iness.'

"He added that at the present time his gross income from his houses
was between $6,000 and $7,000 per month. Altogether, including several
store buildings and two apartment houses containing fifty-four suites
of rooms, Mr. Terry owns 222 buildings in Brockton. One of these
buildings is leased by the United States Government for the use of the
post-office; another is rented for a public library and reading-room
by the city.

"I should not, perhaps, have dared to make this statement if I had not
confirmed the truth of Mr. Terry's statement by independent inquiry.
In a recent letter from Secretary White, of the Brockton Young Men's
Christian Association, he says: 'Some weeks ago I wrote you relative
to our mutual friend (Watt Terry's) business, but now I want to
enclose a clipping from the tax list which you will see is positive
evidence that the time the taxes were recorded he was carrying well on
to $300,000 and I know that his purchase of $120,000 occurred since
that time. It is certainly a most wonderful development within a few
years.'

"I ought to add that during all the time that Mr. Terry has been in
Brockton he has been connected with the Young Men's Christian
Association, and not long ago he contributed $1,000 toward the support
of that institution.

"Many persons will, perhaps, feel that money which is acquired in this
rapid way is likely to do the person who obtains it as much harm as it
does good. I confess that it seems to me that the same amount of money
acquired more slowly would mean more to the man who gained it. On the
whole, however, the Negro race has not reached the point where it has
been troubled by the number of its millionaires. And if getting slowly
and laboriously is a good discipline, the Negro has almost a surplus
of that kind of blessing. I ought to add, also, in justice to Mr.
Terry, that from all I can learn, his rapid rise has neither injured
his character nor destroyed his good sense. I suspect that the effort
to keep all those houses rented and the effort to pay interest on his
mortgages has had a tendency to make him humble."

Although Watt Terry's success is, of course, phenomenal he is only one
of the many notably successful Negro business men who have told their
stories at meetings of the National Negro Business League. Neither is
Mr. Terry the only Negro who has made a big success in real estate. At
the meeting of the league already described, held in Boston in 1915,