It is certainly a fallacy that the poor do not want good housing. In a wonderful address, given last spring at the Child Welfare Conference, in Richmond, a negro speaker said in substance: “We would use the bath tub as frequently and enjoy it as much as our white brother and sister, if we could afford to rent houses which have the bath tub in them. We do not prefer dilapidation and discomfort, nor being forced to live in districts where there is only depravity and low surroundings; but the better ones of us have too much self-respect to force ourselves on our white brothers, if they do not want us living alongside of them.” All that Miss Cocke said was indorsed by the chairman, John Stewart Bryan, who as publisher of one of the most influential newspapers in the South, _The News Leader_, is in a position to know the facts. “It is an old story to any engaged in work of this sort,” he declared, “that a person situated as the negro is in Richmond pays more taxes than the richest man in Richmond, because the taxes he pays take such a large part of his income and he gets so little in return. All that Miss Cocke says is true. They are segregated in Jackson ward, and under a new ordinance they are being still further segregated. That is radically wrong, it is economically wrong, and nothing in the world can change it but an awakening of public sentiment, and it ought to be awakened and it will be.”[32] A study of the activities of women and women’s associations along housing reform lines shows that they are beginning to recognize the importance of good homes for our colored citizens. Professor Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, of Chicago University and the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, has given this subject special study, and it is to her that we owe the following thoughtful statement of this particular housing question, published in _The Survey_: One of the many serious problems that now confront the negro not only in southern communities but also in many a northern city is the difficulty he experiences in finding decent housing accommodations for his family. In the face of increasing manifestations of race prejudice, he has come to acquiesce silently, as various civil rights are withheld from him in the old “free North,” which was once the Mecca of his race. He rarely protests, for example, at being excluded from restaurants and hotels or at being virtually refused entertainment at the theater or the opera. There are three points, however, which he cannot yield and in regard to which he should not be allowed to yield. He must claim a decent home for his family in a respectable neighborhood and at a reasonable rental, an equal chance of employment with the white man, and education for his children. We will consider here only the first of these three demands.