Another company reported that when it attempted to fill skilled positions with Negroes the foremen said they would never be able to teach them as long as they lived. "It couldn't be done." The foremen were told they had to do it, and they now agree that it can be done and are "quite won over to the point of employing Negroes." The experience of this plant led the superintendent to the conclusion that no particular race is especially fitted for any given kind of work.
The superintendent of a foundry employing 2,500 men, of whom 427 are Negroes, said:
The foremen told me one time that they never could get a colored man to grind because he was afraid of the wheel. I thought we'd better try out a few of them. We found that was not the fact at all. One of the best grinders we now have is a colored man.
In discussing the attitude of foremen toward colored labor, the superintendent of another large foundry made this significant statement:
I think 50 per cent of what trouble we who employ Negro labor have is due to inefficient foremen, and the failure is in the foreman directly over the man to understand the Negro. As I see it, the Negro must be handled differently from the Pole whom we have usually had in the common labor capacity. We cannot handle the Negro the same as we could the Pole. Our foremen have not been accustomed here in Chicago in our shops to handling Negroes, and at times I have a real fight to see a Negro get an absolutely square deal.
The industrial secretary of the Chicago Urban League, referring to a large firm engaged in the manufacture of machinery, remarked:
I find the attitude of the company liberal. Negroes are advanced to high-grade positions, although some foremen need education in order to have them take the proper attitude toward the employment of Negroes. One foreman set their efficiency down to 75 per cent; the matter was taken to the efficiency department and his statement was found to be untrue. This bears out the point that Negroes will not succeed where foremen do not intend them to succeed.
Despite occasional statements that the Negro is slow or shiftless, the volume of evidence before the Commission shows that Negroes are satisfactory employees and compare favorably with other racial groups.
4. NEGRO WOMEN IN INDUSTRY
Before the war created openings in industry for Negro women, they were even more definitely restricted in their choice of occupations than were Negro men. Restricted opportunity is evident from the fact that, in 1910, almost two-thirds of the gainfully occupied Negro women in Chicago were engaged in two occupational groups, "servants" and "laundresses not in laundries," these being included among those in domestic and personal service who numbered more than three-fourths. The enumeration of Negro women gainfully employed in Chicago in 1910 classified in the census according to industries is given in Table XXVII.