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242

THE CRISIS

[[image - MR. T. J. CALLOWAY]]

he could never make much financial headway. He sold his business, came to Lincoln and has constructed and equipped a building that serves for a store, dining room, hotel and residence. With cows giving milk and the other sources of income he is making good, and at the same time is affording the community a merchant in full sympathy with our best ambitions, a man ready fully to co-operate in all movements for the progress of Lincoln.

Dr. Daniel P. Seaton was a grown man when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He grasped the first opportunity for education, finally succeeded in being awarded a medical diploma from a Philadelphia medical collage and later took special studies in the theological department of Howard University. As was customary in earlier years, he combined the practice of medicine with the ministry. He found it too much labor to do both, so he gave up medicine. He has made some three trips to Palestine and has published a book, "The Land of Promise." Dr. Seaton has been thrifty and owns unencumbered real estate in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Md., and Chester, Pa. He had the means to purchase a home wherever he desired, but he chose Lincoln, where his home has been planned by an architect, built by carpenters, plasterers, tinners, furnace men, etc., all of his own race. His residence there is a source of inspiration to his neighbors. He is the "Grand Old Man" at Lincoln, as might have been seen when the whole community joined in a surprise testimonial on his recent birthday.

The foregoing sketches are types and illustrations. It is not the men alone who are worthy of note. Except for the difficulty of stating the case, the facts as to Lincoln women would be of even greater interest. The Alpha Progressive Club is the special organ of the women, being an outgrowth of the Lincoln Citizens Association, composed of both sexes, which is performing some of the functions of a city council and chamber of commerce.

As Lincoln is but 14 miles from the heart of Washington City, 26 miles from Baltimore and directly between these cities its citizens have the advantage of being accessible to employment in either city and within easy reach of their markets over a choice of transportation by trolley, steam railway or driveway.

If the future of Lincoln can be prophesied from its brief past it is destined to meet a situation forced upon the colored people. If we have learned voluntarily to unite in churches, fraternal societies, schools and apartments we shall find some additional conveniences if we voluntarily unite in communities of our own choosing. Then, and not until then, will we, as a race, learn to feed, clothe and house ourselves, an operation effectively performed by the slowly creeping snail but a lesson yet to be learned by some of those high creatures that claim to be made "in God's own image."


AN OLD FOLKS' HOME

IT is noticeable that the number of colored people asking charity in hard times like the present is much less than the great poverty of the race would lead one to expect. The reason for this is the large amount of unrecorded and personal charity that takes place inside the race lines : the cheerful helping of neighbors, 



AN OLD FOLKS' HOME  243

the adoption of children and the care of the old. In the latter work Negro charity has become institutional and the old folks' home is perhaps the most characteristic Negro charity.

There are today in the United States not less than one hundred homes supported and conducted very largely by colored people. One of them, the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Persons at Philadelphia, was endowed by a colored man in 1864 with a capital of about $100,000. Philanthropic whites have added to this until the Home's property now is worth $400,000. In other cases, as in Springfield, Mass., a colored man, Primus Mason, founded a home for all races; and in New Bedford, a colored woman, Miss Elizabeth C. Carter, has a home for which she has collected over $35,000.

This article refers primarily to the Home for Aged Colored People in Cleveland, Ohio. It was founded by Mrs. Eliza Bryant in 1893 and incorporated in 1896. The present property containing eleven rooms and all improvements was purchased in 1901, burned down soon after, but reoccupied in 1902. The home is valued at $11,725, with a mortgage indebtedness of $4,000. The home collects through donations, entertainments and the like about $2,200 a year. There is a house furnishing committee which collected $373 worth of furniture last year; there is a $15,000 campaign committee which is hard at work. The institution is conducted by a board of trustees consisting of twenty persons of whom four are men and the rest women. The home is a member of the Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthrophy and thus receives advice and co-operation in the latest philanthropic methods. This institution together with dozens of similar institutions throughout the United States call for the sympathy and co-operation of all right-minded people.

[[image - THE COLORED OLD FOLKS' HOME AT CLEVELAND]]