As a rule, the colored people all over this country are getting very small wages; therefore they cannot save sufficient money to enter large financial enterprises; but we must organize co-operate associations, and from this will come assistance to build grocery, shoe, dry goods, and commission houses.
We must come together. The colored people must unite, and the quicker the better. Every other race on earth is uniting. Why not the Negro?
If you should be quite a long way behind your leader, keep in line. Don't throw stumbling-blocks in the way of those behind you, or try to impede the progress of those who have gone before you. We are all one family, notwithstanding some of us can almost pass for other folks. Again, lay down some of this fighting religion and take up piety. Think how far you have traveled, and yet how far you are to go. Thousands of immensely wealthy negroes, some of whom came from peanut stands, others from the corn and cotton fields, slave men one day, another free men; ignorant to-day, to-morrow educated; from one position to another the Negro has traveled until they have produced some of the best men in the country, and some of them have traveled all the way from the ditch to the State House in less than a quarter of a century. With men such as R. T. Greener, J. E. Bruce, T. Thomas Fortune, J. M. Henderson, of New York; Booker T. Washington, W. H. Council, Henry C. Smith, of Alabama; George L. Knox. G. L. Jones, Will M. Lewis, W. A. Sweeney, S. A. Elbert, of Indiana; W. H. Crogman, R. R. Wright, W. A. Pledger, of Georgia; H. C. Smith, B. W. Armett, J. P. Green, of Ohio; J. C. Napier, R. F. Boyd, J. T. Settle, of Tennessee; D. Augustus Straker, of Michigan; John C. Dancy, Isaac H. Smith, of North Carolina; O. M. Rickets, of Nebraska; John M. Langston, J. H. Smythe, John Mitchell, Jr., of Virginia; B. K. Bruce, E. E. Cooper, Robert H. Terrell, R. W. Thompson, Alex Crummell, of the District of Columbia; John R. Lynch, C. J. Jones, James Hill, of Mississippi; J. Q. Adams, of Minnesota; N. W. Cuney, of Texas; John S. Durham, J. B. Raymond, of Pennsylvania; George W. Murray, of South Carolina; P. B. S. Pinchback, of Louisiana; E. H. Morris, of Illinois; Albert S. White, of Kentucky; J. Milton Turner, of Missouri; and scores of others equally worthy, we expect to be on our way very soon to the White House. Let us start now, to-day. (Boston Advance.)
NEGRO BUSINESS ASSOCIATION.
An Afro-American Financial Accumulating Merchandise and Business Association was organized in Pittsburg, Pa., June 22, 1896, for the purpose of accumulating money to establish business among the race. This association promises to build three large buildings, not to cost less than $40,000 each. In these are to be carried on all kinds of merchandise, and our young men and women will be thus employed.
Its object is to accumulate $560,000, which is to be divided into shares of $52 each, and any person can purchase one or more shares for 10 cents each, for which the association gives the purchaser a membership certificate. This certificate entitles the person to any employment which the association may need; also when the holder of the certificate has paid in $52, his or her certificate will be indorsed as a paid-up certificate; and the holder will cease to pay any further dues; and on this certificate he or she draws annual dividends of all money, over the current expenses, and when the husband dies the wife receives the same; when the wife dies the children take up the same certificate and receive the same dividends as long as one of them is living. Single persons holding certificates receive the same privilege, and when they die, whoever they designate will take up their certificate and receive the same dividend.
