THE SITUATION AT POINTS IN THE EAST
No less conspicuous as attractions to the negroes of the South were
the various industries of the State of Pennsylvania. Although not so
closely connected with the Black Belt of the South as are so many
of the industrial centers of the West, Pennsylvania nevertheless was
sought by many of these migrants because of the long accepted theory
that this commonwealth maintains a favorable attitude toward persons
of color. It drew upon this population too because of the very urgent
need for workers in its numerous industries during the labor crisis
resulting from the falling off of the foreign immigration. When,
moreover, manufacturing establishments of the State multiplied as
elsewhere because of the demand for the manufacture of munitions of
war, this need became more urgent than ever.
According to the census of 1910, the State of Pennsylvania had 193,919
inhabitants of negro blood, 84,459 of whom lived in the city of
Philadelphia. During the recent rush to that commonwealth, however,
investigators are now of the opinion that the negro population of that
State is hardly less than 300,000. These migrants were, of course, not
all settled in the city of Philadelphia. Here we see another example
of a rerouting point, a place where the migration broke bulk,
scattering itself into the various industrial communities desiring
labor. Among the other cities and towns receiving this population were
practically all of those within a radius of about one hundred miles of
Philadelphia, such as Lancaster, Pottsville, York, Altoona, Harrisburg
and certain other towns lying without the State, as in the case of
Wilmington, Delaware, a site of a large munitions plant. In some cases
the negro population in these towns increased more than 100 per cent
in a few days.
The chief factors in the bringing in of these negroes from the South
were the leading railroads like the Erie and Pennsylvania. During
the shortage of labor, these corporations found it impossible to keep
their systems in repair. In this situation, they, like the smaller
concerns further west, sent labor agents to the South to induce
negroes to supply this demand. Unfortunately, however, so many of the
negroes who had their transportation paid by these firms counted it
more profitable to leave their employ immediately after arriving,
because of the unusually high wages offered by smaller industries in
just as urgent need of labor. Instead of supplying their own demand,
therefore, the railroads were benefiting their neighbors.
A better idea as to the extent of the congestion made possible by this
influx of newcomers may be obtained from the comments of observers
in that section. Traveling men tell us of the crowded houses and
congested streets which marked the places wherever these migrants
stopped. Housing facilities being inadequate, temporary structures
were quickly built and when these did not suffice, in the case of
railroads, ordinary tents and box cars were used to shelter the new
laborers. Owing to these unsatisfactory conditions and the inability
of employers to ameliorate them, the migration was to some extent
discouraged, and in a few cases a number of the migrants returned to
their homes in the South, so that the number that actually came into
the State is much less than it would have been, had it been possible
to receive and adequately accommodate the negroes in their new homes.
In Philadelphia the situation at first became unusually critical.
Being closer to the Southland than most of the large cities of the
country, the people of Philadelphia are much more prejudiced against
the negro than those in some other northern cities. It was necessary,
therefore, upon their arrival in that city for them to crowd into the
district largely restricted to negroes, giving rise to such unhappy
conditions as to jeopardize the peace and health of the community.
Numbers of these migrants died from exposure during the first winter,
and others who died because of their inability to stand the northern
climate made the situation seem unusually alarming. It was necessary,
therefore, to organize social workers to minister to the peculiar
needs of these newcomers. Appeals were made in their behalf and a
number of prominent citizens felt that it was necessary to urge them
to remain in the South.
The solution of this problem was rendered a little more difficult
for the reason that here, as in many other centers in the North, the
newcomers were not welcomed by their own race. Philadelphia had for
years been pointed to as having a respectable, thrifty and prosperous
colored population, enjoying the good will and the cooperation of the
best white people in the community. These northern negroes felt then
that the coming of their brethren in the rough did them a decided
injury in giving rise to a race problem in a northern community where
it had not before figured. This unusual influx of other members of the
race greatly stimulated that tendency to segregate negro children in
the schools, to the deep regret of the older citizens of Philadelphia.
Other social privileges as in theaters, churches and the like,
formerly allowed the negro citizens of that city, tended gradually to
be withdrawn.
The negro migrants were not altogether innocent. Many of them used
their liberty in their northern home as a stumbling block. Receiving
there such high wages which they could not judiciously spend, the
unwise of their group used this unusually large income to their own
detriment and to that of the community. It was indeed difficult to
restrain a poor man who never had had a few dollars, when just arrived
from a section of the country where he had not only been poor but
restricted even in expending what income he received. Many of them
received $6, $7 and in a few cases $8 to $10 a day. They frequented
saloons and dens of vice, thereby increasing the number of police
court cases and greatly staining the record of the negroes in that
city. A number of fracases, therefore, broke out from time to time,
growing in intensity in keeping with the condition to which the
community, unaccustomed to negro neighbors, saw fit to manifest
its displeasure. This finally culminated in the recent riots in
Philadelphia in which a number of blacks and whites were killed.
Feeling that they did not have the support of the officers of the law,
the negroes of the city organized a Colored Protective Association and
raised a fund for the prosecution of policemen and others who might
aid mobs. The method of strengthening itself is to organize the
churches of the city with a view to securing the cooperation of every
negro there. To advance this work, a large sum has been raised. Other
efforts of this sort in behalf of the negroes in Philadelphia have
been made by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People and the Armstrong Association in cooperation with the National
League on Urban Conditions among Negroes.
Social workers in general soon found it necessary to address
themselves to the task of readjusting these migrants.[140] The
Philadelphia Academy of Medicine, composed of negro physicians,
dentists and druggists, put into effect measures calculated to meet
requirements for housing, sanitation, medical attention and education.
Systematic medical inspections were given, and projects for the
erection of houses and the adaptation of existing buildings for
lodgings are under way. Eighty negro physicians of the city collected
information which took the form of a weekly report of the Bureau of
Health. Real estate dealers were asked to submit lists of every house
immediately available for the relief of the overcrowded buildings then
occupied by the negroes and to provide hundreds of new ones, cheaply
but substantially constructed. Stereopticon lectures and talks were
given on an increasing scale in all the negro churches telling the new
arrivals how to care for themselves in the Philadelphia climate, how
to avoid colds, which lead to pneumonia and tuberculosis, the two most
common diseases among them, and other useful information in general.
The Interdenominational Ministerial Union of Philadelphia, embracing
all the negro ministers of the city, drew up certain resolutions
setting forth their views relative to the migration and making some
suggestions concerning the situation in Philadelphia. They pledged
themselves to look after the comfort of the migrants in every way
possible, urged them to join the churches and other organizations for
improvement, and send their children to the schools, and to utilize
the libraries, night schools and other agencies of culture which were
denied them in the South. These ministers urged them also to work
regularly, and give their best services to their employers regardless
of pay, remembering always that the race is on trial in them; that
they save their money, and purchase homes and become a part of the
substantial citizenry as soon as possible.[141]
A Negro Migration Committee was formed, composed of eight workers from
social agencies and charitable societies, to provide suitable housing
for negro families arriving in this city and to aid them in getting
work. Each member of the committee is to work through the organization
he represents and be responsible for one specific phase of the
problem.[142]
Notwithstanding the efforts that were made to improve the housing
conditions, the situation in this respect continued to grow worse. In
December of 1917, representatives of the various social agencies
and of the corporations employing large numbers of negroes met in a
conference on the housing situation. "All the questions involved in
the reasons for the colored people coming north and the problem of
housing and caring for them were seriously discussed."
Some representatives of the corporations asserted that the men
were not reliable and dependable, going from place to place
and only working a few days in each week. The social service
workers stated that the reason for this is that there are not
a sufficient number of houses in which to take care of the men
and their families, and that the districts in which they lived
were shamefully crowded. According to these workers the only
way in which the men can be made satisfied is by providing
more homes for them in sanitary and wholesome quarters. After
thoroughly considering the problem a permanent committee was
appointed to deal with the problem in all its aspects.[143]
One of the most effective agencies for dealing with the situation
created by thousands of negroes migrating north was the Armstrong
Association. This association gave special attention to stabilizing
negro labor and to improving the housing conditions. The association
brought before several corporations conditions of housing and
recreation which would enable them to retain their workers. They
provided a negro welfare worker for the American International
Shipbuilding Company, to attend to the stabilizing of negro labor. The
association is perfecting plans for better housing of negro workers
and the providing of recreation centers, such as are now enjoyed in
virtually every city by the white workers. The association obtained
the cooperation of a number of large industrial firms and corporations
in this city, to aid it in the employment of competent negro welfare
workers to help adjust existing conditions, making for greater
efficiency and reliability among the negro race.
The demand for labor by the many industrial plants located in New
Jersey caused that State to get a very large proportion of the negro
migrants and as a result to have, in acute form, the problem of
housing conditions and the other problems incident to a large number
of migrants being within her borders. To assist in caring for the
situation a Negro Welfare League was organized with branches at
various points in the State.
Writing on the situation in New Jersey, a contributor of _The Survey_,
for February 17, 1917, states:
The native negro residents of the city and suburban towns have
been kind and generous in helping the southern stranger. They
have collected money to send numbers back home, and when
the bitter cold weather began they collected and distributed
thousands of garments. Resident negroes have also taken
hundreds of newcomers into their own homes until rooms could
be found for them. But, while different churches and kind
hearted people had been most active in helping individually,
there was no concerted movement to bring all these forces
together until the organization of the Negro Welfare League
of New Jersey. Industries of New Jersey have utterly failed
to provide the housing which would enable their negro help
to live decently and in enough comfort so that while growing
accustomed to their unusual work, they might be stimulated to
become useful and efficient.
In the last two weeks the Negro Welfare Committee, with the
help of an investigation of 120 self-supporting families, all
of whom were found in the worst sections of the city, showed
that 166 adults--only twenty of whom are over forty years of
age--and 134 children, a total of 300 souls, are all crowded
into insanitary dark quarters, averaging four and two-sevenths
persons to a room. These fifty-three families paid a total
rent per month of $415.50, an average of $7.66. The average
wage of these people is $2.60 a day. In not one of the 120
families was there a wage earner making the maximum wage of
$3 and $4 a day. Some of the reports in brief were: "Wife and
children living over a stable. Husband earning $11 a week."
Three families in four rooms, "a little house not fit for a
chicken coop." "A sorry looking house for so much money, $15 a
month; doors off the hinges, water in the cellar, two families
in five rooms." "Indescribable; so dark they must keep the
light burning all day." "This family lives in three rooms on
the second floor of a rickety frame house, built on the side
of a hill, so that the back rooms are just above the ground.
The entrance is in a muddy, disorderly yard and is through
a tunnel in the house. The rooms are hard to heat because of
cracks. A boy of eighteen was in bed breathing heavily, very
ill with pneumonia, delirious at times." Unused to city life,
crowded into dark rooms, their clothing and household utensils
unsuitable, the stoves they have brought being all too small
to heat even the tiny rooms they have procured (the instalment
houses are charging from $20 to $30 for these stoves),
shivering with the cold from which they do not know how
to protect themselves, it is small wonder that illness has
overtaken large numbers.[144]
Newark, New Jersey, was one of the places to which the migrants first
came in large numbers. William H. Maxwell, President of the Negro
Forward Movement, of that city, issued an appeal for the protection
from the unscrupulous of southern negroes migrating to Newark. He
declared that they were being made to work for lower wages than they
had been promised and that storekeepers and dealers were charging them
high prices for worthless goods. The Newark Presbytery took up
the matter of proper housing and clothing of the migrants who were
unaccustomed to the rigors of a northern climate.
On September 23, 1917, a State conference of negroes was held
in Newark to devise ways and means to cooperate with the State
authorities in looking after the welfare of migrants. Soon after
this conference, it was decided to establish a State bureau, "for
the welfare and employment of the colored citizens in the State and
particularly to look after the housing, employment and education of
the citizens migrating from the South." On October 12, Governor Edge
had a number of social workers among the negroes to meet him, "to
discuss the several perplexing and grave economic, industrial and
social problems arising from the steady influx of the negro migrants
from the South." The conference was held in the Assembly room at the
State House. Col. Lewis T. Bryant, Commissioner of Labor, presided.
After many reports and discussions of work accomplished in various
parts of the State, the body voted to accept the proposed Negro
Welfare Bureau, under the Department of Labor. A fund of $7,500 is
available for the coming year's maintenance and work. The scope
of this bureau's work was employment, housing, social welfare and
readjustment, education and legal fairness. This bureau acted as
a welfare clearing house for all social agencies working for the
betterment of the colored people.
At the next session of the legislature, a bill was passed, February,
1918, establishing in the Department of Labor the Negro Welfare
Employment Bureau. According to a report of the work of the Negro
Welfare Bureau made public in April, 1918, considerable progress in
the work of improving both the migrating negroes to New Jersey from
the South as well as the members of the race generally who have been
in this State for some time has been made. With the possible exception
of Salem and Hudson counties, the sheriffs of the State report no
increase of criminality from the migration of negroes from the South.
At Pennsgrove in Salem county, where the Du Pont powder plants are
located, Sheriff William T. Eiffin reports that considering the
increase in population there has been an increase in crime in that
county, but that the situation is well in hand and diminishing to
normal.[145]
Hartford was one of the industrial centers to which large numbers of
the migrating negroes went. The housing problem became acute and
the chief efforts of those endeavoring to better the conditions of
migrants was along this line. Religious, civic and commercial bodies
gave attention to the amelioration of this problem.[146] The problem
of housing negroes who were coming in greater numbers each year to
Hartford was taken up briefly by speakers at the 128th annual meeting
of the Hartford Baptist Association at the Shiloh Baptist Church. It
was decided to bring the housing problem before the attention of
the Chamber of Commerce, which, it was said, some time before had
appointed a committee to investigate it. Negroes complained that they
were obliged to pay higher rent than white folks and that they were
obliged by landlords to live together in cramped quarters that were,
by reason of the crowding, insanitary. They said also that the living
of several families almost as one family leads to a breaking down of
the moral and religious ideals.[147] Conditions in Hartford resulting
from the bringing of more than 2,500 negroes from the South were
discussed at the fall meeting of the Confidential Exchange with a view
to preparing for these new arrivals.
At the June, 1917, meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, a committee
was appointed from that body to investigate housing conditions and
to cooperate with other agencies in improving them. The committee met
frequently through the summer with the housing committee of the Civic
Club, in an endeavor to ascertain the facts bearing upon the present
situation. It had before it leading colored citizens, ministers,
business men and industrial workers, some of whom have lived here
for years and others who have recently arrived from the South. It was
discovered that there was, at that time, plenty of work and at good
wages, but the universal complaint was the lack of homes suitable for
proper living and the extortionate prices asked for rents. Negroes
in Hartford were suffering from the cupidity of landlords. They were
obliged to live in poor tenements and under unhealthful conditions
because accommodations of another class were withheld from them.
For such inferior accommodations they were charged outrageous rents,
because selfish property owners knowing that negroes must live charged
all the traffic would bear. Partial relief was obtained from the
immediate need by the purchase of buildings already erected, and homes
for them were later built. It appeared that for the first time in many
years Hartford had a race problem on its hands.
[Footnote 140: The _Philadelphia North American_, February 2, 1917.]
[Footnote 141: Resolutions of the Interdenominational Union.]
[Footnote 142: _Philadelphia Inquirer_, March 2, 1917.]
[Footnote 143: _The Living Church_, December 22, 1917.]
[Footnote 144: Cotton Pickers in Northern Cities, _The Survey_,
February 17, 1917.]
[Footnote 145: _The Courier_ (Camden, N.J.), April 30, 1918.]
[Footnote 146: _The Hartford Courant_, September 19, 1917.]
[Footnote 147: The _Hartford Post_, October 9, 1917.]