Booker T. Washington, Builder o - African American History

Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization. 190
gimleted upon you."
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Barret Wendell, Professor of English at Harvard University, wrote him: "Will
you allow me to express the pleasure which your book, 'Up from Slavery,' has
given me? For about twenty years a teacher of English, and mostly of English
composition, I have become perhaps a judge as to matters of style. Certainly I
have grown less and less patient of all writing which is not simple and efficient;
and more and more to believe in a style which does its work with a simple,
manly distinctness. It is hard to remember when a book, casually taken up, has
proved, in this respect, so satisfactory as yours. No style could be more simple,
more unobtrusive; yet few styles which I know, seem to me, more laden--as
distinguished from overburdened--with meaning. On almost any of your pages
you say as much again as most men would say in the space; yet you say it as
simply and easily that one has no effort in reading. One is simply surprised at
the quiet power which can so make words do their work."
Thus was received the simple narrative of his life up to this time as hastily
written down in odd moments snatched from his already overcrowded days. In
this country alone more than 110,000 copies of the book have since been sold. It
has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Hindustani, and Braille.
Booker Washington's philosophy as to money raising after a generation of
constant and successful experience was summed up in this statement which he
made in "Up from Slavery": "My experience in getting money for Tuskegee has
taught me to have no patience with those
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people who are always condemning the rich because they are rich, because they
do not give more to objects of charity. In the first place, those who are guilty of
such sweeping criticisms do not know how many people would be made poor,
and how much suffering would result if wealthy people were to part all at once
with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple
great business enterprises. Then very few people have any idea of the large
number of applications for help that rich people are constantly being flooded
with. I know wealthy people who receive as many as twenty calls a day for help.
More than once, when I have gone into offices of rich men, I have found half a
dozen persons waiting to see them, and all come for the same purpose, that of
24.03.2006