Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

The investigators found no colored men employed as boot-and-shoe-makers, glove-makers, bindery workers, garment workers in factories, cigar box makers, elevated railroad employees, neckwear workers, suspender-makers or printers. No colored women are employed in dress-making, cap-making, lingerie and corset-making. The two reasons given for this non-employment by the employers are: first, the refusal of the white employees to work with colored people; second, the “colored help” is slower and not so efficient as the white. Some employers solve the latter difficulty by paying the colored help less. In the laundries, for instance, where colored people do the same work as white people, the latter average a dollar a week more.

The effect of these restrictions upon negroes is, first, that they are crowded into undesirable and underpaid occupations. As an example, about 12 per cent. of the colored men in Chicago work in saloons and poolrooms. Second, there is greater competition in a limited field with consequent tendency to lower the already low wages. Third, the colored women are forced to go to work to help earn the family living. This occurs so universally as to affect the entire family and social life of the negro colony.

A large number of negroes are employed on the railroads, largely due to the influence of the Pullman Palace Car Company. There is a tradition among colored people that Mr. Pullman inserted a clause in his will urging the company to employ colored men on trains whenever possible, but while the investigators found 1,849 Pullman porters living in Chicago, they counted 7,625 colored men working in saloons and poolrooms. There is also a high percentage employed in theaters; more than one-fourth of all the employees in the leading theaters of Chicago are colored.

The federal government has always been a large employer of colored labor; 9 per cent. of the force in all the federal departments are negroes. In Chicago the percentage of colored men is higher. Out of a total of 8,012 men, 755 are colored, being 10.61 per cent. of the whole, approximately their just share in proportion to the population. The negroes, however, do not fare so well in local government. A study made of the city departments in Chicago showed the percentage of colored employees to be 1.87 per cent.; in Cook County, 1.88 per cent. Three colored men have also been elected as county commissioners, and there is said to be no instance on record in Chicago of a negro office-holder having betrayed his trust.

The investigators found, in regard to the colored men 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 capital and little previous experience.

In the colored belt on the South Side of Chicago a number of business houses are managed by colored people. There is also one bank located in a fine building, of which a colored man is president, but 80 per cent. of the depositors are white. According to the evidence confirmed by the figures of the United States census, 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 another 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 occupations suggesting personal service.

There is 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 eager to own their 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.

The largest district in Chicago in which colored people have resided for a number of years is the section on the South Side, known as the “black belt” which includes a 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, and an investigation made by the School of Civics showed that only 26 per cent. of the houses in the South Side and 36 per cent. of the houses in 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 insanitary conditions.

High rents among the colored people, as everywhere else, force the families to take in lodgers. Nearly one-third of the population in the district investigated on the South Side and one-seventh of the population in the district investigated on the West Side were lodgers. This practice is always found dangerous to family life; it is particularly so to the boys and girls of colored families who, because they so often live near the vice districts, are obliged to have the house filled with “floaters” of a very undesirable class, so that the children witness all kinds of offenses against decency within the home as well as on the streets. [Similar conditions exist in some of the colored districts of New York City.]

It was found 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 is 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.