Under free competition it would have been natural for this class of house servants to enter the economic life of the nation directly. In some cases this happened, especially in the case of the barber and the caterer. For the most part, however, the black applicant was refused admittance to the economic society of the nation. He held his own in the semi-servile work of barber until he met the charge of color discrimination in his own race, and the competition of foreigners. The caterer was displaced by palatial hotels in which he could have no part. On the whole, then, the mass of house servants soon found the doors in their own lines closed in their faces. They could remain good servants but they could not by this means often escape into higher walks of life. The better tenth of them went gradually into professions and thus found economic independence for themselves and their children. The mass of them either remained house servants or turned toward industry. The second attempt of the freedmen toward economic safety lay in industry. It was a less ambitious effort than that of the house servants, and included larger numbers of men. It was characterized by a large migration to the towns. Here it was that the class of slave artisans made themselves felt in freedom and they were joined by numbers of unskilled workmen, such as steam railway hands, porters, hostlers, etc. This class attracted considerable attention and bore the brunt of the economic battle in competition with white working men. It is a class that is growing and in the future it is going to have a large development. At present, however, its fight is difficult. The third effort of economic elevation was by land owning. This was the ideal toward which the great mass of black people looked. They at first thought that the government was going to help them, and the government did in a few instances, as when Sherman distributed land in Georgia and the government sold South Carolina lands for taxes. For the most part, however, the Negroes had to buy their own lands which they did in some cases by means of their bounty money for serving in the army or by means of special monies which they earned as workmen during the war or by the help of the former masters. Some too, by the share tenant system gained enough to buy land. In this way about 200,000 to-day own their farms and thus approximate economic independence.