Up From Slavery: An Autobiography The Story of the Negro Working With the Hands Character Building My Larger Education THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN A RECORD OF OBSERVATION AND STUDY IN EUROPE BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON WITH THE COLLABORATION OF Robert E. Park Garden City       New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1912 Copyright, 1911, by The Outlook Company Copyright, 1912, by Doubleday, Page & Company All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the S

On the 20th of August, 1910, I sailed from New York City for Liverpool, England. I had been given a leave of absence of two months from my work at Tuskegee, on condition that I would spend that time in some way that would give me recreation and rest. Now I have found that about the only comfortable and satisfactory way for me to rest is to find some new kind of work or occupation. I determined therefore to carry out a plan I had long had in mind of making myself acquainted with the condition of

The Carmania , the ship in which I had sailed, disembarked its passengers late Saturday at Fishguard, off the coast of Wales. The special train which sped us on to London reached the city early Sunday morning, August 28. As I drove from the railway station in the gray of the early morning my attention was attracted by a strange, shapeless and disreputable figure which slunk out of the shadow of a building and moved slowly and dejectedly down the silent and empty street. In that quarter of the ci

The first thing about London that impressed me was its size; the second was the wide division between the different elements in the population. London is not only the largest city in the world; it is also the city in which the segregation of the classes has gone farthest. The West End, for example, is the home of the King and the Court. Here are the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, most of the historical monuments, the art galleries, and nearly everything that is inte

One clear, cold morning, about the first of September, I took a train at Bonar Bridge, in the north of Scotland, southward bound. There was a cold wind blowing, and Bonar Bridge is about the latitude, as I learned from looking at my atlas, of northern Labrador—farther north, in fact, than I had ever in my lifetime dreamed of going. I spent the next four or five hours looking out of a car window across the bleak, brown moors, studying the flocks of sheep and the little thatch-roofed cottages clin

In Prague, the capital of Bohemia, I came in contact for the first time with the advance guard, if I may use the expression, of a new race, the Slavs. I say a new race, because although the Slavic peoples claim an antiquity as great as that of any other race in Europe, the masses of the race seem just now emerging from a condition of life more primitive than that of almost any other people in Europe. Many little things, not only what I saw with my own eyes, but what I heard from others, gave me

There is one English word which seems to be more widely known and used in Europe than almost any other. It is the word "strike." Labour strikes, I have understood, had their origin with the factory system in England. But the people on the Continent have improved on the original English device, and have found ways of using it of which we in America, I suspect, have rarely if ever heard. It seems to me that during my short journey in Europe I heard of more kinds of strikes, and learned more about

I had crossed Europe from north to south before I got my first glimpse of an emigrant bound for America. On the way from Vienna to Naples I stopped at midnight at Rome, and in the interval between trains I spent an hour in wandering about in the soft southern air—such air as I had not found anywhere since I left my home in Alabama. In returning to the station my curiosity was aroused, as I was passing in the shadow of the building, by what seemed to me a large vacant room near the main entrance

Among the things that make Sicily interesting are its ruins. There are dead cities which even in their decay are larger and more magnificent than the living cities that have grown up beside them—larger and more magnificent even than any living city in Sicily to-day. There are relics of this proud and ancient past everywhere in this country. In the modern city of Catania, for example, I came suddenly one day upon the ruins of the forum of a Roman city which was buried under the modern Italian one

It was late in September when I reached Catania, on the eastern side of Sicily. The city lies at the foot of Mt. Ætna on the edge of the sea. Above it looms the vast bulk of the volcano, its slopes girdled with gardens and vineyards that mount, one terrace above the other, until they lose themselves in the clouds. A wide and fertile valley below the city to the south, through which the railway descends from the mountain to the sea, seemed, as did Mt. Ætna itself, like one vast vineyard. This was

One of the interesting sights of Catania, Sicily, as of nearly every other city I visited in Europe, is the market-place. I confess that I have a fondness for visiting markets. I like to wander through the stalls, with their quantities of fruit, vegetables, meat and bread, all the common, wholesome and necessary things of life, piled and ranged in bountiful profusion. I like to watch the crowds of people coming and going, buying and selling, dickering and chaffering. A market, particularly an ol

There is one street in Catania, Sicily, which seems to be given over to the trade and industry of the poorer people of the city. It is not mentioned in the guide-books, and there is perhaps no reason why it should be. Nevertheless, there are a great many interesting things to be seen in that street—strange, quaint, homely things—that give a stranger intimate glimpses into the life of the people. For example, on a street corner, tucked away in one of those snug spaces in which one sometimes finds

It was a Jewish trader who advised me to visit Jedlovka. He said that I would see the peasants living there now as they had lived for hundreds of years—in the simplest and most primitive fashion. Jedlovka, I found, is a little straggling village in the foothills of the Carpathians—the mountains which divide Galicia from Hungary. In order to reach the village it was necessary to take the train at Cracow and ride for an hour or more in the direction of Lemberg, which is the Ruthenian, just as Crac

Of the three former capitals of Poland the city of Cracow, the last of Polish territory to lose its independence, is now an Austrian fortress. One day, shortly after my arrival, I was driving in the suburbs of the city when my attention was directed to a number of low, grass-covered mounds scattered about at regular intervals in the level plain outside the city. To all appearances these mounds were nothing more than slight elevations of land sinking, in a direction away from the city, almost imp

Several times during my stay in London I observed, standing on a corner in one of the most crowded parts of the city, a young woman selling papers. There are a good many women, young and old, who sell papers in London, but any one could see at a glance that this girl was different. There was something in her voice and manner which impressed me, because it seemed to be at once timid, ingratiating, and a little insolent, if that is not too strong a word. This young woman was, as I soon learned, a

I had heard a good deal, from time to time, about John Burns before I went to Europe, and when I reached London I took advantage of the first opportunity that offered to make my acquaintance with him a personal one. This meeting was a special good fortune to me at the time because, as I already knew, there is, in all probability, no one in England who better understands the hopes, ambitions, and the prospects of the labouring classes than the Rt. Hon. John Burns, President of the Local Governmen

Upon my arrival in London I found myself, at the end of my journey, once more at my point of departure. A few days later, October 9th, to be precise, I sailed from Liverpool for New York. I had been less than seven weeks in Europe, but it seemed to me that I had been away for a year. My head was full of strange and confused impressions and I was reminded of the words of the traveller who, after he had crossed Europe from London to Naples, and had visited faithfully all the museums and neglected