ley addressed to the students at the Tuskegee Institute,
"Integrity and industry," he said, "are the best possessions which
any man can have, and every man can have them. No man who has them
ever gets into the police court or before the grand jury or in the
work-house or the chain gang. They are indispensable to success. The
merchant requires the clerk whom he employs to have them; the railroad
corporation inquires whether the man seeking employment possesses
them. Every avenue of human endeavor welcomes them. They are the only
keys to open with certainty the door of opportunity to struggling
manhood. If you do not already have them, get them."

For our encouragement, reference has been made to a portion of the
history of the distinguished President of this convention, and also,
for the same purpose, quotation has been made from a speech of the
honored President of his country. We thus have before us the example
of the former and the precept of the latter--each a leader in his own
sphere, the one black and the other white. By following the example of
the one and the advice of the other, the Negro will not only succeed
as a business man, but the early dawn of the present century will yet
witness the best achievements and the loftiest conceptions of a once
enslaved race.

SECOND PAPER

THE NEGRO AS A BUSINESS MAN.

BY ANDREW F. HILYER.

[Illustration: Andrew F. Hilyer]

ANDREW FRANKLIN HILYER.

The subject of this sketch was born in slavery near Monroe,
Walton county, Georgia, August 14, 1858. In the early
fifties his maternal grandfather, Overton Johnson, was set
free, given some money and sent North. He went to Cincinnati
and began a free man's life as a cook and steward in a
hotel. In a short time, by strict economy, he had saved some
money from his earnings. This, with the money brought from
the South, enabled him to open "The Dumas House," well known
to the older residents of Cincinnati. In 1862 he sold this
business, moved to St. Louis and opened a hotel in that
city, where he was at the close of the war. In 1866 he sent
for the remainder of his family in the South, consisting of
his youngest son and a daughter and her four children, the
eldest of whom was Andrew Franklin Hilyer.

About the time of their arrival in St. Louis business
reverses threw the now enlarged family upon their own
resources, a