What of the Negro business man? In Washington public employment and the professions have captured most of the energetic and alert Negroes, to the injury of business development. Springfield, Massachusetts; Richmond, Virginia; Dayton, Ohio,--not one of these important cities has a total population as large as the Negro population of the District of Columbia. As buyers of goods, eighty-seven thousand people are important; but as sellers of goods, the eighty-seven thousand Negroes in Washington are by no means important. For example, of the total profits on the dry goods bought in a year by the Negro population of Washington,--profits amounting to thousands and thousands of dollars, for the ratio of expenditure to income is exceptionally large,--what per cent. goes to Negro merchants? Shall I say five per cent., one per cent., or one thousandth of one per cent.? Mathematical precision is, of course, not possible but you and I know that practically none of these profits go to Negro merchants. And you and I could name a dozen white merchants who have been enriched by those profits. And in consideration of this fact how many Negro clerks have the white merchants placed in their stores? how many Negro floor walkers? how many Negro buyers? And, my friends, how many thousands of years must elapse before the Washington Negro will add to his culture enough co-operative endeavor and competitive power to change all this? I myself have never yet been convinced that the Anglo-Saxon and the Jew really need the black man’s charity. Though I cannot point out, then, to the members of this graduating class openings in established business houses, I can point out that their success in business will provide opportunities for some later class, and will help to make the spending of Negroes enrich Negroes. Let me suggest two other ways in which the Negro business men may be of great service to the many. In the first place, the rents charged Negroes in cities, for example, Washington, are considerably higher for the same accommodations than the rents charged white people. By offering good houses at reasonable rents to the Negro working class, the Negro business man will find a paying investment and a means of much service. In the second place, hotels, restaurants, and theatres even in the capital of the nation are open to black men and women only on degrading terms, or not open at all. The closing of such accommodations is really the opening for black business men of the doors of opportunity. In discussing ways of direct service I have then mentioned teaching and preaching as types of the work in which the decisive factor is personal influence. Medicine and business I have mentioned as types of the work in which the decisive factor is directing intelligence.