Price and others had sought a way of honorable alliance with
the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first indis-
solubly linked these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited
energy, and perfect faith into his programme, and changed it
from a by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of
the methods by which he did this is a fascinating study of
human life.

It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a
programme after many decades of bitter complaint; it startled
and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the
admiration of the North; and after a confused murmur of
protest, it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves.

To gain the sympathy and cooperation of the various ele-
ments comprising the white South was Mr. Washington's first
task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for
a black man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it
was done in the word spoken at Atlanta: "In all things purely
social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one
as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." This
"Atlanta Compromise" is by all odds the most notable thing
in Mr. Washington's career. The South interpreted it in dif-
ferent ways: the radicals received it as a complete surrender
of the demand for civil and political equality; the conserva-
tives, as a generously conceived working basis for mutual
understanding. So both approved it, and to-day its author is
certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson
Davis, and the one with the largest personal following.