All this has given
place to the simple plan of an indefinite extension among the
neglected classes of both races of the Hampton-Tuskegee system of
training. The "problem" in one sense has disappeared. The future
will have for the South swift or slow development of its masses
and of its soil in proportion to the swift or slow development of
this kind of training. This change of view is a true measure of
Mr. Washington's work.
The literature of the Negro in America is colossal, from
political oratory through abolitionism to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and
"Cotton is King"--a vast mass of books which many men have read
to the waste of good years (and I among them); but the only books
that I have read a second time or ever care again to read in the
whole list (most of them by tiresome and unbalanced "reformers")
are "Uncle Remus" and "Up from Slavery"; for these are the great
literature of the subject. One has all the best of the past, the
other foreshadows a better future; and the men who wrote them are
the only men who have written of the subject with that perfect
frankness and perfect knowledge and perfect poise whose other
name is genius.
Mr. Washington has won a world-wide fame at an early age. His
story of his own life already has the distinction of translation
into more languages, I think, than any other American book; and I
suppose that he has as large a personal acquaintance among men of
influence as any private citizen now living.
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