A questionnaire concerning kinds of labor in which Negro migrants engaged, and wages paid them both in Pittsburgh and in their native South was prepared; and answers to it from over five hundred individuals were obtained during the months of July and August, 1917. Information relating to housing, rents, health and social conditions was elicited in a similar manner. An effort was made to visit and study every Negro quarter in Pittsburgh. Data was secured from the Negro sections in the Hill District and upper Wylie and Bedford Avenues; the Lawrenceville district, about Penn Avenue, between Thirty-fourth and Twenty-eighth Streets; the Northside Negro quarter around Beaver Avenue and Fulton Street; the East Liberty section in the vicinity of Mignonette and Shakespeare Streets, and the new downtown Negro section on Second Avenue, Ross and Water Streets.
The information thus secured is discussed in the following pages.
TABLE NUMBER I
Time of Residence in Pittsburgh of 505 Negro Migrants Questioned
[Table No. I] indicates that the migration has been going on for little longer than one year. Ninety-three percent of those who gave the time of residence in Pittsburgh had been here less than one year. More than eighty percent of the single men interviewed had been here less than six months. In the number who have been here for the longest periods, married men predominate, showing the tendency of this class to become permanent residents. This fact is evidently well known to some industrial concerns which have been bringing men from the South. Many of them have learned from bitter experience that the mere delivery of a train load of men from a Southern city, does not guarantee a sufficient supply of labor. This is evidenced by the fact that the labor agents of some of these firms, made an effort to secure married men only, and even to investigate them prior to their coming here. Differences in recruiting methods may also explain why some employers and labor agents hold a very optimistic view of the Negro as a worker, while others despair of him. The reason why Pittsburgh has been unable to secure a stable labor force is doubtless realized by the local manufacturers. The married Negro comes to the North to stay. He desires to have his family with him, and if he is not accompanied North by his wife and children he plans to have them follow him at the earliest possible date. Although such a man is glad to receive the better treatment, enlarged privileges and higher wages, which are accorded him here, he cannot adjust himself permanently to the Pittsburgh housing situation. He meets his first insuperable difficulty when he attempts to get a house in which to live. Back South, he may have been oppressed, but his home was often in a more comfortable place, where he had light and space. At least he did not have to live in one room in a congested slum and pay excessive rents.
While it is true that the foreign immigrant of a few years ago was probably not accorded any better accommodations in Pittsburgh than is the Negro at present, it should be remembered that the foreigner did not know the language. Everything seemed strange and unfamiliar to him. He was loath to move to an even stranger part of the city and preferred to stay in his first new world home and to live among his own people, even under adverse conditions. It is altogether different with the Negro. He knows the language and the country; he does not fear to migrate and when he does not feel content in one place, he proceeds to look for a better one. We might cite dozens of incidents of men who have either had their families here or intended to bring them, but have gone to other cities where they hoped to find better accommodations. This is certain to continue if cities like Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia keep in advance of Pittsburgh in building or providing houses for these migrants. The Pittsburgh manufacturer will never keep an efficient labor supply of Negroes until he learns to compete with the employers of the other cities in a housing programme as well as in wages.
The actual situation of the Pittsburgh housing problem for the Negro is shown by the figures obtained in our survey. Almost ninety-eight percent of the people investigated live either in rooming houses or in tenements containing more than three families. Thirty-five percent live in tenement houses, fifty percent in rooming houses, about twelve percent in camps and churches, and only two and a half percent live in what may be termed single private family residences.
TABLE NUMBER II
Kinds of Residences of 465 Negro Migrants Questioned