It was found that young colored girls, like the boys, often become desperately discouraged in their efforts to find employment. High school girls of refined appearance, after looking for weeks, will find nothing open to them in department stores, office buildings, or manufacturing establishments, save a few positions as maids in the women’s waiting rooms. Such girls find it continually assumed by the employment agencies to whom they apply for positions that they are willing to serve as domestics in low class hotels and disreputable houses. Of course, the agency does not explain the character of the place to which the girl is sent, but on going to one address after another she finds that they are all of this kind. Quite recently an intelligent colored girl who had kept a careful record of her experiences with three employment agencies came to the office of the Juvenile Protective Association to see what might be done to protect colored girls less experienced and self-reliant than herself, against similar temptations. Quite recently a young colored girl who at the age of fifteen had been sent to a house of prostitution by an employment agency, was rescued from the house, treated in a hospital and sent to her sister in a western state. She there married a respectable man and is now living in a little home “almost paid for.”

The case of Eliza M., who has worked as a cook in a disreputable house for ten years is that of a woman forced into vicious surroundings. In addition to her wages of five dollars a week and food, which she is permitted to take home every evening to her family, she has been able to save her generous “tips” for the education of her three children, for whom she is very ambitious.

Insults to Girls
Common

Colored young women who are manicurists and hairdressers find it continually assumed that they will be willing to go to hotels under compromising conditions, and when a decent girl refuses to go, she is told that that is all that she can expect. There is no doubt that the few colored girls who find positions as stenographers or bookkeepers are much more open to insult than white girls in similar positions.

All these experiences tend to discourage the young people from that “education” which their parents so eagerly desire for them and also makes it extremely difficult for them to maintain their standards of self-respect.

Life Insurance
Popular

It was found that colored people in Chicago do not patronize these life insurance companies so successfully managed by colored men in Atlanta and in other cities. The investigators, however, found many colored agents employed as solicitors among their own people; two hundred colored agents, for instance, are writing policies for accident insurance companies. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company alone has approximately 65,000 industrial policies on the lives of colored people in the city of Chicago, many colored people having more than one policy on every member of the family.

Many Professional
Men of
High Standard

Chicago has a large number of fine negro professional men; this is due largely to the number of schools and universities accessible to the negro’s use. There are in Chicago sixty-five colored physicians, four of whom are women; twenty-five lawyers; eighteen dentists; twelve pharmacists, with many students in attendance at the universities and professional schools. One of the physicians is on the staff of St. Luke’s hospital and others are responsible for the fine medical work carried on at the Provident Hospital, the leading hospital for colored people in the United States. The colored people are justly proud of this hospital, founded in 1891, where there is no discrimination between white and colored people, on the staff of physicians and nurses, nor among the patients. The hospital is managed by a board of trustees of fourteen members—six white and eight colored, and has a good standing among the hospitals of Chicago. Although colored women have an aptitude for nursing, there are not enough training schools in the country where they can be properly trained as nurses, such as the Provident Hospital in Chicago; the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D. C.; the Lincoln Hospital in New York, and one in Philadelphia. One of the colored dentists of Chicago is a leader in his profession. His practice is exclusively among white people. Two colored dentists are women. Several of the colored lawyers have been in the State’s Attorney’s office, one of them an assistant there from 1896 to 1911, was most active in bettering conditions for the juvenile offenders; still another colored man was District United States Attorney for some years, and several negro lawyers have been admitted to Supreme Court practice. One of the prominent colored lawyers who was for five years head of the department of the city damage suits, has become a specialist in “track elevation suits” with big corporations as his clients.

Physicians and
Lawyers Real
Factors in Social
Improvement