Nor need I speak of the changed condition that these fifty years have wrought in our economic condition. We are still poor; we still have to struggle to make ends meet, to keep the wolf from the door; but there can be no doubt that we are very much better off now than we were fifty years ago. We live in better houses; we dress better; we eat better food; we own more property; we have more on deposit in banks and other saving institutions; we have more invested in business; we travel more; we give more to religion, to charity, to education. Even our worst enemies, however, they might wish it were otherwise, will hardly be found affirming that we are no farther on materially than we were fifty years ago, that no substantial progress has been made by the race. In every direction the evidences are too plainly apparent to be denied. The following statement, taken from the declarations of the National Business League at its recent session in Philadelphia, tells in a word the simple story of what has been accomplished during these fifty years: "Starting half a century ago, without experience, without education, and without property, we to-day own and pay taxes on 20,000,000 acres of land, an area as large as the State of South Carolina; we own and control 100 insurance companies, 300 drug stores, 64 banks, 450 newspapers, and more than 20,000 other businesses of various kinds, and the total wealth of American Negroes in land, homes, schools, churches, and other forms of property, amounts to more than $700,000,000. "In submitting this brief record of material progress, we do not overlook the advance made in other directions. Fifty years ago more than 90 per cent of the race was wholly illiterate. To-day more than 70 per cent can both read and write."