f only to the most patient and determined search. If the people
are of mountainous proportions and are unyielding in their attitude of
stolidity or unconcernment in the affairs of their business leaders,
for the latter naught is left but to assume the role of Mohamet and go
to the people.

In various ways the suggestion can be followed, but in no more
feasible and effective way than by an appeal to their selfish and
individual interests. On the principle that a people's pocket can be
reached before their pride, it is suggested that those who would more
largely secure their trade and patronage, do so by holding out to them
the inducements common to co-operative business enterprises. The
business represented by huge department stores operated by such
merchant princes as John Wanamaker and Siegel & Cooper in their
returns to their employees, and the offering of bargain inducements to
their patrons in general, illustrate to a large degree what can be
done on a smaller scale by business men of the race, provided the
experiment be deemed worth the trial. The True Reformer's Organization
is a purely Negro enterprise, representing interests running up into
the millions, having as its mainspring of success the co-operative and
profit yielding principle indicated.

The foregoing illustrations, references and suggestions cannot fail,
at least in part, to answer the grave and momentous question on whose
right solution so much of the race's future welfare depends. SECOND
PAPER.

HOW CAN THE NEGROES BE INDUCED TO RALLY MORE TO NEGRO ENTERPRISES AND
TO THEIR PROFESSIONAL MEN?

BY PROF. J. W. GILBERT.

[Illustration: J. W. Gilbert, A. M.]

PROF. JOHN W. GILBERT, M. A.

Prof. John Wesley Gilbert, A. B., A. M., was born at
Hephzibah, Ga., July 6, 1864. Young Gilbert was left to the
care of his widowed mother and his uncle John, for whom he
had been named. He usually spent half the year on the farm
and the other half in the public schools of the city of
Augusta. After finishing the public grammar school course,
he spent twelve months, all told, in the Atlanta Baptist
College (then Seminary).

In January, 1884, Paine College opened in Augusta. He
attended this institution eighteen months and graduated from
it in June, 1886. In September of the same year he entered
the Junior Class of Brown University, Providence, R. I. He
graduated from this his