that only ten per cent
retire from the contest victorious. When we recall the fact that the
colored people have come so recently from savagery, through the
barbarism and debasing effects of American slavery, into the light of
the present-day civilization, we should expect them to be slow in
getting a footing in the shifting and ever-changing sands of the
business world, while in slavery they were deprived of every
opportunity to learn anything about the art of business or even to
drink in its spirit. It was one of the essential conditions of the
slave system that they should be taught to distrust each other; and
they learned this lesson well. We must expect that it will take some
time to unlearn it. Along with this blighting feeling of distrust the
seeds of envy and jealousy were carefully sown. These seeds must have
fallen in good soil, for they sprang up and increased wonderfully, and
now constitute the thorns and weeds in the pathway of the colored
man's success in business.

In view of their economic, educational and political history, we
should naturally expect the colored race to make in the first
generation of their freedom more progress in education and general
culture, more progress in the building of churches and in the
acquisition of homes and lands than in the exacting arena of business.
At any rate such has been the fact. The entire race is passing through
a hard and severe economic struggle. The whole nation is in the throes
of a great social distress, on account of the presence of this colored
race with physical aspects so different from the main body of the
people. The colored people are being put to a severe test. They are
being tried as it were by fire. They are face to face and in
competition with the most efficient, the most exacting people the
world has ever seen. The dross is being driven off. The race is being
purified and strengthened for the contests which are to follow. The
colored man or woman who would succeed in business must meet not only
the competition of his white neighbor with his superior capital and
training, but also the blight of distrust and the jealousy and envy of
many of his own race. His course is by no means plain sailing. He has
foes within his race as well as foes without; enemies in front and
enemies in the rear. And yet, in spite of all these adverse conditions
a very creditable beginning has already been made in the business
world--a beginning that promises well for the