The asphalt workers are nearly all coloured. In New York they have a strong union and although part of the membership is white (chiefly Italian), the chosen representative who sits with the Central Federated Union of the city is James H. Wallace, a coloured man.
In Indianapolis I found that the hod-carriers’ industry was almost wholly in the hands of Negroes who have a strong union, with a large strike fund put aside. So successful have they been that they now propose erecting a building of their own as a club house. Although there are white men in the union the officers are all coloured. Not long ago some of the coloured members began to “rush” a white man at his work. It was reported to the union and hotly discussed. The coloured members finally decided that there should be no discrimination against white men, and fined one of the Negro offenders for his conduct. He couldn’t pay and had to leave town.
Where the Negro workman gets a foothold in the North, he often does very well indeed. R. R. Wright, Jr., calls attention to conditions in the Midvale Steel Company, which is one of the largest, if not the largest employer of Negro labour in Philadelphia. Charles J. Harrah, the president of this company, said before the United States Industrial Commission in 1900:
“We have fully 800 or 1,000 coloured men. The balance are Americans, Irish and Germans. The coloured labour we have is excellent.... They are lusty fellows; we have some with shoulders twice as broad as mine, and with chests twice as deep as mine. The men come up here ignorant and untutored. We teach them the benefit of discipline. We teach the coloured man the benefit of thrift, and coax him to open a bank account; and he generally does it, and in a short time has money in it, and nothing can stop him from adding money to that bank account. We have no coloured men who drink.”
Asked as to the friction between the white and black workmen, Mr. Harrah replied:
“Not a bit of it. They work cheek by jowl with Irish, and when the Irishman has a festivity at home he has coloured men invited. We did it with trepidation. We introduced one man at first to sweep up the yard, and we noticed the Irish and Germans looked at him askance. Then we put in another. Then we put them in the boiler-room, and then we got them in the open hearth and in the forge, and gradually we got them everywhere. They are intelligent and docile, and when they come in as labourers, unskilled, they gradually become skilled, and in the course of time we will make excellent foremen out of them.”
Mr. Harrah added that there was absolutely no difference in wages of Negroes and whites in the same grade of work.
I have pointed out especially in my last article how and where prejudice was growing in Northern cities, as it certainly is. On the other hand, where one gets down under the surface there are to be found many counteracting influences—those quiet constructive forces, which, not being sensational or threatening, attract too little attention. Northern people are able to help Negroes where Southern people are deterred by the intensity of social prejudice: for in most places in the South the teaching of Negroes still means social ostracism.
Help for Negroes in the North
Settlement work, in one form or another, has been instituted in most Northern cities, centres of enlightenment and hope. I have visited a number of these settlements and have seen their work. They are doing much, especially in giving a moral tone to a slum community: they help to keep the children off the streets by means of clubs and classes; they open the avenues of sympathy between the busy upper world and the struggling lower world. Such is the work of Miss Bartholomew, Miss Hancock, Miss Wharton in Philadelphia, Miss Eaton in Boston, Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley in Chicago, Miss Ovington in New York. Miss Hancock, a busy, hopeful Quaker woman, has a “broom squad” of Negro boys which makes a regular business of sweeping several of the streets in the very worst slum district in Philadelphia; it gives them employment and it teaches them civic responsibility and pride.