8. If a bank does not exist, can one be established and supported?
9. If a millinery establishment does not exist, can one be established and supported, etc.?
10. If a shoe store or gents' furnishing store does not exist, can one be established and supported?
11. If a drug-store does not exist, can one be established and supported?
In another such pamphlet monthly meetings between the grocers and the clubwomen are suggested. Such meetings would have as their object the fixing of uniform and mutually satisfactory prices and service. It is also recommended that Negro insurance agents constitute themselves unofficial health inspectors for their sections of the town. In this capacity they would report to the public health committee of the local league all instances of badly ventilated homes or schools, mosquito-breeding spots, accumulations of rubbish and filth, or any other conditions menacing the health of the colored citizens. The suggestion is made that where possible reading-rooms and bureaus of information be opened in connection with the offices of Negro newspapers and that such rooms place the colored papers from all sections of the country at the disposal of the patrons after the editor has finished with them. That several small shopkeepers club together and employ one expert bookkeeper is another idea offered. It is also proposed that small retailers get together for the purpose of purchasing jointly such commodities as can be advantageously secured in this manner. It is finally urged that a committee be appointed each year to make a social survey of the Negro population. This study would show what progress had been made during the year in all lines of endeavor and at the same time furnish a directory of all the business and social activities of the Negroes of the community. It is pointed out that the sale of advertising space in its pages would alone more than pay for such a directory.
It will be noted that these business leagues, like all other organizations founded or moulded by Booker Washington, do not stick to their lasts in any narrow sense. Mr. Washington never lost sight of the fact that the fundamental concern of all human beings was living, and that farming, business, education, recreation, or what not, were only important in so far as they made the whole of life better worth living. The means employed never obscured his vision of the aim sought as is so frequently and unhappily the case with lesser men.
Just as at the agricultural conferences, so at these business gatherings, Booker Washington used the methods employed by the revivalist at the experience meeting. By so doing he accomplished the double purpose of encouraging the successful by the tribute of public recognition and spurring on the less successful and the unsuccessful to go and do likewise. Also by means of men and women telling their fellows in open meeting how they achieved their success the race is, as it were, revealed to itself. It was, for instance, through a meeting of the National Negro Business League that it came to light that the man who raises the most potatoes in the United States, and who is commonly known as the Potato King of the West, is a Negro—J.G. Groves of Edwardsville, Kan. Groves' story at one of the annual meetings attracted so much attention that an account of his life later appeared in an illustrated special article in the American Magazine. It was also discovered through a league meeting that Scott Bond, another colored man, was probably the most successful farmer in the State of Arkansas. After he had told his story at the meeting of the National League held in New York in 1910 he was pursued by cameramen and interviewers for days and weeks and his story was spread all over the United States. At the Chicago meeting of 1912 Watt Terry, a modest and even shrinking colored man of Brockton, Mass., unfolded a remarkable story of success in spite of the hardest and must untoward circumstances. So unbelievable seemed this man's story that the Executive Committee took up with him personally the facts of his recital, and later the Secretary of the League, in response to a demand, had to vouch for his statements in open meeting. To clinch the matter still further Mr. Washington wrote to the Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association in Brockton, who replied that Terry's story had, if anything, been understated rather than overstated. Booker Washington himself told Watt Terry's story in the pages of the Independent for March 27, 1913. Here it is: "... Mr. Terry is a modest-appearing young man about thirty years of age. When he landed at Brockton some twelve years ago he had, according to his own story, a capital of just twelve cents. He found work at first as a coachman. After a time he obtained what he thought was a better position as janitor in the Young Men's Christian Association Building. Some of the members of the association succeeded in getting him a position as a railway porter.
"'Somehow or other,' said Terry, 'I did not care for that sort of work, and after a few months gave it up. I made up my mind that I would rather work at a trade, and tried to get work in one of the shoe factories in Brockton. As I did not know the trade and there was a good deal of competition for the places open to apprentices it looked rather hopeless at first. Finally, I got the foreman to say he would give me a chance, provided I was willing to work for two weeks without pay. I accepted that offer and made up my mind to make the most of those two weeks.'
"At the end of the two weeks Terry had done so well that he was given a position in which he earned $7 a week. By sticking close to his job and making the most of his opportunities he was gradually promoted until he earned first $10, then $15, $18, and finally $25 a week.
"'I had some difficulties at first,' said Terry. 'The other men did not like me at first and showed it. However, I stuck to the job, kept on smiling, and it was not long before I was on just as good terms with the men in the shop as I cared to be. As I did not have much opportunity to spend my money, I found it easier to save.'