The Man Farthest Down Quotes

“The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States of America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record Of Observation And Study In Europe

“The effect of this movement, or revolution, as I have called it, is not to "tear down and level up" in order to bring about an artificial equality, but to give every individual a chance "to make good," to determine for himself his place and position in the community by the character and quality of the service he is able to perform.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“Indeed it was no longer strange that, with all the vast resources which Russia possesses, the masses of the people have made so little progress when I considered how large a portion of the population had no other task than that of holding the people down, hindering rather than inspiring and directing the efforts of the masses to rise.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“The real reason for the backward condition of Sicily is, in my opinion, not so much the intermixture of races as the neglect and oppression of the masses of the people. In 1861, when Sicily became a part of the Italian Confederation, 90 per cent. of the population were wholly unable to read or write. This means that at this time the people of Sicily were not much better off, as far as education is concerned, than the Negro slaves at the time of emancipation. It has been”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“The Negro is better off in his family, in the first place, because, even when his home is little more than a primitive one-room cabin, he is at least living in the open country in contact with the pure air and freedom of the woods, and not in the crowded village where the air and the soil have for centuries been polluted with the accumulated refuse and offscourings of a crowded and slatternly population.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“From all that I can learn, the filthy promiscuity of these crowded houses and dirty streets have made the Sicilian rural villages breeding places of vices and crimes of a kind of which the rural Negro population in the United States, for example, probably never heard. There are some things, in connection with this ancient civilization, concerning which it is better the Negro should not know, because the knowledge of them means moral and physical degeneration, and at the present time, whatever else may be said about the condition of the Negro, he is not, in the rural districts at least, a degenerate. Even in those parts of the Southern States where he has been least touched by civilization, the Negro seems to me to be incomparably better off in his family life than is true of the agricultural classes in Sicily.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“employ, there is not enough land to employ the surplus population. The result is the farm labourers are competing for the privilege of working on the land. As agriculture goes down and the land produces less, the population increases and the rents go up. Thus between the upper and the nether millstone the farmer is crushed. In the South we have just the contrary situation. We have land crying for the hand to till it; we have the landowners seeking labour and fairly begging for tenants to work their lands. If a Negro tenant does not like the way he is treated he can go to the neighbouring farm; he can go to the mines or to the public works, where his labour is in demand. But the only way the poor Italian can get free is by going to America, and that is why thousands sail from Palermo every year for this country. In certain places in Sicily, in the three years”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“have described at some length the condition of the farm labourers in Italy because it seems to me that it is important that those who are inclined to be discouraged about the Negro in the South should know that his case is by no means as hopeless as that of some others. The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States in America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily. The Negro farmer sometimes thinks he is badly treated in the South. Not infrequently he has to pay high rates of interest upon his "advances" and sometimes, on account of his ignorance, he is not fairly treated in his yearly settlements. But there is this great difference between the Negro farmer in the South and the Italian farmer in Sicily: In Sicily a few capitalists and descendants of the old feudal lords own practically all the soil and, under the crude and expensive system of agriculture which they”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“have described at some length the condition of the farm labourers in Italy because it seems to me that it is important that those who are inclined to be discouraged about the Negro in the South should know that his case is by no means as hopeless as that of some others. The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States in America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“The Negro is not the man farthest down. The condition of the coloured farmer in the most backward parts of the Southern States in America, even where he has the least education and the least encouragement, is incomparably better than the condition and opportunities of the agricultural population in Sicily.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“looking over the budgets of a number of the small landowners, whose position is much better than that of the average farm labourer, I found that as much as $5 was spent for wine, while the item for meat was only $2 per year. There are thousands of people in Sicily, I learned, who almost never taste meat. The studies which have been made of the subject indicate that the whole population is underfed.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“Persons who have made a special study of the physical condition of these people declare that this part of the population shows marked signs of physical and mental deterioration, due, they say, to the lack of sufficient food. For example, in respect to stature and weight, the Sicilians are nearly 2 per cent. behind the population in northern Italy. This difference is mainly due to the poor physical condition of the agricultural classes, who, like the agricultural population of the southern mainland of Italy, are smaller than the population in the cities.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“One of the principal articles of diet, in certain seasons of the year, is the fruit of a cactus called the Indian fig, which grows wild in all parts of the island. One sees it everywhere, either by the roadside, where it is used for hedges, or clinging to the steep cliffs on the mountainside. The fruit, which is about the size and shape of a very large plum, is contained in a thick, leathern skin, which is stripped off and fed to the cattle. The fruit within is soft and mushy and has a rather sickening, sweetish taste, which, however, is greatly relished by the country people.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“have been more than once through the slums and poorer quarters of the coloured people of New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York, and my personal observation convinces me that the coloured population of these cities is in every way many per cent. better off than the corresponding classes in Naples and the other Italian cities I have named. As far as the actual hardships they have to endure or the opportunities open to them, the condition of the Negroes in these cities does not compare, in my opinion, with that of the masses of the Italians in these southern Italian cities.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“Where the wages are smallest and the conditions hardest, there emigration has reached the highest mark. In other words, it is precisely from those parts of Italy where there are the greatest poverty, crime, and ignorance that the largest number of emigrants from Italy go out to America, and, I might add, the smallest number return. Of the 511,935 emigrants who came to North and South America from Italy in 1906, 380,615 came from Sicily and the southern provinces.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“Ten days later, coming north from Sicily, I passed through the farming country south of Naples, from which large numbers of emigrants go every year to the United States. It is a sad and desolate region. Earthquakes, malaria, antiquated methods of farming, and the general neglect of the agricultural population have all contributed to the miseries of the people. The land itself—at least such portion of it as I saw—looks old, wornout, and decrepit; and the general air of desolation is emphasized when, as happened in my case, one comes suddenly, in the midst of the desolate landscape, upon some magnificent and lonely ruin representing the ancient civilization that flourished here two thousand years ago.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“The experience of the peasants of Europe, just as the experience of the Negro in America, has served to confirm an opinion I have long held—namely, that it is very hard for a man to keep anything that he has not earned or does not know how to use. And in most cases, the best way and, in fact, the only way to insure any people in the possession either of property or political privileges is to fit them by education to use these gifts for their own good and for the highest good of the community in which they live.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights

“have never been greatly interested in the past, for the past is something that you cannot change. I like the new, the unfinished and the problematic. My experience is that the man who is interested in living things must seek them in the grime and dirt of everyday life. To be sure, the things one sees there are not always pleasant, but the people one meets are interesting, and if they are sometimes among the worst they are also frequently among the best people in the world. At any rate, wherever there is struggle and effort there is life.”
― Booker T. Washington, The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe: Enriched edition. Exploring Social Inequality: European Perspectives and African American Insights