This was a “condition, not a theory,” that we faced when in October, 1900, we opened our office as the first Negro Real Estate Agents in New York City, making a specialty of the management of colored tenement property. Our very best friends all told us that we were attempting the impossible, that we could not succeed, that we would starve in our undertaking. For the first year and a half they proved to be prophets indeed. Our many disappointments, heartaches and actual sufferings during this period would fill a book and read like a romance. Every one could tell us how we could NOT make it, but none how we could. We were real estate agents making a specialty of the management of colored tenement property for nearly a year before we actually succeeded in getting a colored tenement to manage. Our first opportunity occurred in West 134th Street as a result of a dispute between two landlords. To “get even” one of them turned his house over to us to fill with colored tenants. We were so very successful in renting and managing this house that, after a time, we were able to induce other landlords in whose houses vacancies had occurred due to the opening of this house for colored people, to make the change and give us their property to manage. This was the beginning of the turning over to Negro tenants of one of the very best sections of Manhattan Island and in no part of the city are there any better built or more modern tenements for any class of people than are now occupied by Negroes in this section. By opening for colored tenants first a house in one block, and then a house in another, we have finally succeeded in securing for the colored people of New York over 250 first-class flats and private dwellings in a fine section of the city, conveniently located as to transportation facilities, etc. To this extent our ambition has been gratified. There is, however, more work to be done in another direction before we shall be entirely satisfied with the condition of the Negro tenancy in this great city. We feel that our personal experience both as a Negro tenant and a landlord has peculiarly fitted us for the work. Dr. Booker T. Washington in his latest book, “The Negro in Business,” says: “_Mr. Payton has had an opportunity during this time to learn something of the condition under which colored tenants live, sometimes are compelled to live, in New York. Stranger than all else, he was, as he has confessed to me, several times put out of houses, bag and baggage, for inability to pay his rent. He has thus been able to see how an ejectment suit looks from both the point of view of tenant and of landlord._”