A NEGRO SCIENTIST.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5356, 26 November 1928, Page 3

A NEGRO SCIENTIST.

PROFESSOR CARVER & HIS WORK.

(By the Rev. Ray E. Phillips, in the South African “Outlook.”)

The idea of a black man as a scientist was a rather, unusual and novel idea to me until I met Professor George W. Carver. My wife and! I visited the United States last year. On a trip through the southern States we stopped for a few days at Tuskegee Institute, the school founded by Booker T. Washington.

On ,the second day of our stay there, at our. request, we were taken to Professor Carver’s research laboratory. He met us—a very dark, very courteous gentleman. Whem he was told that we were from South Africa he readily agreed to show us through his workropms. He shed his chemist’s apron and was soon at our disposal. “Here,” he began, pointing round the not too spacious room in which we found him, “is where I d© ( m >' work.” We had been looking at the usual laboratory collection of test tubes, retorts, bottles, and other apparatus. Flames burning uncler one or two complicated structures of pipes and tubes showed us that experiments were now being carried on.

When we had asked some questions as, to the nature of those experiments and had received replies as simple as the professor could make them, we asked: “Now can we see some of the results of your research ?” He showed us intq a good-sized room whose walls were lined with glass bottles. He conducted us along in front of the array of bottles containing, the colours extracted in his laboratories frc(m the c,lays found in the immediate neighbourhood of Tuskegee. He rapidly explained that here were 27 wash-colour combinations to be applied to plastered: surfaces, 16 stains for furniture and inside woodwork, 32 varnishes, numerous other, stains for painting bungalows and railway carriages, as well as toilet powders, and ttue* lopg-sought-after ultra-marine blues that were used by the Egyptians of, Tutankhamen’s time. All had been taken from the cqmmbn muds of the neighbourhood-! THE WONDERFUL PEANUT.

Then from shelf to shelf this scientific wizard'led us. This wall on the right contained 196 useful products obtained from the sweet potato. On the ether side were exhibited the 202 products of the peanut—the ce/nmoh monkey-nut. And Dr. Carver assured us that the possibilities of the peanut are not yet exhausted. We could not help thinking that with peanut milk, buttermilk, cream, cheese, and coffee, relish and sauces, dripping and mock oysters, one might have a well-bal-anced diet of peanut products aloneAdd to these the paper made from peanut shells, artificial silk from the same source, other peanut products such as soap, ink, tootß paste; 'dandruff cure, wood stains, dyes, beauty creams; and) lotions, pharmaceutical preparations such as emulsions fop goitre, and creosote —why, life would be very comfortable using only peanut products to meet o.ur, daily needs.

“And the coffee in the beetle,” said the professor wifi a twinkle in his eye, “is no qndiinary coffee. It already contains in it the necessary cneajn and sugar. A teaspoonful will make cup of coffee, complete!”

“And what is this ?” we asked, pointing to a greyish sort of pancake that an assistant was savagely attacking with a large hamaribr. “That is peaput rubber that we have vulcanised, and ar® now testing for, durability. To-morrow’s motor tyres may come from the peaput!” We noddled our heads, dumbly. "Dumb” is the word. We found ourselves strangely unable to frame an intelligent question regarding the nature of the methqds employed in arriving at these amazing results. A gentleman who had followed us into the laboratory' tried it—once. He asked: “Dr. Carver, what are the fundamental elementary chemical units in the peanut which you combine to make these products ?” The turped to 'him and quickly enumerated a dozen or more scientific, names, none of which' I have ever heard before. “I see,” said the gentleman, with a sheepish smile, and lapsed into silence.

We g’anced at some of the 1000 dyes produced from vegetable substances, including 49 from the sc,uppernong grape. From the seeds of the avttcado pear Dr. Carver has extracted! 14 different dyes. Apd we heard him describe sextuple oxidisation, a reaction not recognised as yet by chemistry, and as mystifying to the scientific as well as unscientific listener.

When we bade good-bye to the prof! fessor and left the laboratory we were a somewhat subdued) gtoup. We felt .that we had been in the presence of a great man; not only a great creative scientist, but a great force for. good. He impressed us in both ways. A 5 the editor, of a southern newspaper put it: “One says here is a man who has reajly caught the spirit of science ; another says here is a man W God. And both are right, for, aS Dr. Carver would say : ‘Science is truth, and all truth is of God.’ ” As we saw Dr. Carver, a deacon of the Tuskegee Church, reverently administering the elements in the Communion service, we felt that it had done us good to meet him-

Consider what this man has gone through. We learned that he was born a slave of slave parents. He never knew his family name, but took the name of his master. His mother was carried off by marauders, and he never knew her fate. He himself was carried off in that raid, but his master sent a rescuing party, and young Carver wag rebought for an £BO racehorse. An educational beginning in a negro school only flredi his passion for more learning. Under freedom in the State of Kansas he worked in a laundry, and ultimately earned his way to a master’s degree in lowa University. Then Booker T. Washington bfotight him to Tuskegee. Professor Carver has been made a Fellow of the ROyal Society of Great Britain. ; He is frequently consulted by the American Government. When

he was recently called! before a. governmental commission regarding the use to be made of a certain ous area, Mussel Shoals, for chemical purposes, the commossion assigned 15 minutes to; discuss the matter with him. So comprehensive was his knowledge, however, and so interesting the discussion which he introduced, that over, two hours passed before they would let him go.

Because Cjf the charm of his man-j ner as a speaker Professor Car,ver is in great demand! in white universities and colleges. His summers are largely occupied in speaking to conferences of students. Many of these group meetings are among white students in the southern States, where the colour line is drawn more sharply, in certain directions, than in South Africa. But even among these southern white students Dr. Carver is a favourite. Let me quote from a university student newspaper, in Tennessee : “To some it is given, at least onc.e in a lifetime, to stand in the presence of greatness. Thcpe 500 or 600 students who heard Dr. George W. Carver, negro scientist of Tuske-i gee Institute, who spoke to us on last Tuesday afternoon, are confident that then they »at under the voice of one deservedly called great. . . ■

They were aware of the greatness of their opportunity, and were humble.”

REFUSED £50,000 A YEAR’

During our stay at Tuskegee we met a nationally knojwn Jewish busi-' ness man who was also on his first visit to the institute. As we drank our coffee at the close of his first meal he turned to us and said rather excitedly: “Do. you know there’s a negro professor here who has rejected a million-dOfllar offer by the -Corporation for the right to control the manufacture and sale of some of the products of his researdh, and who has also refused a salary of 250,000' dollars a year from Edisojn to join him in his laboratories ? It’s a miracle ! Unbelievable! and yet I find it Is true.” Yes, ft was true. Professor Carver seems to care not at all for money, desiring only to* be of the fullest to mankind. “Real facts outweigh prejudices with thinking men,” says a recent writer, who adds: “As men begjn to think and to allow life and conduct to be dominated by thought rather than prejudice, immense progress between men and: groups between whom barriers have existed may yet be p<^s j sible.” Thinking'men are beginning to recognise that there is “no distinction of' colour in intellect and genius, and no distinction of dolour in souls, except the distinction between good and bad?’ “But,” says someone, “black people are not all Carvers; and there ai» few black Boojker T. Washingtons.”

“True,” a friend of mine has answered. “But we whites might remind ourselves that not all bf us are George Washingtons.”