Page:Boys Life of Booker T. Washington.djvu/142

126 Upon further conversation, he found that this man had once lived in Detroit, Michigan.

When he was in the mines at Campo Franco, Sicily, he by chance met a man who had once worked in the mines near Malden, West Virginia, where Washington himself had worked when a boy. The world is not such a big place after all!

As a result of his observations of conditions in Europe, Washington came to the conclusion that the negro in the South is, generally speaking, in far better condition than the peasant of Europe. He also noted that, wherever conditions were fairly good, where the natives owned the land and had developed reasonably good farming conditions, there was no emigration from that region to America. But where conditions were bad, where farms were not well kept, where the people were not permitted or encouraged to own their own homes, from such sections there was always much emigration to America. In other words, good local conditions, land ownership, good schools, and so on, tended to make the people happy, contented, and desirous of remaining where they were. In this fact he saw a great lesson for his own people. He believed that the South is the home of the negro, that here it is possible for him to do his best. He was, therefore, tremendously anxious for the negroes to learn how to cultivate the soil to the best possible advantage, to buy land, to build schools, to establish churches, and