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method of applying the principle should continue to increase in popularity we are sure to have in Harlem and elsewhere a full and flowing tide of Negro business enterprises gladly and loyally supported by the mass of Negro purchasers to their mutual benefit.

The Negro business man who is unintelligently selfish, makes a hash of racial welfare in the attempt to achieve individual success. A case in point is that of the brownskinned dolls. Twenty years ago the Negro child's only choice was between a white Caucasian doll and the "nigger doll," On the lower levels the one was as cheap as the other. Then, a step at a time came the picturesque poupee, variously described as the "Negro doll," the "colored doll" and the "brown-skinned doll." This was sold by white stores at an almost prohibitive price. It was made three times as easy for the Negro child to idolize a white doll as to idolize one with the features of its own race. When the principle of "Race First" began to be proclaimed from scores of platforms and pulpits, certain Negro business men saw a chance to benefit the race and, incidently to reap a wonderful harvest of profits, by appealing to a principle for whose support and maintenance, here and elsewhere, they had never paid a cent. "Factories" for the production of brown-skinned dolls began to spring up-most of the factoring consisting of receiving these dolls from white factories and either stuffing them with saw dust, excelsior or other filling, or merely changing them from one wrapper to another. Bear in mind that the proclaimed object was to make it easier for the Negro mother to teach race patriotism to her Negro child. Yet it was soon notorious that these leeches were charging $3, $4 and $5 for Negro dolls which could sell at prices ranging from 75 cents to $1.25, and yet leave a handsome margin of profit.

The result is that today even in Negro Harlem nine out of ten Negro children are forced to play with white dolls, because rapacious scoundrels have been capitalizing the principle of "patronize your own" in a one-sided way. By lowering their prices to a reasonable level, they could extend their business tremendously. Failing to do this, they are playing into the hands of the vendors of white dolls and making it much easier for the Negro mother to select a white doll for her child; limiting at once their own market and restricting the development of a larger racial ideal.

The Women of Our Race.

America owes much to the foreigner and the Negro in America owes even more. For it was the white foreigner who first proclaimed that the only music which America had produced that was worthy of the name was Negro music. It naturally took some time for this truth to sink in, and, in the meantime, the younger element of Negroes, in their weird worship of everything that was white, neglected and despised their own race-music. More than one college class had walked out, highly insulted, when their white teachers had asked them to sing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “My Lord, What a Morning.” It is to be hoped that they now know better.

But the real subject of this editorial is not Negro music, but Negro women. If any foreigner should come here from Europe, Asia or Africa and be privileged to pass in review the various kinds of women who live in our America he would pick out as the superior of them all the Negro woman. It seems a great pity that it should be left to the foreigner to "discover” the Negro-American woman. For her own mankind have been seeing her for

centuries. And yet, outside of the vague rhetoric of the brethren in church and lodge when they want her to turn their functions into financial successes, and outside of Paul Dunbar and perhaps two other poets, no proper amount of esthetic appreciation of her has been forthcoming from their side.

The white women of

Consider the facts of the case. America are charming to look at in the upper social classes. But even the Negro laundress, cook or elevatorgirl far surpasses her mistress in the matter of feminine charms. No white woman has a color as beautiful as the dark browns, light-browns, peach-browns, or gold and bronze of the Negro girl. These are some of the things which make a walk through any Negro section of New York or Washington such a feast of delight.

Then, there is the matter of form. The bodies and limbs of our Negro women are, on the whole, better built and better shaped than those of any other women on earth -except perhaps, the Egyptian women's. And their gait and movement would require an artist to properly describe. The grace of their carriage is inimitable.

But their most striking characteristic is a feature which even the crude mind of mere man can appreciate. It is, to quote “Gunga Din," "the way in which they carry their clothes." They dress well --not merely in the sense that their clothing is costly and good to look at; but inthat higher sense in which the Parisian woman is the bestdressed woman in Europe. From shoes and stockings to shirtwaists and hats, they choose their clothes with fine taste and show them off to the best advantage when they put them on. That is why a man may walk down the avenue with a Negro cook or factory girl without anyone's being able to guess that she has to work for a living.

And, finally, in the matter of that indefinable some

thing which, for want of a better word, we call simply "charm"-the Negro women are far ahead of all others in America. They have more native grace, more winsomeness, greater beauty and more fire and passion. These facts have already begun to attract ttention, here and elsewhere, and, eventually, the Negro woman will come into her own.

What say you, brothers! Shall we not love her while she is among us? Shall we not bend the knee in worship and thank high heaven for the great good fortune which has given us such sisters and sweethearts, mothers and wives?

To the Young Men of My Race.

The Negro is already at work on the problems of reconstruction. He finds himself in the midst of a world which is changing to its very foundations. Yet million's of Negroes haven't now--and have never had-- the slightest knowledge or idea of what those foundations are. How can they render effective nid to the world without understanding something of how the world, or society, is arranged, how it runs, and how it is run?

No one, friendly or unfriendly, can deny that the Negroes of America do wish to help in constructing this world of men and things which will emerge from the Great War. They want to help, because they realize that their standing and welfare and happiness in that world will very largely depend upon what kind of work it is, They have not been happy, so far, in America-nor, so far as the white man's rule is concerned,―nnywhere else under it. And they want to be happy, if that be possible. For which reason they want to help in the re-shaping of the world-to-be.

They feel the burdens put on them by the White Lords of subjection and repression, of 39 cents worth of education a year in Alabama, of the deep race hatred of the Christian Church, the Y. M. C. A. and the Associated Press; of lynching in the land of "liberty," disfranchisement in "democratic" America and segregation on the Federal trains and in the Federal departments. They feel that the world should be set free from this machinery of mischief-for their sakes as well as that of the world.

Such is the state of mind of the Negro masses here. And now what does this attitude of the Negro masses require? GUIDANCE! Guidance, shaping and direction. Here is strength, here is power, here is a task to call forth the sublimest heroism on the part of those who should lead them. And what do we find? No guidance, no shaping of the course for these millions. The blind may not safely lead the blind in these critical times-and blind men are practically all that we have as leaders.

The old men whose minds are always retrospecting and reminiscing to the past, who were "trained" to read a few dry and dead books which they still fondly believe are hard to get--these do not know anything of the modern world, its power of change and travel, and the mighty range of its ideas. Its labor problems and their relation to wars and alliances and diplomacy are not even suspected by these quaint fossils. They think that they are “leading” Negro thought, but they could serve us better if they were cradelled in cotton-wool, wrapped in faded roses, and laid aside in lavender as mementoes of a dead past.

The young men must gird up their loins for the task of leadership--and leadership has its stern and necessary duties. The first of these is TRAINING. Not in à night did the call come to Christ, not in a day was He made fit to make the great sacrifice. It took thirty years

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