The next year he founded a weekly farm paper, a circulating library, and a Ministers' Institute. The year after, 1906, the Jesup Agricultural Wagon--the agricultural school on wheels, which is described in the chapter, "Washington, the Educator"--was started. In 1907 the farmers' cooperative demonstration work, which has also been mentioned, was inaugurated. In 1910 the rural improvement speaking tours began. And finally, in 1914, he established "Baldwin Farms," the farming community for the graduates of the agricultural department of Tuskegee, which also has been previously described. These, then, are some of the tangible means which Booker Washington developed during a period of thirty years for keeping in touch with his people and for keeping his people in touch with one another and with all the things which go to make up wholesome and useful living. CHAPTER SEVEN BOOKER WASHINGTON AND THE NEGRO FARMER Booker T. Washington was a great believer in the experience meeting, and the Tuskegee Negro Conference, which he started in 1891, is nothing more nor less than an agricultural experience meeting. He placed his faith in the persuasive power of example--in the contagion of successful achievement. He once said: "One farm bought, one house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the largest taxpayer or has the largest bank account, one school or church maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden profitably cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived--these will tell more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through commerce, education, and religion." Nothing delighted Mr. Washington more than the successful Negro farmers who had started in life without money, friends, influence, or education--with literally nothing but their hands. At one of the Tuskegee conferences not many years ago his keen eyes spotted such a man in the audience and he called to him in his straight from the shoulder manner: "Get up and tell us what you have been doing as a farmer."