And this is no idle suggestion. Few people have any conception of the growing progress of Negroes in the medical profession. In August, 1907, the Coloured National Medical Association held its ninth annual session at Baltimore. Over three hundred delegates and members were in attendance from thirty different states. Graduates were there not only from Harvard, Yale, and other white colleges, but from coloured medical schools like Meharry and Howard University. Negro hospitals have been opened and are well supported in several cities. _National Negro Business League_ All over the country the Negro is organised in business leagues and these leagues have formed a National Business League which met last August in Topeka, Kansas. I can do no better in interpreting the spirit of this work, which is indeed the practical spirit of the Southern party, than in quoting briefly from the address of Booker T. Washington, who is the president of the league: Despite much talk, the Negro is not discouraged, but is going forward. The race owns to-day an acreage equal to the combined acreage of Holland and Belgium. The Negro owns more land, more houses, more stores, more banks, than has ever been true in his history. We are learning that no race can occupy a soil unless it gets as much out of it as any other race gets out of it. Soil, sunshine, rain, and the laws of trade have no regard for race or colour. We are learning that we must be builders if we would succeed. As we learn this lesson we shall find help at the South and at the North. We must not be content to be tolerated in communities, we must make ourselves needed. The law that governs the universe knows no race or colour. The force of nature will respond as readily to the hand of the Chinaman, the Italian, or the Negro as to any other race. Man may discriminate, but nature and the laws that control the affairs of men will not and cannot. Nature does not hide her wealth from a black hand. All along the line one finds this spirit of hopeful progress. A vivid picture of conditions, showing frankly both the weakness and strength of the Negro, is given by a coloured correspondent of the Indianapolis _Freeman_. He begins by telling of the organisation at Carbondale, Ill., of a joint stock company composed of thirty-nine coloured men to operate a dry goods store. The correspondent writes: