In examining Tables VI and VII below one must take into consideration several factors. In the first place, 81.2 per cent of the Washington applicants and 73.9 per cent of the Indianapolis applicants were born in the South where the standard is not so high as in the North; and many of these applicants attended school in the rural districts of the South where the schools were not standardized, and only a few schools had any domestic science instruction. Then, too, a large proportion of them left school some years ago when all of the grades or groups of a school were taught by one teacher in one room.
Those persons who could not read or write seemed to feel their illiteracy very keenly. Many of them offered excuses by saying that the "white folks raised" them; or their parents died and they had to help the other children; or they were "sickly," and the like. Those who had never been to school but could read and write a little were listed as being in the first grade. One applicant said that she had never been through any grade but she could read and write and go anywhere in the city she wished to go. Another one, an elderly woman, expressed her regrets because she never had a chance to go to school, but she had learned to read and write so that she could sign her name instead of simply "touching the pen" when she was transacting her business.
Grades on Leaving School of 7,975 Female and 172 Male Negro Domestic Workers from the U. S. Employment Service, Washington, D. C., 1920-1922
| Table VI | |||
| Male | Female | ||
| Illiterate | 8 | 418 | |
| 1st Grade | 5 | 244 | |
| 2d Grade | 7 | 436 | |
| 3d Grade | 9 | 842 | |
| 4th Grade | 17 | 1,073 | |
| 5th Grade | 31 | 1,417 | |
| 6th Grade | 28 | 1,237 | |
| 7th Grade | 25 | 998 | |
| 8th Grade | 42 | 1,310 |
Grades on Leaving School of 387 Negro Domestic Workers, Irrespective of Sex, Indianapolis, Ind., 1922
| Table VII | ||||||||
| Illiterate | 1st Gr. | 2d Gr. | 3d Gr. | 4th Gr. | 5th Gr. | 6th Gr. | 7th Gr. | 8th Gr. |
| 21 | 7 | 11 | 22 | 44 | 63 | 51 | 47 | 120 |
The figures show that of a total of 7,975 female applicants for domestic work in Washington, D. C., 4,430, or 55.5 per cent, had received school training in the sixth grade or below; leaving only 29.9 per cent who had seventh or eighth grade training. Of the 387 applicants for domestic service in Indianapolis, 168, or 43.3 per cent, had received school training up to the fifth grade or below; and 219, or 56.7 per cent, had been to the sixth grade or below, leaving 43.3 per cent who had been in the seventh or eighth grade. The larger proportions of those from higher grades in Indianapolis may be accounted for by the lesser opportunity in other occupations as compared with Washington, and by the smaller number of applicants involved. In short, domestic service as a regular occupation does not attract and hold Negro workers of the higher grades of educational training and intelligence.
In order to understand exactly what is meant by saying that consideration of certain factors must be taken into account in any attempt to formulate some idea of the educational status of the rank and file domestic worker reckoned by his grade when he left school, some letters, typical of the educational equipment among the 9,774 domestic workers (applicants), should be read. These letters were written to the agent in the Washington, D. C., office by 5th grade domestic workers.[14]
Many of these domestic workers also showed their lack of training by their inability to figure out their weekly wages at the rate of $40, 45, or $50 per month. Such inability often caused them to feel and say that their employers were "cheaters." To a considerable number of them, $40 a month meant $10 a week, and vice versa; $45 a month meant $11.25 a week, and $50 a month meant $12.50 a week. They generally secured their pay twice a month—the first and the fifteenth. However, such an arrangement did not seem to clarify matters, since they thought of four weeks as making a month.