Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

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.

When it becomes possible for the colored people of a better class to buy property in a good neighborhood, so that they may take care of their children and live respectably, there are often protest meetings among the white people in the vicinity and sometimes even riots. A striking example of the latter occurred recently on the West Side of Chicago; a colored woman bought a lot near a small park upon which she built a cottage. It was not until she moved into the completed house that the neighbors discovered that a colored family had acquired property there. They immediately began a crusade of insults and threats. When this brought no results, a “night raid” company was organized. In the middle of the night a masked band broke into the house, told the family to keep quiet or they would be murdered; then they tore down the newly built house, destroying everything in it. This is, of course, an extreme instance, but there have been many similar cases. Recently in a suburb of Chicago, animosity against negro residents resulted in the organization of an anti-negro committee, which requested the dismissal of all negroes who were employed in the town as gardeners, janitors, etc., because the necessity of housing their families depressed real estate values.

Supplementary to the previous housing investigations, the Juvenile Protective Association studied the conditions of fifty of the better homes occupied by the colored people of Chicago, those in the so-called “black belts” in the city, those in a suburban district and other houses situated in blocks in which only one or two colored families lived. The size of the houses varied from five to fourteen rooms, averaging eight rooms each. The conditions of the houses inside and out compared favorably with similar houses occupied by white families.

Classified according to occupation, the heads of the household in nine cases were railroad porters, the next largest number were janitors, then waiters, but among them were found lawyers, clergymen and physicians. In only four instances was the woman of the house working outside the home. Only four of the homes took in lodgers and children were found in only fifteen out of the fifty families studied.

The total of thirty-three children found in the fifty homes averages but two-thirds of a child for each family and but for one family—a janitor living in a ten-room house and possessing eight children—the average would have been but half a child for a family. This confirms the statement often made that while the poorer colored people in the agricultural districts of the South, like the poor Italians in rural Italy, have very large families, when they move to the city and become more prosperous, the birth rate among colored people falls below that of the average prosperous American family.

From the homes situated in white neighborhoods, only two reported “indignation meetings when they moved in” and added “quiet now.” One other reported “No affiliation with white neighbors”; another “White neighbors visit in time of sickness” and the third was able to say “Neighbors friendly.” Of the ownership of the fifty homes, thirty-five were owned by colored men, twelve by white landlords and the ownership of three was not ascertained. Thirty-four of the houses were occupied by their owners.

According to the Juvenile Protective Association records, it was found that out of one hundred poor families, eighty-six of the women went out to work. Though there is no doubt that this number is abnormally high, it is always easier for a colored woman to find work than it is for a man, partly because white people have the traditions of colored servants and partly because there is a steadier demand for and a smaller supply of household workers, wash and scrub women, than there is for the kind of unskilled work done by men. Even here they are discriminated against and although many are employed in highly respectable families, there is a tendency to engage them in low-class hotels and other places where white women do not care to go.

Investigators found from consultation with the principals of the schools largely attended by colored children that they are irregular in attendance and often tardy; that they are eager to leave school at an early age, although in one school where there is a great deal of manual work this tendency is less pronounced.

Colored children more than any others are kept at home to care for younger members of the family while the mother is away at work. A persistent violation of the compulsory education law recently tried in the Juvenile Court disclosed the fact that a colored brother and sister had been refused admittance in a day nursery, the old woman who cared for the little household for twenty-five cents a day was ill, and the mother had been obliged to keep the older children at home in order to retain her place in a laundry. At the best the school attendance of her five children had been most unsatisfactory, for she left home every morning at half-past six, and the illiterate old woman in charge of the children took little interest in school. The lack of home training and the fact that many colored families are obliged to live in or near the vice districts perhaps accounts for the indifference to all school interests on the part of many colored children, although this complaint is not made of those in the high schools who come from more prosperous families.

The most striking difference in the health of the colored children compared to that of the white children in the same neighborhood was the larger proportion of the cases of rickets, due of course to malnutrition and neglect. The colored people themselves believe the school authorities are more interested in a school whose patronage is predominantly white.