At Indianapolis I found an organisation of Negro women, called the Woman's Improvement Club. The president, Mrs. Lillian T. Fox, told me what the club was doing to solve the problem of the coloured girl and boy who could not get work. She found that, after all, white prejudice was not so much a bugaboo as she had imagined. The newspapers gave publicity to the work; the Commercial Club, the foremost business men's organisation of the city, offered to lend its assistance; several white employers agreed to try coloured help, and one, the Van Camp Packing Company, one of the great concerns of its kind in the country, even fitted up a new plant to be operated wholly by coloured people. Last fall, after the season's work was over, one of the officers of the company told me that the Negro plant had been a great success, that the girls had done their work faithfully and with great intelligence. Just recently a meeting of coloured carpenters was held in New York to organise for self-help, and they found that, by bringing pressure to bear, the Brotherhood of Carpenters was perfectly willing to accept them as members of the union, on exactly the same basis as any other carpenters. In short, the Negro is beginning to awaken to the fact that if he is to survive and succeed in Northern cities, it must be by his own skill, energy, and organisation. For, like any individual or any race, striving for a place in industry or in modern commercial life, the Negro must, in order to succeed, not only equal his competitor, but become more efficient. A Negro contractor said to me: "Yes, I can get any amount of work, but they expect me to do it a little better and a little cheaper than my white competitors." Then he added: "And I can do it, too!" Those are the only terms on which success can be won. For so long a time the Negro has been driven or forced to work, as in the South, that he learns only slowly, in an intense, impersonal, competitive life like that of the North, where work is at a premium, that he himself, not the white man, must do the driving. It is the lesson that raises any man from slavery into freedom. _Pullman Porters_ So much for industry. The Negro in the North has also been going into business and into other and varied employment. The very difficulty of getting hold in the trades and in salaried employment has driven many coloured people into small business enterprises: grocery stores, tailor shops, real estate or renting agencies. If they are being driven out by white men as waiters and barbers, they enjoy, on the other hand, growing opportunities as railroad and Pullman porters and waiters--places which are often highly profitable, and lead, if the Negro saves his money, to better openings. A Negro banker whom I met in the South told me that he got his start as a Pullman porter. He had a good run, and by being active and accommodating, often made from $150 to $200 a month from his wages and tips.