C. MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS
Provident Hospital and Training School.—Provident Hospital and Training School is supported and controlled by whites and Negroes. It has a mixed board of directors. Practically all its physicians and all its internes and nurses are Negroes. For the year ended June, 1919, the hospital handled 1,421 patients, served 682 persons through its dispensary, and gave free medical care to 143. Of the total number of patients in the hospital during 1919, 1,248 were Negroes, and 173 were white. Support of the institution comes from patients and donations. During 1919 the receipts from patients totaled $36,445.81; from donations $5,782.07. Donations in drugs totaled $1,505.95, and from the dispensary $112.05. The expenses for the year were $42,002.35. The hospital has an endowment fund of $47,350, invested in securities. It has a training school for Negro nurses whose faculty is made up of prominent white and Negro physicians and surgeons.
Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium.—The two branches of this institution which are in Negro neighborhoods, at 2950 Calumet Avenue and 4746 South Wabash Avenue, and the Children's South Side Dispensary, 705 West Forty-seventh Street, are municipal agencies so located that they are convenient for Negroes.
South Side Dispensary.—This is at 2531 South Dearborn Street and is supported by the Northwestern University Medical School. It gives free care to those unable to pay for medical services.
D. SUPPORT OF INSTITUTIONS BY NEGROES
Social agencies, although their work is limited as respects the Negro group, have for many years taken second place to the churches in self-support. This is accounted for largely by the fact that social work in general has been regarded as a philanthropic rather than a co-operative matter. With Negro social and philanthropic agencies, especially during the period of general unsettlement following the migration, the number of possible beneficiaries greatly increased, while the group of Negroes educated in giving to such agencies grew more slowly. Recently, however, support from Negroes for their own institutions has gradually been increasing. An example is found in the Urban League. In 1917 Negroes contributed $1,000 and in 1919 $3,000. During 1920 six social agencies and twenty-seven churches raised among Negroes approximately $445,000. Although Negroes contribute in some measure to agencies like the United Charities and American Red Cross, there is no means of knowing or accurately estimating the amount.
CHAPTER V
THE NEGRO HOUSING PROBLEM
A. A STUDY OF NEGRO FAMILIES
Consideration of the housing problem as a continuing factor in the experience of Negro families led to an effort to study it from a new angle of approach—through histories of typical families in the Negro community.
The data thus gathered afford an opportunity to present an interpretative account of Negro family life, setting forth the intimate problems confronting Negroes in Chicago, their daily social difficulties, the reflection in their home life of their struggle for existence, just how they live, how they participate in the activities of the Negro community and the community at large, their own opinions concerning civic problems, their housing experience, how much they earn and how much they save, how much they spend and what value they receive from these expenditures, how they spend their spare time, and how they seek to improve their condition in the community.