are going to succeed in whatever undertaking you have entered upon.

I do not attempt to give you specific advice as to the kind of work you shall do, but I should say that in a general way I believe that you can accomplish more good--and perhaps this will hold good for the next fifty years here in the South--by taking a country school for your nucleus. Take a three months school, and gradually impress upon the people of the community the need of having a longer school. Get them to add one month to three months, and then another month, until they get to the point where they will have six, seven or eight months of school in a year. Then get them to where they will see the importance of building a decent school-house--getting out of the one-room log cabin school-house--and of having suitable apparatus for instruction.

There are two things you must fix your mind on: the building of a suitable school-house and the arousing in the people, at the same time, a spirit that will make them support your efforts. In order to do this you must go into the country with the idea of staying there for some time at least. Plant yourself in the community, and by economical living, year by year, manage to buy land for yourself, on which to build a nice and comfortable home. You will find that the longer you stay there the more the people will give you their confidence, and the more they will respect and love you.

I find that many of our graduates have done excellent work by having a farm in connection with their schools. This is true, also, of many who did not remain here to graduate. I have in mind such a man. He has been teaching school in one of the counties of this State for seven or eight years. He has lengthened the school year to eight months. He has a nice cottage with four rooms in it, and a beautiful farm of forty acres. This man is carrying out the "Tuskegee idea."

There will be some of you who can spend your life to better advantage by devoting it to farming than to any other industry. I speak of farming particularly, because I believe that to be the great foundation upon which we must build for the future. I believe that we are coming to the point where we are going to be recognized for our worth in the proportion that we secure an agricultural foundation. Throughout the South we can give ourselves in a free, open way to getting hold of property and building homes, in a way that we cannot do in any other industry. In farming, as in teaching, no matter where you go, remember to go with the "Tuskegee spirit."

I want the boys to go out and do as Mr. N. E. Henry is doing; I want the girls to go out and do as Miss Anna Davis and Miss Lizzie Wright are doing. I want you to go out into the country districts and build up schools. I would not advise you to be too ambitious at first. Be willing to begin with a small salary and work your way up gradually. I have in mind one young man who began teaching school for five dollars a month; another who began teaching in the open air under a tree.

Then, too, I want you to go out in a spirit of liberality toward the white people with whom you come in contact. That is an important matter. When I say this I do not mean that you shall go lowering your manhood or your dignity. Go in a manly way, in a straightforward and honourable way, and then you will show the white people that you are not of a belittling race, that the prejudice which so many people possess cannot come among you and those with whom you work. If you can extend a helping hand to a white person, feel just as happy in doing so as in helping a black person.

In the sight of God there is no colour line, and we want to cultivate a spirit that will make us forget that there is such a line anywhere. We want to be larger and broader than the people who would oppress us on account of our colour.

No one ever loses anything by being a gentleman or a lady. No person ever lost anything by being broad. Remember that if we are kind and useful, if we are moral, if we go out and practise these traits, no matter what people say about us, they cannot pull us down. But, on the other hand, if we are without the spirit of usefulness, if we are without morality, without liberality, without economy and property, without all those qualities which go to make a people and a nation great and strong, no matter what we may say about ourselves and what other people may say about us, we are losing ground. Nobody can give us those qualities merely by praising us and talking well about us; and when we possess them, nobody can take them from us by speaking ill of us.

End of Project Gutenberg's Character Building, by Booker T. Washington