It is important then to see the scope of such organizations in Negro city life. Kansas City, Missouri, with a Negro population in 1910 of 23,566, had 19 Negro churches and 16 Negro missions in 1913, with a total membership of 7,156. In this city there were 135 different lodges, or households (women's chapters), with a total membership of 8,055, 4,226 men and 3,829 women. The average initiation fee in the men's orders was $11.50 and in the women's $4.51 with additional monthly dues of 50 cents and 25 cents respectively. Endowment insurance policies of these lodges for which there is an annual fee from $2 to $4 are for the most part optional. These 8,055 members pay into their lodges annually $55,411.40. Their property in Kansas City is valued at $46,100. Each of the 135 orders has sick benefits ranging from $2.50 to $4.50 a week and all of them, with one exception, pay burial expenses in case of death.[37] In Harlem, New York, with a Negro population of about 90,000 in 1920 there are 25 Negro churches and about 16 missions. There are in this densely populated section six moving picture theatres which cater largely to Negro patronage.[38] Gainesville, Georgia, with a Negro population in 1910 of 1,629 had a Negro church membership of 1,023. Five of the Negro lodges in that city admit women, some of whom are members of several lodges.[39] In the lodges composed as they are very largely of the masses of the Negro people with a few of the more intelligent leaders as officers, there are many possibilities for improving the efficiency of the domestic workers.
Just what is the social life of the younger Negro domestic workers, many of whom are away from their own families, is a question. Of the 471 Negro domestic workers registered at the Indianapolis office, about 44.5 per cent were rooming and only about 2.3 per cent were living with parents or relatives. As possible attractions for such workers there are the moving picture and low vaudeville theatres, usually located in Negro neighborhoods, the pool and billiard rooms, cabarets and questionable dance halls.
Dr. Rubinow says that of 2,300 domestic white workers, a large majority of whom were under 30 years of age, interviewed by the Michigan Bureau of Labor, only 51 belonged to fraternal societies of any kind. Of 230 questioned by the Domestic Relation Reform League, 20 belonged to clubs and 15 to classes of some kind, and 118 entertained no men callers. A domestic worker, he says, not only loses caste among other groups of workers, but she loses at the hands of her employers even her family name. She lives a life of loneliness, "in a family but not of it."[40]
Organization of Domestic Workers
In order to show concretely what domestic workers themselves have attempted to do to improve their conditions, some discussion of their organizations as an expression of that attempt is in place here. It is not certain how many of these organizations are still active nor how many have Negro members. Some of them have such members, no doubt. However, three of them are composed entirely of Negroes.
In Los Angeles, California, the "Progressive Household Club" with a membership of 75 domestic workers is still active. This club was organized primarily for the purpose of furnishing a cheerful and welcome home for a domestic worker taking a rest or not employed for a time. It has a self-supporting home which will accommodate twenty-five girls. Their recreational and educational features are not startling, as the secretary writes, but they enable the girls to pass some cheerful hours out of their "humdrum" lives. This club was among the 15 other domestic workers' clubs organized in 1919 and 1920. In 1919 a Domestic Workers' Alliance with a membership of over 200, affiliated with the Hotel Waitresses under the American Federation of Labor, was granted a charter. During that year, the secretary of Hotel and Restaurant Employees of the International Alliance and International League of America reported that this organization had established a domestic workers' union in each of the following cities: Mobile, Alabama; Fort Worth, Texas; and Lawton, Oklahoma. A union of domestic workers was also organized in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1919. The following March a charter was granted to a domestic workers' union in Richmond, Virginia.[41] In 1920 there were 10 unions of domestic workers affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. These unions were located in the following cities: Los Angeles and San Diego, California; Brunswick, Georgia; Chicago and Glencoe, Illinois; New Orleans, Louisiana; Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania; Denison, Harrisburg, and Houston, Texas. The New Orleans Union, a Negro organization, was composed of about 200 members. All of these organizations have now ceased to be affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. There is, however, one union of domestic workers in Arecibo, Porto Rico, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.
Relation of Negro Domestic Service to Employment Agencies
In view of the volume and extent of turn-over in domestic service, employment agencies, especially in the North, East, and West, have a close relationship to both employers and workers. A person in need of domestic help secures it either by advertising in the help wanted section of the newspapers, by applying to one or more employment agencies, by means of inquiries among friends and acquaintances who may have been a former employer of some available laborer, by accepting some one who may by chance apply in person or by hiring a former worker.
In some of the southern cities where there is no local employment agency, domestic workers are secured in all other of the above-mentioned ways. For example, this condition prevails in Montgomery, Alabama. Although the United States Employment Service, the Department of Labor, and the Municipal Employment offices of Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama, are co-operating, there is no State license applying to local employment agencies except those soliciting laborers to go outside of the State, according to a recent statement from the Alabama Tax Commission. A like condition exists in the State of Louisiana. Georgia, however, issues licenses to employment agencies for domestic positions. In this State as in some others, there is no law regulating the fee which an agency may charge either employer or employee for service rendered. Neither Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, nor Maryland, and several other States have such a fee regulated by law. However, in Pennsylvania, every employment agent must file with the commissioner for his approval a schedule of fees, proposed to be charged for any service rendered to employer or employee, and these may be changed only with the approval of the commissioner. Every employment agent in this State is required to give a receipt to any applicant for any money which the applicant pays him; and if an applicant fails through no fault of his to secure a position to which he is referred, the entire amount paid by such a person to the agent is to be refunded. Such a law obtains in some other States.