Adjustment to new conditions was taken up by the Urban League as its principal work. Co-operating with the Travelers Aid Society, United Charities, and other agencies of the city, it met the migrants at stations and, as far as its facilities permitted, secured living quarters and jobs for them. The churches took them into membership and attempted to make them feel at home. Negro newspapers published instructions on dress and conduct and had great influence in smoothing down improprieties of manner which were likely to provoke criticism and intolerance in the city.
Individual experiences of the migrants in this period of adjustment were often interesting. The Commission made a special effort to note these experiences for the light they throw upon the general process. Much of the adjustment was a double process, including the adjustment of rural southern Negroes to northern urban conditions. It is to be remembered that over 70 per cent of the Negro population of the South is rural. This means familiarity with rural methods, simple machinery, and plain habits of living. Farmers and plantation workers coming to Chicago had to learn new tasks. Skilled craftsmen had to relearn their trades when they were thrown amid the highly specialized processes of northern industries. Domestic servants went into industry. Professional men who followed their clientèle had to re-establish themselves in a new community. The small business men could not compete with the Jewish merchants, who practically monopolized the trade of Negroes near their residential areas, or with the "Loop" stores.
Many Negroes sold their homes and brought their furniture with them. Reinvesting in property frequently meant a loss; the furniture brought was often found to be unsuited to the tiny apartments or large, abandoned dwelling-houses they were able to rent or buy.
The change of home carried with it in many cases a change of status. The leader in a small southern community, when he came to Chicago, was immediately absorbed into the struggling mass of unnoticed workers. School teachers, male and female, whose positions in the South carried considerable prestige, had to go to work in factories and plants because the disparity in educational standards would not permit continuance of their profession in Chicago.
These illustrations in Table VI, taken from family histories, show how adjustment led to inferior occupation.
| Occupation in South | Occupation on First Arrival in Chicago | Occupation One or More Years Later |
|---|---|---|
| Display man on furniture | Laborer | Laborer in factory |
| Stone mason | Laborer in coal yard | Laborer in Stock Yards |
| Proprietor of café | Laborer | Elevator man |
| Farmer | Laborer in Stock Yards | Laborer in Stock Yards |
| Coal miner | Porter in tailoring shop | Janitor |
| Proprietor of boarding-house | Laborer | Laborer in Stock Yards |
| Farmer | Factory worker | Factory worker |
| Barber | Painter | Janitor |
| Hotel waiter | Waiter | Porter in factory |
| Plasterer | Laborer in Stock Yards | Laborer in steel mill |
| Farmer | Hostler | Laborer in livery stable |
| Clergyman | Stationary fireman | Laborer in Stock Yards |
| Tinsmith | Waiter | Laborer |
| Farmer | Laborer in cement factory | Laborer in Stock Yards |
| Blacksmith | Barber | Janitor |
| Office boy | Porter | Laborer in Stock Yards |
The following experiences of one or two families from the many histories gathered, while not entirely typical of all the migrants, contain features common to all:
The Thomas family.—Mr. Thomas, his wife and two children, a girl nineteen and a boy seventeen, came to Chicago from Seals, Alabama, in the spring of 1917. After a futile search, the family rented rooms for the first week. This was expensive and inconvenient, and between working hours all sought a house into which they could take their furniture. They finally found a five-room flat on Federal Street. The building had been considered uninhabitable and dangerous. Three of the five rooms were almost totally dark. The plumbing was out of order. There was no bath, and the toilet was outside of the house. There was neither electricity nor gas, and the family used oil lamps. The rent was $15 per month. Although the combined income of the family could easily have made possible a better house, they could find none.
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were farmers in the South. On the farm Mrs. Thomas did the work of a man along with her husband. Both are illiterate. The daughter had reached the fourth grade and the boy the fifth grade in school. At home they belonged to a church and various fraternal orders and took part in rural community life.
On their arrival in Chicago they were short of funds. Father and son went to work at the Stock Yards. Although they had good jobs they found their income insufficient; the girl went to work in a laundry, and the mother worked as a laundress through the first winter for $1 a day. She later discovered that she was working for half the regular rate for laundry work. Soon she went back to housekeeping to reduce the food bill.