It is a far cry from satisfying an employer to pleasing the public. The one requires the obeying of the orders of a boss, the other calls for initiative and self-direction. Business enterprise involves judgments of the whims, wishes and wants of prospective customers and skill in buying goods or supplying services to satisfy their demands. The wage-earner needs his labor only. The business promoter must secure capital and establish credit. The employee has only the stake of a present place, and has little hindrance from going to another job in case of disappointment. The business man risks name, time, labor and money in the commercial current and has only his experience left, if he loses his venture. Therefore, the Negro two and a half centuries under the complete control of a master could hardly be expected in one generation to acquire the experience, develop the initiative, accumulate the capital, establish the credit and secure the good-will demanded to-day in carrying on great and extensive business enterprises, such as find their headquarters in New York City, the commercial heart of the continent. Besides, the handicaps of the social environment, due to the prejudices and differences of the white group by which he is surrounded, and to previous condition of servitude, have had their commercial and industrial consequences. Again, speaking for New York City, many of the Negroes who were leaders in whatever business was carried on up to about 1884 were the prominent workers in activities for race liberation and manhood privileges, thus subtracting energy and time from business pursuit. The movement may be likened in a rough way to that of English workingmen before and after about 1848; the first period being a struggle for the liberty of labor and the second period aiming to fill that liberty with manhood and economic content. This study, then, of what the Negro is doing along business lines in New York City does not show a number of large operations when compared with what goes on in America's greatest commercial Metropolis. But the findings are highly significant for what they disclose of business capacity and possibility. There has been a business development among Negroes in such a competitive community that is both substantial and prophetic. 2. A HISTORY OF THE NEGRO IN BUSINESS