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VISITS TO EUROPE
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and rest. But the third trip was undertaken with a serious purpose. He wanted to see how the poor people of Europe lived, and how their living conditions compared with those of the working-man in the United States. He was particularly anxious to see how conditions there compared with those affecting the negro population of the South. He also wanted to see whether or not he could find anything in Europe that would justify the system of education he had established at Tuskegee. So this time he left the usual highways of travel and went far into the interior, visiting the peasant in his hut, in the remotest regions of the country,—the miner toiling underground, the laborer in the quarry, and the poor man at his work whatever it was and wherever he could be found. He visited the farms in the remote parts of Poland, Austria, and Italy. He went to the sulphur mines in Campo Franco. At Catania he saw the grape harvest and the men barelegged, treading the wine press as they did in Bible times.

In a very remote part of Poland, away up in the mountains, he stopped at a little thatched-roof cottage. Desiring to see how the place looked on the inside, he knocked at the door. In response a man opened the door, and Washington said something to him in English, thinking, of course, that the man would not understand, but that he would be able to see inside the hut. To his utter astonishment, the man answered him in English.