Part 2

But the chance for material success in connection with industrial life is relatively of less importance than is the chance for the individual to get development through the mastering of difficulties in the management of industrial operations. The mere mastering of these difficulties has made many of the Captains of Industry of this country. Poverty discourages many a youth who starts out in the busy industrial world, but the fact that others have conquered poverty is an earnest that others, for centuries to come, will get courage and strength out of adverse struggle. The colored man starts out, it is true, with an additional handicap, but here is the chance for Negro youth to learn to turn disadvantages to advantages. A colored man born in poverty and an ex-slave owns to-day one of the largest tailoring establishments in one of the most prominent streets in the city of Boston. This man had learned the sweet uses of adversity and knew how to lay hold of disadvantages. His establishment is patronized by people who buy from him not in spite of the fact that he is a Negro, but because he is a Negro. The world needs men, be they white or black, who can rise on successive failures to useful citizenship. No person can enter industrial life without for a time feeling some days of almost complete failure, but mistakes and weariness beget confidence and experience.

All industrial operations and material progress should be used not as ends but as means of making life more comfortable, more useful and more beautiful. The intelligent farmer as he plants and works and harvests the cotton must remember that the production of cotton is not the end of his effort. Every bale of cotton can be turned into books, into opportunities for travel and study. The man who grows corn must remember that the growing of corn is not the end of life, but that the corn can be turned into refinements and beauties of a civilized life and a Christian home.

No one can doubt that the people who have built the railroads and constructed the great steamships that bind country to country have added to the wealth and happiness of the world. Finally, it must be remembered that the mastering of difficulties should bring poise, purpose and vision. I want every Tuskegee student as he finds his place in the surging industrial life about him to give heed to the things which are “honest and just and pure and of good report,” for these things make for character, which is the only thing worth fighting for, either in this life or the next.

v

Making Religion A Vital Part of Living

Educated men and women, especially those who are in college or other institutions of learning, very often get the idea that religion is fit only for the common people and beneath the interest and sympathy of the educated man. In too many cases they are disposed to think that religion is for the weak, and that to express doubts concerning religion and the future life is an indication of a vigorous, independent mind. No young man or woman can make a greater error than this.

Some years ago, when I was in New York City, I went down to Wall Street to consult a friend as to methods of arranging for a large meeting. I wanted in this meeting to get interest centred in the work we are trying to do at Tuskegee. My friend said: “If you can secure the coöperation of four men in New York City, the success of your meeting will be assured.” I went to the four men whose names had been given me and secured their interest and coöperation. Some weeks later there was a large meeting held in New York in the interest of the Young Men’s Christian Association movement. In looking over the list of persons who were sponsors for this meeting I found the names of the four men whom my Wall Street friend had mentioned. He gave me these names, however, with no thought that they were leaders in the religious activity of New York City. He named them chiefly because he knew their standing in the commercial and business life of the city was secure, and that anything they said would attract the attention of the public and would secure the confidence of the people whose interest and aid we were seeking. And so it appears that the four men who at that time represented the commercial and business interest of New York were men who were closely identified with the religious life of the city, and were active in Sunday-school and church work, and connected with many other agencies which had to do with the uplifting of the masses. My observation has taught me that the people who stand for the most in the educational and commercial world and in the uplifting of the people are in some real way connected with the religious life of the people among whom they reside.

This being true we ought to make the most of our religious life and to avail ourselves of certain outward helps, helps which are not ends but aids to higher spiritual living. First the habit of regular attendance at some religious service should be cultivated. This is one of the outward helps toward inward grace. Nothing is ever lost by this habit of systematic devotion. But one says, “What good is accomplished by attending church?” Another says, “I stay away from religious service and I am just as good as those who go.” To put the question another way, Was any one ever injured by regular attendance upon religious services? The man who allows himself to grow careless about sacred things yields to a temptation which is sure to drag him down. As you value your spiritual life, see to it that you do not lose the spirit of reverence for the Most High as revealed in your own life and experience, reverence for the Most High as revealed in the men and women about you, in the opening flower, the setting sun, and the song of the bird. Do not mistake denominationalism for reverence and religion. Religion is life, denominationalism is an aid to life.

Systematic reading and prayerful study of the Bible is the second outward help which I would commend to those whom I wish to see make the most of their spiritual life. Many people regard the Bible as a wonderful piece of literature only. The reading of the Bible as literature only brings its reward in that it throws new light on secular history and gives acquaintance with men and women and ideals which have been the inspiration of the noblest things that have ever been spoken or written. Nowhere in all literature can be found a finer bit of oratory than St. Paul’s defence before King Agrippa. But praiseworthy as this kind of study is, I do not believe it is sufficient. The Bible should be read as a daily guide to right living and as a daily incentive to positive Christian service.

I think that no man who lives a merely negative religious life can ever know real spiritual joy. There are many people who pride themselves on the things they do not do. The negative Christian always suggests a lamp-post to me. The negative Christian says he is going to heaven because he does not lie. Neither does the lamp-post. The negative Christian does not steal. Neither does the lamp-post steal. He does not cheat, he does nothing of which he is ashamed: he is therefore blameless. The lamp-post has never done any one of these things. I do not want the Tuskegee students to be lamp-posts in their religious life, but I want them to turn their beliefs into energy that shall work into every detail of their lives.

Not less repulsive to me than the negative Christian is the one who is always using his religion as a means of escape from something, from hell fire or brimstone or some less remote punishment. This class of Christians use religion as people use the conjurer’s bag or a disinfectant to ward off evil. They are not drawn to any vital thing in religion; they simply use it as a cloak to shield them from harm.

To live the real religious life is in some measure to share the character of God. The word “atonement,” which occurs in the Bible again and again, means literally at-one-ment. To be at one with God is to be like God. Our real religious striving, then, should be to become one with God, sharing with Him in our poor human way His qualities and attributes. To do this, we must get the inner life, the heart right, and we shall then become strong where we have been weak, wise where we have been foolish. We are often criticised as a race because people say that our religion is not real. They say that our religion is superficial, that in spite of our attendance at religious services and protestations of faith we are guilty of petty pilfering, stealing, lying and of walking crookedly in many directions. Whenever this criticism is true it means that we have not learned what the religious life really means. We must learn to incorporate God’s laws into our thoughts and words and acts. Frequent reference is made in the Bible to the freedom that comes from being a Christian. A man is free just in proportion as he learns to live within God’s laws, and he makes grievous mistakes and serious blunders the minute he departs from these laws.

As a race we are inclined, I fear, to make too much of the day of judgment. We have the idea that in some far-off period there is going to be a great and final day of judgment, when every individual will be called up, and all his bad deeds will be read out before him and all his good deeds made known. I believe that every day is a day of judgment, that we reap our rewards daily, and that whenever we sin we are punished by mental and physical anxiety and by a weakened character that separates us from God. Every day is, I take it, a day of judgment, and as we learn God’s laws and grow into His likeness we shall find our reward in this world in a life of usefulness and honor. To do this is to have found the kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of character and righteousness and peace.

vi

On Making Our Race Life Count in the Life of the Nation

In the Bible one finds over and over again the words “a peculiar people.” Reference is made to the Jews as “a peculiar people,”--a people differing in thought and temperament and mode of life from others by whom they were surrounded. Now the race to which Americans of African lineage belong is often described as “a peculiar people,” having had, as we know, a peculiar history. They differ in color and in appearance, and in a very large degree their temperament and thought differ from that of the people about them. Now the Jews because they were different from the peoples by whom they were surrounded, because of their peculiar religious bent, were able to give to the world the doctrine of the unity and Fatherhood of God, and Christianity, the finest flower of Jewry. It is then, I think, not too much to hope that the very qualities which make the Negro different from the peoples by whom he is surrounded will enable him, in the fulness of time, to make a peculiar contribution to the nation of which he forms a part.

What that contribution is to be no man can now tell, but we must keep in mind that the race is made of individuals and

“every man God made Is different, has some deed to do, Some work to work. Be undismayed. Though thine be humble, do it, too.”

As with an individual, so with a race. When you and I and all the other individuals that go to make up our race shall have learned to do well our own peculiar work, we shall be able to determine the bent of the race. It must fall upon you and me, who have had opportunity to work out in some measure our own individual problems, to give direction to the race. It is for us, therefore, to bring to the enrichment of our lives, as individuals, every quality which we are capable of cultivating.

There is in the New Testament a passage which I like to refer to and to think of; it reads something like this: “He that overcometh shall be clothed in white raiment.” The expression “He that overcometh” occurs several times in the New Testament. I am anxious that the Tuskegee students shall get the idea firmly fixed in their minds that there are definite rewards coming to the individual or to the race that overcomes obstacles and succeeds in spite of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. The palms of victory are not for the race that merely complains and frets and rails. I do not mean to say that there is not a place for race loyalty and enthusiasm. There is a proper and vital place for protests against the wrongs that are inflicted without cause or reason. Every race, like every individual, should be swift to protest against injustice and wrongs, but no race must be content with mere protests. Every race must show to the world by tangible, visible, indisputable evidence that it can do more than merely call attention to the wrongs inflicted upon it. The reward of life is for those who choose the good where evil calls out on every hand. That reward is moral character. The more temptations resisted--the more difficult the struggle--the more robust the character. The wholly innocent person is much less praiseworthy than is he who has faced temptation and has come out of it unscarred. The virtues of foresight and thrift and frugality, brought bravely to the front, will bring large material possessions which if properly used will refine and enrich life.

I am constrained to refer once more to that “peculiar people,” the Jews,--a race that has been handicapped in very much the same way as the colored people. Their opportunities have been limited in many directions. In Russia to-day they are in many cases debarred from schools and from entrance into the professions. And, notwithstanding the barriers in this country, one of the most noted banking firms in the United States is composed of Jews. Members of a despised race, they made up their minds that in spite of difficulties they would not stop to complain, but would compel recognition by making a real contribution to the country of which they formed a part. The Japanese race is a convincing example of the respect which the world gives to a race that can put brains and commercial activity into the development of the resources of a country. What material difficulties the thrifty Hollanders have had to overcome in the development of their country! But the battle against water and wind has developed not only a country, but an energetic, thrifty people. The Netherlands have literally been made by these sturdy Hollanders, who because they overcame are looked upon as a great and happy people.

There is, then, opportunity for the colored people to enrich the material life of their adopted country by doing what their hands find to do, minor duties though they be, so well that nobody else of any race can do them better. This is the aim that the Tuskegee student should keep steadily before him. If he remembers that all service, however lowly, is true service, an important step will have been taken in the solution of what we term “the race problem.”

For it must be remembered that no individual of any race can contribute to the solution of any general problem until he has first worked out his own peculiar problem. Some months ago I met a former schoolmate whom I had not seen for a number of years. I was naturally interested to hear about his progress, and began to question him. I asked him where he lived, and he said he had no abiding-place, in fact he had lived in a half dozen places since we parted. In answer to other questions, I found that he had no special trade, no special business, no bank account. I asked then what he had been doing in the intervening years, and he answered he had been travelling about over the country, doing his best to solve the race problem. That man should rather have been at work at the solution of his own individual problem. An individual circumstanced as he was could not solve anybody’s problem. It is important to have one’s own dooryard clean before calling attention to the imperfection in the neighbor’s yard. Each Negro can put much into the life of his race by making his own individual life present a model in purity and patience, in industry and courage, in showing the world how to get strength out of difficulties. The late President Garfield once said that no person ever drowned, no matter how many times he was thrown overboard, who was worth saving, and that remark, with a few modifications, might be applied to a race. No race is ever lost that is worth saving, and no race need be lost that wants to save itself. The world is full of little people who through lack of wisdom and patience and perseverance merely add to the world’s burdens. The despised Negro has the chance to show to the world that charity which suffereth long and is kind and which never faileth. In the face of discouragements and difficulties the Negro must ever remember that nobody can degrade him. Nobody can degrade a big race or a big man. No one can degrade a single member of any race. The individual himself is the only one who can inflict that punishment. Frederick Douglass was on one occasion compelled to ride for several hours in a portion of a freight car. A friend went into the freight car to console him and said to him that he hated to see a man of his intelligence in so humiliating a position. “I am ashamed that they have thus degraded you.” But Douglass, straightening himself up in his seat, looked the friend in the face and said, “They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass.” And so they cannot degrade a single individual who does not want to be degraded. Injustice cannot work harm upon the oppressed without injuring the oppressor. The Negro people must live the precepts taught by the Christ. They must go on multiplying, day by day, deeds of worthiness, piling them up mountain high. And just as you and I, as individuals, are called upon to serve the race of which we are a part, so let us as a race recognize the fact that we are a part of a great nation which we are bound to serve.

The End

Transcriber’s Notes

Simple typographical errors were corrected. Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

The Frontispiece illustration is a photograph of Booker T. Washington. The illustration on the Title page is decorative.

End of Project Gutenberg's Putting the Most Into Life, by Booker T. Washington