Booker T. Washington

This is what I mean by getting the superficial culture before the dollars are made; grasping at the shadow instead of the substance.

I think that the temptation for us, especially for those who are only half educated, is to try to get hold of a certain kind of shallow culture, instead of getting the substantial--instead of getting hold of real education, of property and…

And, unless we have this ability, we will find, sooner or later, that instead of going forward we are going backward.

By such an education as that, while we are getting culture along all the lines that in any degree tend to increase the wants of a person, we are, in the meantime, getting skill to increase our ability to supply these wants.

Now, the crisis in that person's affairs comes when the question arises whether his education has increased his ability to supply his wants.

So you see the result of education is to increase a person's wants.

Instead of jeans and osnaburg for clothes, he wants decent woollen cloth, neat-fitting shoes, and a white collar and a necktie, things which he never thought of wearing before he became educated.

But, as soon as that man becomes educated, he feels that he must have a house with at least two or three rooms in it, furnished with neat and substantial furniture.

You take the ordinary person who lives on a plantation, and so long as that person is ignorant, he is content to live in a cabin with one room, in which he has a skillet, a bedstead--or an apology for one--a table, and a few chairs or…

It is for you to demonstrate to them this value more and more clearly every year.

These white people are beginning to see the difference between the value of an educated Negro and one who is not educated.

Furthermore, I think the time has come in the South for all our people to consider more fully than they have ever done before the question of the education of all of our population; and, wherever practicable, to give attention in our…