(1) No moneyless people have any power or voice in the solid things of life, in those facts which command homes, farms, store houses, railroads, live stock, steamship lines, furnaces, manufactories, merchandise, banks, and the like. We need plans of co-operation which will enable us to come together with our little savings until they aggregate to an amount that is large enough to support some sort of business. Saving societies or circles should be organized all over the country, for the purpose of studying methods for money saving and money investment. Of course, it must be admitted that money raised by our people in this way has fallen into the hands of men who have made way with it. But this danger may be put out of the way by compelling the man who holds the money to give good security in the form of a bond, legally made and properly signed. The money thus raised should be deposited in the bank till the amount obtained is large enough for some business project. The Alabama Penny Savings Bank of Birmingham started somewhat after this fashion, with a small beginning, but now they command in one way and another nearly one hundred thousand dollars. This bank gives the colored people of Birmingham a power in financial circles that they could obtain by no other means. (2) Our young people need something to do. When the young white man completes his course at school, he returns to find a job ready for him--a job as clerk, bookkeeper, collector or something so. Not so with the young black man--he returns to an empty void so far as concerns the business world. He comes home to be a loafer, or a boot-black, or a buggy boy, or a cook, or a waiter, or a barber, or a prisoner. He comes home to despair, to temptation, to ruin. And this sad state of things can never change by accident: if a better condition of things shall ever be our lot, it must come about as the result of forces which the Negro himself shall put in operation. Our white neighbor looks upon the facts that we earn the millions and can’t control the cents, as proof that we are an inferior race. They say we can be preachers, teachers and doctors, but we can’t manage money and can’t unite in great business enterprises. We seem not to realize that the handling of business affairs conduces to the formation of moral character. The writer dares to hope that there are better things in our hearts on this line than have yet appeared, and that ere long they will appear in our united action and in our substantial investments. However, “_Fear God and keep His commandments._” [Illustration: Rev. C. L. Purce, President, Louisville, Ky.] CONCLUSION.