Most of the Negroes who were employed in the foregoing instances had been former employees in the cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar cane, turpentine and lumber industries of the South. Their coming to the North in search of work suddenly forced them into factories, foundries, ammunition plants, automobile establishments, packing industries, and into various other forms of work which were entirely different from those to which they had been accustomed at home. Attached to these occupations was a set of mores, wholly new to the Negroes, and with which they had, first of all, to make themselves familiar. It goes almost without saying, therefore, that at the beginning the Negroes experienced much difficulty in trying to adjust themselves to these new labor conditions. Among these newcomers, moreover, there were two types of laborers, namely, those who were intelligent, industrious, and thrifty. In this class were many students and men with responsibilities, who had been carefully selected by the labor agents. The second type was composed of men who had been picked up promiscuously and transported to the North. These were for the most part single men and in habits were shiftless and undependable; and in numbers this class far exceeded the former type. It will, therefore, be of interest to know what was the behavior of the Negroes in the various industries in which they were employed.
The performance of the Negroes in this regard is well seen in the railroad and steel industries which employed many thousands of them. In these we find that the deportment of the Negro workers was such as to cause a great deal of labor turn-over. This was due largely to the fact that these concerns hired mostly single men who were shiftless and given to wandering from place to place. For example, the Pennsylvania Railroad, in 1917, after a year of importation of thousands of Negroes from the South had less than 2,000 in its employ. The Baltimore and Ohio and New York Central roads, after having done likewise, had less than 1,000 Negroes occupied. Each of these roads experienced a demand for labor and was trying to fill the depleted ranks by further importations from the South. Again, in 1917, the Erie Railroad reported that among 9,000 Negroes brought from the South during a period of six or seven months a full labor turn-over occurred every eleven days. Of this number only the first two thousand remained long enough to work out the transportation that had been furnished them. In most of these cases the Negroes, after reaching the North, remained in the railroad camps only long enough to draw a first pay or until they learned of the opportunity for higher wages in other fields. Sometimes they would not wait even long enough to try the work and quarters after their transportation had been paid, but would start at once for other places.[139]
The steel mills in Pennsylvania, like the railroads, also found it difficult to keep a stable Negro labor force. At the Coatesville Midvale plant it was necessary to bring in 150 new workers each week in order to keep the labor force up to the normal standard. This same plant was compelled to hire from 2,500 to 2,800 men a month to keep a steady force of 5,500 employed, and the turn-over was twice as great among the Negro as among the white workers. The Carnegie steel plant at Youngstown reported that 9,000 or 10,000 Negroes had been hired and that in the meantime it was necessary to keep hiring five men to have every two jobs filled. Even other plants paying the highest wages, moreover, were compelled to hire 200 or more per month in order to keep up a force of 600 men.[140] They would not stay in one place any length of time, but continued to move in search of better wages and accommodations. They could not be persuaded in many cases to wait until pay-day for their earnings, but would not be content if they could not get some of it in advance according to their custom in this regard in the South. In behalf of this they offered the most flimsy pretexts, and often spent this money for very unwholesome things.[141]
Thus, in 1917, it was concluded that the Negroes were not as yet adapted to the heavy and pace-set work in the steel mills, that they were accustomed to the easy-going plantation and farm work of the South, and that it would take them some time to become adjusted. It seemed that the roar and clangor of the mills made the Negroes a little dazed and confused.
In the city of Detroit the actions of the Negroes in the industries were highly pleasing to some of the employers, whereas to others they were just the reverse. The employers held two lines of adverse criticism against the Negro as a workman. In the first place, they complained that the Negro was too slow; that he did not have the speed which the routine of efficient industry demands; and that he lacked that regularity demanded by the routine of industry day by day. In the second place, the Negro was disinclined to work out-of-doors when the cold weather set in; and, in this respect, he was considered unsatisfactory, because his labor could be depended upon only at certain seasons of the year.[142]
Reports from Newark, New Jersey, likewise showed that the Negroes were having trouble in adjusting themselves to the new conditions. The female migrants manifested an unadaptability to housework, being accustomed to outdoor work on the farms. In factories and freight-yards men and boys when overheated would throw off their outer clothing just as they would in the mild South, with the consequence that they were often attacked by grip and pneumonia. The unaccustomed roads and pavements and long hours of toil caused the migrants to lose many days' work. In fact, outdoor work was attended with so many hardships that the Negroes began to apply only for indoor work. Again, it is said that the fumes in munition factories made many of them temporarily ill, thus necessitating their seeking other work even at lower wages. Explosions in ammunition plants, moreover, threw many out of work and frightened away many more to other occupations which seemed more secure. Thus, these difficulties and hardships attached to their new jobs together with the strangeness of their surroundings caused the Negroes to be very irregular in the performance of their work.[143]
Mr. Eugene K. Jones, the executive secretary of an organization interested in the economic and social welfare of the Negroes in Northern cities, affirms that the testimony of many of the employers was to the effect that the Negroes were rather inexperienced, frequently undependable, and were of a roaming nature, being easily tempted to change their places of employment on account of such inducements as small increases in wages, shorter hours, and easier work. Nevertheless, he takes the position that enough testimony is available to show conclusively that Negro labor in the North, on the whole, was extremely promising. This position is taken on the following grounds: (1) That the Negroes were loyal to their employers; (2) that they took a proprietary interest in their employers' plants; (3) they did not either strike or become easily inflamed against their employers; (4) they were tractable; and (5), above all, most of the Negroes who proved unreliable did so because they had no hope on the job, or because they had been chosen from a group of idle loafers in some Southern city or community where real opportunity for training for the Negro is unknown.[144]
Next in importance among the efforts of the migrants to adjust themselves to the Northern environment was that of securing shelter. It has already been shown that the housing of the newcomers developed into a very serious problem and that unusual steps had to be taken in order to meet the emergency. It was indicated also that this unprecedented housing situation gave rise to high rents and caused much congestion or overcrowding among the Negroes. Our aim here, therefore, is simply to expand this further by means of specific examples in order to furnish a more complete picture of this housing problem, especially as it concerned the migrants themselves.
According to a report on housing conditions in Newark, New Jersey, we are informed that old dilapidated buildings, long closed as undesirable for habitation, were opened and rented to Negroes. These houses were rented out as housekeeping apartments regardless of the fact that there were no facilities for such purposes. Kitchen ranges, lavatories, baths, and toilets were either altogether absent or inadequate. In a majority of these houses no heat facilities were supplied, and the consequence was that whole families were accustomed to crowd around a small kerosene stove in stuffy rooms with no ventilation, where all the housekeeping was done, and where frequently the whole family slept together to keep warm. Furthermore, a study of fifty-three families, consisting of three hundred persons—one hundred and sixty-six of whom were adults, and one hundred and thirty-four children—showed that all were crowded into unsanitary, dark quarters averaging 4-2/7 persons per room. These families paid a total rent of $415.50, an average of $7.86 per family for these very poor quarters in the worst sections of the city.[145]
As to housing conditions in Pittsburgh, it is reported that of four hundred and sixty-five migrants interviewed, 35 per cent lived in tenement houses, 50 per cent in rooming houses, about 12 per cent in camps and churches, and only 2.5 per cent in what may be called single private family residences.[146] It was further shown that of 157 families investigated to ascertain the number of rooms per family, 77, or 49 per cent, lived in one room each, 33, or 21 per cent, lived in two-room apartments and only 47 families, or 30 per cent, lived in apartments of three or more rooms each.[147] It was discovered, moreover, that sleeping quarters were not only in bed-rooms, but also in attics, basements, dining-rooms, and kitchens. In many cases the houses in which rooms were located were dilapidated dwellings with the paper torn off, the plaster sagging from the naked lath, windows broken, ceiling low and damp, and the whole room dark, stuffy and unsanitary. In a great number of cases, also, the houses had very poor water facilities and filthy toilet conditions, because of the total absence of sewerage connections. In spite of these conditions, however, rent charges for these quarters were comparatively high.[148] "As to housing conditions among the single men in this city, it was discovered that only 22 out of more than three hundred of them had individual bed-rooms. Twenty-five per cent of these lived four in a room, and twenty-five per cent lived in rooms used by more than four people. Thirty-seven per cent of them, moreover, slept in separate beds, 50 per cent slept two in a bed, and 13 per cent slept three or more in a bed."[149]