have our choice of the professions, it is true, but, as we have
not been endowed with an overwhelming abundance of brains, it is not
probable that we can contribute to the bar a great lawyer except once in
a great while. The same may be said of medicine; nor are we able to tide
over the "starving time," between the reception of a diploma and the
time that a man's profession becomes a paying one.

Being determined to know whether this industrial and business ostracism
lay in ourselves or "in our stars," we have from time to time, knocked,
shaken, and kicked, at these closed doors of employment. A cold,
metallic voice from within replies, "We do not employ colored people."
Ours not to make reply, ours not to question why. Thank heaven, we are
not obliged to do and die; having the preference to do or die, we
naturally prefer to do.

But we cannot help wondering if some ignorant or faithless steward of
God's work and God's money hasn't blundered. It seems necessary that we
should make known to the good men and women who are so solicitous about
our souls, and our minds, that we haven't quite got rid of our bodies
yet, and until we do, we must feed and clothe them; and this attitude of
keeping us out of work forces us back upon charity.

That distinguished thinker, Mr. Henry C. Carey, in his valuable works on
political economy, has shown by the truthful and forceful logic of
history, that the elevation of all peoples to a higher moral and
intellectual plane, and to a fuller investiture of their civil rights,
has always steadily kept pace with the improvement in their physical
condition. Therefore we feel that resolutely and in unmistakable
language, yet in the dignity of moderation, we should strive to make
known to all men the justice of our claims to the same employments as
other's under the same conditions. We do not ask that anyone of our
people shall be put into a position because he is a colored person, but
we do most emphatically ask that he shall not be kept out of a position
because he is a colored person. "An open field and no favors" is all
that is requested. The time was when to put a colored girl or boy behind
a counter would have been to decrease custom; it would have been a tax
upon the employer, and a charity that we were too proud to accept; but
public sentiment has changed. I am satisfied that the employment of a
colored clerk or a colored saleswoman wouldn't even be a "nine days'
wonder." It is easy of a