The colored people often state that the colored professional men, lawyers and physicians, rather than the ministers and social workers, have been the real factors in the social improvement among the negroes of Chicago. They instance that the Frederick Douglas Center has staunch supporters among the professional men; that the president of their newly built Y. M. C. A. is a colored physician and that professional men are very active in the Chicago branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. [Sidenote: =Musicians of Prominence=] Among the many colored musicians in Chicago are at least a score who may be called professionals; two of them direct orchestras; one is a pianist of local reputation; at least four of them singing in vaudeville are also composers of songs; two are young colored women who have extensively traveled as singers in Cuba and South America as well as in the United States. Every year several young people graduate at the various musical colleges, and a gifted young violinist is now studying in Paris. The Art Institute often has colored students, and there are a goodly number of colored people who write creditable poetry, chiefly words to songs which are set to music by their friends. Four newspapers edited in Chicago by colored men, as well as contributions to the “Crisis” and other magazines, give evidence of a remarkable ability for writing. In addition to several clergymen and attorneys of undoubted forensic ability, may be cited several lecturers, one of them a woman with a gift for public speaking, who years ago roused interest throughout England in the condition of colored people. [Sidenote: =Church Chief Factor in Social Life=]