EXPERIMENTS WITH NEGRO WOMEN WORKERS
Employers' opinions regarding the character of Negro labor without reference to sex were considered above. Particular comments concerning male workers were quoted there, comments upon women workers are now given. Four employers of Negro women in large numbers within the past two years gave the Commission the benefit of their experience. They were two mail-order concerns, a manufacturer of automobile spring cushions, and a wholesale millinery shop.
NEGRO WOMEN EMPLOYED ON POWER MACHINES IN A LARGE APRON FACTORY
This concern when it increased its number of Negro women, combined its four shops and moved into this modern daylight factory building.
The mail-order house which established a large office for Negro entry clerks in September, 1918, was the first to try the experiment. It had no precedent to guide it and "did not know how the colored girl would act in business." The unit was opened with ninety girls, and increased in the fall of 1919 to 650 girls, who were given the promise of advancement and Negro supervision. In the early summer of 1920, when the investigator visited this office, there were 311 girls at work, as follows:
| Operators on Elliott-Fisher machines | 30 |
| Mail-order workers | 76 |
| Instructing new girls | 9 |
| Checkers | 138 |
| Supervisors | 5 |
| Mail opening, sorting, etc. | 27 |
| Posting | 26 |
They were above the average in education, 75 per cent being high-school graduates and 12 per cent having had two or more years in college.
The employment manager said that misunderstandings had arisen occasionally, due to the colored girl being oversensitive and suspicious. "The colored girl seems to suspect that her employer is going to put something over on her. She is suspicious of any whites that come in her vicinity and is ready to believe that any white person is prejudiced against her on account of race."
The Negro welfare worker for this unit suggested that what might seem supersensitiveness was often overzealousness on the part of girls who have not had experience enough to judge their limitations or qualifications. Being eager to succeed, they are very much disappointed when advancement does not reward their efforts: "I think the best type of colored girl we have in business is very ambitious. This is her first opportunity, and she feels that she is really a pioneer making history for her race. She is possibly a little overzealous, but can be made to get the right attitude and accept it all very gracefully."