My connection with Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, which promote the elevation of the colored race we formerly kept in slavery, has been a source of satisfaction and pleasure, and to know Booker Washington is a rare privilege.  We should all take our hats off to the man who not only raised himself from slavery, but helped raise millions of his race to a higher stage of civilization.  Mr. Washington called upon me a few days after my gift of six hundred thousand dollars was made to Tuskegee and asked if he might be allowed to make one suggestion.  I said:  “Certainly.”

“You have kindly specified that a sum from that fund be set aside for the future support of myself and wife during our lives, and we are very grateful, but, Mr. Carnegie, the sum is far beyond our needs and will seem to my race a fortune.  Some might feel that I was no longer a poor man giving my services without thought of saving money.  Would you have any objection to changing that clause, striking out the sum, and substituting ‘only suitable provision’?  I’ll trust the trustees.  Mrs. Washington and myself need very little.”

I did so, and the deed now stands, but when Mr. Baldwin asked for the original letter to exchange it for the substitute, he told me that the noble soul objected.  That document addressed to him was to be preserved forever, and handed down; but he would put it aside and let the substitute go on file.

This is an indication of the character of the leader of his race.  No truer, more self-sacrificing hero ever lived:  a man compounded of all the virtues.  It makes one better just to know such pure and noble souls—­human nature in its highest types is already divine here on earth.  If it be asked which man of our age, or even of the past ages, has risen from the lowest to the highest, the answer must be Booker Washington.  He rose from slavery to the leadership of his people—­a modern Moses and Joshua combined, leading his people both onward and upward.

In connection with these institutions I came in contact with their officers and trustees—­men like Principal Hollis B. Frissell of Hampton, Robert C. Ogden, George Foster Peabody, V. Everit Macy, George McAneny and William H. Baldwin—­recently lost to us, alas!—­men who labor for others.  It was a blessing to know them intimately.  The Cooper Union, the Mechanics and Tradesmen’s Society, indeed every institution[52] in which I became interested, revealed many men and women devoting their time and thought, not to “miserable aims that end with self,” but to high ideals which mean the relief and uplift of their less fortunate brethren.

[Footnote 52:  The universities, colleges, and educational institutions to which Mr. Carnegie gave either endowment funds or buildings number five hundred.  All told his gifts to them amounted to $27,000,000.]