The investigators found, in regard to the colored man in business: (1) That the greater number of their enterprises are the outgrowth of domestic and personal service occupations. (2) That they are in branches of business which call for small amounts of capital and very little previous experience. There are at present in the city of Chicago, managed by colored men, twenty-three manufacturing establishments of various kinds, seventy-two barber shops, sixty-three van, moving, and storage places, fifty restaurants, thirty-four pool rooms, twenty-six real estate dealers, twenty-six tailors, twenty-five coal and wood dealers, twenty-four hair dressers, twenty-three groceries, twenty cigar venders, twelve builders and contractors, eleven undertakers, nine printing plants, and eight hotels, besides a small representation in forty-one other lines of business.

Table showing number of colored men employed by the city of Chicago:

Department of Police 83
Fire Department 11
Corporation Counsel Office 1
Health Department 22
Board of Education, not including educational employes of the Board 9
Department of Public Works 32
Board of Local Improvement 3
Mayor’s Office 1
Municipal Court 1
Municipal Court—Bailiffs’ Office 1
Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium 2
Department of Smoke Inspection 1
City Comptroller’s Office 2
Public Library 23
Labor Service 100
———
Total colored 292
Total number employed 15,597
Percentage colored 1.87

In the colored belt on the South Side of Chicago, there are a number of business houses managed by colored people and patronized exclusively by members of their own race. There is also one bank located in a fine building of which a colored man is president and 80 per cent of the depositors white. According to the evidence confirmed by the figures of the United States census, however, there is little possibility for a colored business man to make a living solely from the patronage of his own people. The census report holds that he succeeds in business only when two-thirds of his customers are white. This affords one explanation of the fact that most of his business is of such a character that a white man is willing to patronize it—barber shops, expressing, restaurants, and other business suggesting personal service.

The Principal
Business Street
in the
“Black Belt”

In a mile on State street, from No. 3000 to 3900, the investigators found 108 colored men in business, who employed 270 colored men. Of these business undertakings, twelve were saloons—most of them newly opened; twelve barber shops; seven real estate offices—only three of them ten years old; ten restaurants—five of them having been there for more than five years and two for more than ten years; six pool rooms—all recently opened; four hair dressers, and three tailors, in addition to confectioners, bakers, cleaners, decorators, dressmakers, druggists and the other miscellaneous shops usually found in a self-contained neighborhood. As ministering to the higher life, there were found in the same block three music stores, one “art” store, one piano store, two printers, and—if they may be included in such a list—a photographer and a florist. All of the latter save one have been in existence for more than five years, in sharp contrast to the more ephemeral life of the pool rooms and saloons, only one of which has survived so long, while eleven others have changed proprietors recently. This may be partly owing to the fact that it requires very little money to run either, since both the breweries and the pool room manufacturers readily accommodate their salesmen with their goods and other fittings, and many young colored men, who have been employed in them, are ambitious themselves to become proprietors. While in a measure the decency of such a place depends upon the proprietor, he usually responds to the pressure of the large concern who is his creditor. The total amount of capital invested in the mile by the 108 colored men was found to be $15,750. In addition to the colored men carrying on business in the mile were twenty-six Americans, seventy-nine Jews, eighteen Germans, thirteen Irishmen, ten Greeks, nine Chinamen, and six other white men whose nationality was not ascertained. Several colored women manage independent hair dressing establishments in Chicago. On State street there are two successful restaurants conducted by women; also one saloon and one florist shop; two widows of their original owners. There are a large proportion of real estate dealers among colored men, many of whom do business with white people, the negro dealer often becoming the agent for houses which the white dealers refuse to handle. Colored people are very eager to own their own homes and many of them are buying small houses, divided into two flats, living in one and collecting rent from the other. The contract system prevails in Chicago, making it possible for a man with two or three hundred dollars for the first payment to enter into a contract for the purchase of a piece of property, the deed being held by the real estate man until the purchaser pays the amount stipulated in the contract.

Four Colored
Settlements in
Chicago

As a careful study of the housing conditions of colored people made by the students of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy ascertained, there are four well defined districts in which colored people have resided for a number of years—one at Englewood, one at 55th street and Lake avenue, one on the West Side, and the largest, known as the “Black Belt,” which includes the old 22nd street segregated vice district. In this so-called “belt,” the number of children is remarkably small, forming only a little more than one-tenth of the population, while the lodgers constitute 37 per cent of the population. The investigation made by the School of Civics showed that only 26 per cent of the houses on the South Side and 36 per cent of the houses on the West Side colored district were in good repair. Colored tenants reported that they found it impossible to persuade their landlords either to make the necessary repairs or to release them from their contracts, but that it was so hard to find places in which to live that they were forced to endure unsanitary conditions. The investigation by the School of Civics confirmed the general impression that the rent paid by a negro is appreciably higher than that paid by any other nationality. In a flat building formerly occupied by white people, the white families paid a rent of twelve dollars for a six-room apartment for which a negro family are now paying sixteen dollars. A white family paid seventeen dollars for an apartment of seven rooms for which the negroes are now paying twenty dollars.

Real Estate
and the Colored
Tenant

The negro real estate dealer frequently offers to the owner of an apartment house which is no longer renting advantageously to white tenants cash payment for a year’s lease on the property, thus guaranteeing the owner against loss, and then he fills the building with colored tenants. It is said, however, that the agent does not put out the white tenants unless he can get 10 per cent more from the colored people. By this method the negroes now occupy many large apartment buildings, but the negro real estate agents obtain the reputation of exploiting their own race.