Peanut Man

With words of praise and affection, a bronze bust was unveiled during the commencement of Alabama's Tuskegee Normal & Industrial Institute last week, disclosing the image of an aged Negro with benign eyes and wrinkled brow, wearing an old-fashioned coat, a wing collar and flowing tie. It was a likeness of George Washington Carver, and its presentation climaxed his long, remarkable, well-publicized career. Made by Sculptor Steffen Wolfgang George Thomas of Atlanta, it was paid for by George Washington Carver's admirers, black and white, mostly in $1 subscriptions.

This man was born "about 1864" in a cabin near Diamond Grove, Mo. His parents were slaves, owned by Moses Carver, who gave the pickaninny his own surname and christened him George Washington. One night the baby and his mother were stolen by raiders. The mother was never heard of again but agents of Moses Carver found the baby and got him back by swapping a race horse. In childhood George Washington Carver mastered every word in his spelling book. Finding himself a free but penniless orphan, he got what schooling he could in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa, supporting himself by odd jobs. In six years at Iowa State College he won his bachelor's and master's degrees, showed such ability in agricultural chemistry that he was made a member of the faculty. Forty-one years ago the great Booker Taliaferro Washington summoned him to Tuskegee Institute to start a school of agriculture.

When Carver got to Tuskegee he had to poke around in scrap heaps for spare parts with which to build apparatus. With his junkpile equipment he experimented with peanuts, and as the list of surprising products he extracted from them grew longer, his fame traveled farther. Thomas Alva Edison offered him a job, but Carver stayed at Tuskegee. From peanuts he made nearly 300 substances; from sweet potatoes 118, including starch, vinegar, shoe-blacking, library paste, candy. He showed proficiency in cooking and artistic needlework. He made dyes from clay, dandelions, onions, beans, tomato vines, trees. One of his dyes he believes is a rediscovery of a lost purple used by the Egyptians. He made paints from clay, peanuts and cattle dung. With these he painted pictures, some of which hang in art galleries. From wood shavings he made a synthetic marble.

Peanuts, however, have been his prime interest. His list of peanut products includes milk, butter, cheese, coffee, pickles, shaving lotion, breakfast food, flour, soap, ink, cosmetics, a dandruff remedy. When the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill was in the making, its framers were skeptical as to the need of U. S. farmers for peanut protection. George Washington Carver appeared in Washington, talked for an hour and 45 minutes to the Congressmen. When the bill passed a peanut tariff was in it. In recent years he has tried out peanut oil as a remedy for infantile paralysis, rubbing it into withered muscles.

This year George Washington Carver has made two speeches before regional conferences on the Farm Chemurgic Council. Before the microphone he manifested a whimsical simplicity reminiscent of Green Pastures, apostrophizing God as "Mr. Creator." He corresponds with Mahatma Gandhi, whom he emulates in humility and lack of interest in money. When he was younger he got up at 4 a.m., went to the woods to pick flowers, gather specimens, observe animals not visible later in the day, commune with God.

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