And in conclusion he said: "At the present rate, it is taking not a few days or a few years, but a century or more to get Negro education on a plane at all similar to that on which the education of the whites now is. To bring Negro education up where it ought to be will take the combined and increased efforts of all the agencies now engaged in this work. The North, the South, the religious associations, the educational boards, white people and black people, all will have to cooperate in a great effort for this common end." These were the last words he ever spoke at a great public meeting. They show his acute realization of the immensity of the task to which he literally gave his life, and his dread lest what had been accomplished be over-estimated with a consequent slackening of effort. A very cordial friendship existed between Mr. Washington and his Trustees. Every man among them was his selection and joined the Board on his invitation. In the year 1912 they manifested their friendship and interest in the most practical of ways by volunteering to raise a guarantee fund of $50,000 a year for five years to help bridge the ever-widening gap between the income of the school and its unavoidably mounting expenses. To do this, aside from contributing handsomely themselves, almost all went out and "begged" of their friends. Mr. Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, for instance, after making his own liberal personal contribution, and soliciting funds among his Chicago friends, left his great and absorbing interests at a busy time of the year to go to New York and devote a week's time to "begging" money for Tuskegee among his friends and acquaintances, Messrs. Low, Willcox, Trumbull, Mason, and others also personally solicited funds. Many men have gotten millionaires to give large sums of money, but how many men have ever gotten millionaires both to give large sums and personally to solicit large sums for a purely unselfish purpose? In his final report Booker Washington said of this guarantee fund: "It is not possible to describe in words what a relief and help this $50,000 guarantee fund has proven during the four years it has been in existence.... We shall have to begin now to consider some method of replacing these donations. The relief which has come to us because of this guarantee fund has been marked and far reaching."