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182  THE COLORED AMERICAN MAGAZINE

[[image - black and white photograph of Negro woman dressed in a formal white dress]]
[[caption]] MISS CLARA R. THREET, of Seattle, Wash. [[/caption]]

Miss Threet is perhaps one of the most proficient operators in Seattle, having to do, and doing with success, twelve different codes daily. 

This excellent business woman was born in Palestine, Texas, but with her parents went to Seattle when quite a child.  Graduating from the city's public schools, she immediately entered Leo's Business College, from which she graduated with honors.  Without any difficulty she secured her position with the large financial house.  Miss Threet is also known beyond the confines of her own city in musical circles, having had the tutelage in music of some of the best teachers in Seattle. 

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An Example of Negro Manhood
By ROY REGINALD

I ENTER into this study with a feeling akin to dread, not that the task is odious or tedious, not that the career of my subject is interwoven with a multiplicity of endeavors, complex of nature, but rather that he has engaged in such a few, all of which were simple of construction, easy of comprehension and fundamental in their influence for good in the community in which he lives.  Therefore I enter into the study of so sturdy a young man, with a kind of fear that I may not be able to impress those who may read these lines of his real worth to our city, county and State, in morals, manhood and material. 

The subject of this sketch was born in Americus, Sumter County, Georgia, April 20, 1871, and received his educational training in the public and high schools of his native city.  In the common vernacular, he was a "bright boy," and many were the predictions as to the part he would play in after life, in those things which would affect the social life and material uplift of his people. 

In early life he evinced a desire to "know something, do something and be somebody," and as a consequence he hired himself to a cotton firm of his city as office boy at a salary, to which the word salary is verily a misnomer.  As an office boy, he was efficient and honest and grew rapidly into the good graces of his employer, until in time and in turn he became a cotton sampler and a cotton classer.  Naturally increased competency and the shifting of duties and responsibilities brought an increased salary and young Williams's career in the ordinary estimate was commented upon by his friends as satisfactory.  But not so with Mr. Williams. 

In the year 1891, a short time after the Civil Service Law went into effect, he entered the examination for a position in the railway mail service.  He passed the examination creditably, and in due time was appointed a railway postal clerk on a line of road that ran through his home city.  The position paid him $1,000 per year, and for fifteen years he held it and was considered by the heads of the department as a competent and careful clerk.  In the year 1906 he voluntarily resigned the position of railway postal clerk, then at a salary of $1,100 per year, to assume the presidency of the Wage Earners' Loan and Investment Company of Savannah, Ga., of which institution he is at present the president. 

Early in his career as a man he "shied his castor" with the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, and when I first saw him he wore the paraphernalia of the past