THE NEGROES' STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL IN NORTHERN CITIES
One of the questions I asked of Negroes whom I met both North and South
was this:
"What is your chief cause of complaint?"
In the South the first answer nearly always referred to the Jim Crow cars
or the Jim Crow railroad stations; after that, the complaint was of
political disfranchisement, the difficulty of getting justice in the
courts, the lack of good school facilities, and in some localities, of the
danger of actual physical violence.
But in the North the first answer invariably referred to working
conditions.
"The Negro isn't given a fair opportunity to get employment. He is
discriminated against because he is coloured."
Professor Kelly Miller, one of the acutest of Negro writers, has said:
"The Negro (in the North) is compelled to loiter around the edges of
industry."
Southern white men are fond of meeting Northern criticism of Southern
treatment of the Negro with the response:
"But the North closes the doors of industrial opportunity to the Negro."
And yet, in spite of this complaint of conditions in the North, one who
looks Southward can almost see the army of Negroes gathering from out of
the cities, villages and farms, bringing nothing with them but a buoyant
hope in a distant freedom, but tramping always Northward. And they come
not alone from the old South, but from the West Indies, where the coloured
population looks wistfully toward the heralded opportunities of America. A
few are even coming from South Africa and South America. In New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia, thousands of such foreign Negroes know nothing
of America traditions; some of them do not even speak the English
language.
And why do they come if their difficulties are so great? Is it true that
there is no chance for them in industry? Are they better or worse off in
the North than in the South?
In the first place, in most of the smaller Northern cities where the Negro
population is not increasing rapidly, discrimination is hardly noticeable.
Negroes enter the trades, find places in the shops, or even follow
competitive business callings and still maintain friendly relationships
with the white people.
But the small towns are not typical of the new race conditions in the
North; the situation in the greater centres of population where Negro
immigration is increasing largely, is decidedly different.
As I travelled in the North, I heard many stories of the difficulties
which the coloured man had to meet in getting employment. Of course, as a
Negro said to me, "there are always places for the coloured man at the
bottom." He can always get work at unskilled manual labour, or personal or
domestic service--in other words, at menial employment. He has had that in
plenty in the South. But what he seeks as he becomes educated is an
opportunity for better grades of employment. He wants to rise.
It is not, then, his complaint that he cannot get work in the North, but
that he is limited in his opportunities to rise, to get positions which
his capabilities (if it were not for his colour) would entitle him to. He
is looking for a place where he will be judged at his worth as a man, not
as a Negro: this he came to the North to find, and he meets difficulties
of which he had not dreamed in the South.
At Indianapolis I found a great discussion going on over what to do with
the large number of idle young coloured people, some of whom had been
through the public schools, but who could not, apparently, find any work
to do. As an able coloured man said to me: "What shall we do? Here are our
young people educated in the schools, capable of doing good work in many
occupations where skill and intelligence are required--and yet with few
opportunities opening for them. They don't want to dig ditches or become
porters or valets any more than intelligent white boys: they are human.
The result is that some of them drop back into idle discouragement--or
worse."
In New York I had a talk with William L. Bulkley, the coloured principal
of Public School No. 80, attended chiefly by coloured children, who told
me of the great difficulties and discouragements which confronted the
Negro boy who wanted to earn his living. He relates this story:
"I received a communication the other day from an electric company stating
that they could use some bright, clean, industrious boys in their
business, starting them at so much a week and aiding them to learn the
business. I suspected that they did not comprehend coloured boys under the
generic term 'boys,' but thought to try. So I wrote asking if they would
give employment to a coloured boy who could answer to the qualifications
stated. The next mail brought the expected reply that no coloured boy,
however promising, was wanted. I heaved a sigh and went on.
"The saddest thing that faces me in my work is the small opportunity for a
coloured boy or girl to find proper employment. A boy comes to my office
and asks for his working papers. He may be well up in the school, possibly
with graduation only a few months off. I question him somewhat as follows:
'Well, my boy, you want to go to work, do you? What are you going to do?'
'I am going to be a door-boy, sir.' 'Well, you will get $2.50 or $3 a
week, but after a while that will not be enough; what then?' After a
moment's pause he will reply: 'I should like to be an office boy.' 'Well,
what next?' A moment's silence, and, 'I should try to get a position as
bell-boy.' 'Well, then, what next?' A rather contemplative mood, and then,
'I should like to climb to the position of head bell-boy.' He has now
arrived at the top; further than this he sees no hope. He must face the
bald fact that he must enter business as a boy and wind up as a boy."
And yet in spite of these difficulties, Negroes come North every year in
increasing numbers, they find living expensive, they suffer an unusual
amount of sickness and death, they meet more prejudice than they expected
to meet, and yet they keep coming. Much as Negroes complain of the
hardship of Northern conditions, and though they are sometimes pitifully
homesick for the old life in the South, I have yet to find one who wanted
to go back--unless he had accumulated enough money to buy land.
"Why do they come?" I asked a Negro minister in Philadelphia.
"Well, they're treated more like men up here in the North," he said,
"that's the secret of it. There's prejudice here, too, but the colour line
isn't drawn in their faces at every turn as it is in the South. It all
gets back to a question of manhood."
In the North prejudice is more purely economic than it is in the South--an
incident of industrial competition.
In the South the Negro still has the field of manual labour largely to
himself, he is unsharpened by competition; but when he reaches the
Northern city, he not only finds the work different and more highly
organised and specialised, but he finds that he must meet the fierce
competition of half a dozen eager, struggling, ambitious groups of
foreigners, who are willing and able to work long hours at low pay in
order to get a foothold. He has to meet often for the first time the
Italian, the Russian Jew, the Slav, to say nothing of the white American
labourer. He finds the pace set by competitive industry immensely harder
than in most parts of the South. No life in the world, perhaps, requires
as much in brain and muscle of all classes of men as that of the vast
Northern cities in the United States. I have talked with many coloured
workmen and I am convinced that not a few of them fail, not because of
their colour, nor because they are lazy (Negroes in the North are of the
most part hard workers--they _must_ be, else they starve or freeze), but
for simple lack of speed and skill; they haven't learned to keep the pace
set by the white man.
A contractor in New York who employs large numbers of men, said to me:
"It isn't colour so much as plain efficiency. I haven't any sentiment in
the matter at all. It's business. As a general rule the ordinary coloured
man can't do as much work nor do it as well as the ordinary white man. The
result, is, I don't take coloured men when I can get white men. Yet I have
several coloured men who have been with me for years, and I wouldn't part
with them for any white man I know. In the same way I would rather employ
Italians than Russian Jews: they're stronger workers."
Not unnaturally the Negro charges these competitive difficulties which he
has to meet in the North (as he has been accustomed to do in the South) to
the white man; he calls it colour prejudice, when as a matter of fact, it
is often only the cold businesslike requirement of an industrial life
which demands tremendous efficiency, which in many lines of activity has
little more feeling than a machine, that is willing to use Italians, or
Japanese, or Chinese, or Negroes, or Hindus, or any other people on the
face of the earth. On the other hand, no doubt exists that many labour
unions, especially in the skilled trades, are hostile to Negroes, even
though they may have no rules against their admission. I heard the
experiences of an expert Negro locomotive engineer named Burns who had a
run out of Indianapolis to the South. Though he was much in favour with
the company, and indeed with many trainmen who knew him personally, the
general feeling was so strong that by soaping the tracks, injuring his
engine, and in other ways making his work difficult and dangerous, he was
finally forced to abandon his run. If there were space I could give many
accounts of strikes against the employment of Negroes. The feeling among
union labour men has undoubtedly been growing more intense in the last few
years owing to the common use of Negroes as strike breakers. With a few
thousand Negroes the employers broke the great stockyards strike in
Chicago in 1904, and the teamsters' strike in the following year. Colour
prejudice is used like any other weapon for strengthening the monopoly of
the labour union. I know several unions which are practically monopolistic
corporations into which any outsider, white, yellow, or black, penetrates
with the greatest difficulty. Such closely organised unions keep the
Negroes out in the South exactly as they do in the North. A Negro
tile-setter, steam-fitter or plumber can no more get into a union in
Atlanta than in New York. Of course these unions, like any other closely
organised group of men, employ every weapon to further their cause. They
use prejudice as a competitive fighting weapon, they seize upon the colour
of the Negro, or the pig-tail and curious habits of the Chinaman, or
the low-living standard of the Hindu, to fight competition and protect
them in their labour monopoly.
[Illustration: WARD IN A NEGRO HOSPITAL AT PHILADELPHIA]
[Illustration: STUDIO OF A NEGRO SCULPTRESS]
And yet, although I expected to find the Negro wholly ostracised by union
labour, I discovered that where the Negro becomes numerous or skilful
enough, he, like the Italian or the Russian Jew, begins to force his way
into the unions. The very first Negro carpenter I chanced to meet in the
North (from whom I had expected a complaint of discrimination) said to me:
"I'm all right. I'm a member of the union and get union wages."
And I found after inquiry that there are a few Negroes in most of the
unions of skilled workers, carpenters, masons, iron-workers, even in the
exclusive typographical union and in the railroad organisations--a few
here and there, mostly mulattoes. They have got in just as the Italians
get in, not because they are wanted, or because they are liked, but
because by being prepared, skilled, and energetic, the unions have had to
take them in as a matter of self-protection. In the South the Negro is
more readily accepted as a carpenter, blacksmith, or bricklayer than in
the North not because he is more highly regarded but because (unlike the
North) the South has almost no other labour supply.
In several great industries North and South, indeed, the Negro is as much
a part of labour unionism as the white man. Thousands of Negroes are
members of the United Mine-Workers, John Mitchell's great organisation,
and they stand on an exact industrial equality with the whites. Other
thousands are in the cigar-makers' union, where, by virtue of economic
pressure, they have forced recognition.
Indeed, in the North, in spite of the complaint of discrimination, I found
Negroes working and making a good living in all sorts of industries--union
or no union. A considerable number of Negro firemen have good positions in
New York, a contracting Negro plumber in Indianapolis who uses coloured
help has been able to maintain himself, not only against white
competition, but against the opposition of organised white labour. I know
of Negro paper-hangers and painters, not union men, but making a living at
their trade and gradually getting hold. A good many Negro printers,
pressmen, and the like are now found in Negro offices (over 200
newspapers and magazines are published by Negroes in this country) who
are getting their training. I know of several girls (all mulattoes) who
occupy responsible positions in offices in New York and Chicago. Not a few
coloured nurses, seamstresses and milliners have found places in the life
of the North which they seem capable of holding. It is not easy for them
to make progress: each coloured man who takes a step ahead must prove, for
his race, that a coloured man can after all, do his special work as well
as a white man. The presumption is always against him.
Here is a little newspaper account of a successful skilled pattern maker
in Chicago:
A few days ago a large box containing twenty-one large and small
patterns was shipped to the Jamestown Exhibition by the McGuire Car
Company of Paris, Illinois, one of the largest car companies in the
West. Before the box was shipped scores of newspaper men, engineers
and business men were permitted to inspect what is said to be the
most complete and most valuable exhibit of the kind ever sent to an
exhibition in this country. The contents of this precious box is
entirely the work of a coloured man named George A. Harrison. Mr.
Harrison is one of the highest salaried men on the pay-roll of the
company. He makes all the patterns for all of the steel, brass, and
iron castings for every kind of car made by this company. He
graduated at the head of his class of sixty members in a pattern
making establishment in Chicago.
Cases of this sort are exceptional among the vast masses of untrained
Negro population in the cities, and yet it shows what can be done--and the
very possibility of such advancement encourages Negroes to come North.
_Trades Which Negroes Dominate_
So much for the higher branches of industry. In some of the less skilled
occupations, on the other hand, the Negro is not only getting hold, but
actually becoming dominant.
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.
But perhaps I can give the best idea of these movements by telling of the
different forms of work in a single city--Indianapolis. In the first
place, the Flanner Guild, projected by Mr. Flanner, a white man, is
maintained largely by white contributions, but it is controlled wholly by
coloured people. Millinery classes were opened for girls (of which there
are now many practising graduates, eight of whom are giving lessons in
Indianapolis and in other cities), and there are clubs and social
gatherings of all sorts: it has been, indeed, a helpful social centre of
influence.
[Illustration: A NEGRO MAGAZINE EDITOR'S OFFICE IN PHILADELPHIA]
[Illustration: 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. Miss Hancock at the right.]
In the South, as I have shown, Negroes receive much off-hand individual
charity--food from the kitchen, gifts of old clothes and money; but it is
largely personal and unorganised. In the North there is comparatively
little indiscriminate giving, but an effort to reach and help Negro
families by making them help themselves. One of the difficulties of the
Negro is improvidence; but once given a start on the road to money saving,
it is often astonishing to see him try to live up to cash in the bank. The
Charity Organisation Society of Indianapolis has long maintained a dime
savings and loan association which employs six women collectors, one
coloured, who visit hundreds of homes every week. These form indeed a
corps of friendly visitors, the work of collecting the savings furnishing
them an opportunity of getting into the homes and so winning the
confidence of the people that they can help them in many ways. Last year
over 6,000 depositors were registered in the association, two-thirds of
whom were Negroes, and over $25,000 was on deposit. Not less than
twenty-five cents a week is accepted, but many Negroes save much more. As
soon as they get into the habit of saving they usually transfer their
accounts to the savings bank--and once with a bank book, they are on the
road to genuine improvement.
Another work of great value which Mr. Grout of the Charity Organisation
Society has organised is vacant lot cultivation. By securing the use of
vacant land in and around the city many Negro families have been
encouraged to make gardens, thus furnishing healthful and self-respecting
occupation for the old or very young members of many Negro families, who
otherwise might become public charges. The plots are ploughed and seeds
are provided: the Negroes do their own work and take the crop. The work is
supported by voluntary contributions from white people. A number of Negro
women have raised enough vegetables not only to supply themselves but have
had some to sell.
Negro children are closely looked after in Indianapolis. Compulsory
education applies equally to both races. Every family thus comes also
under the more or less active attention of the school authorities. An
officer, Miss Sarah Colton Smith, is employed exclusively to visit and
keep watch of the Negro children. Her work also is largely that of the
friendly visitor, helping the various overworked mothers with
suggestions, taking an interest in Negro organisations. For example, the
Coloured Woman's Club, working with Miss Smith, has organised a day
nursery which cares for some of the very young children of working Negro
women, thereby allowing the older ones to go to school. Indianapolis
(which has one of the most progressive and intelligent school systems,
wholly non-political, in the country) is also thoroughly alive to the
necessity of industrial education--for both races. Significantly enough,
the Negro schools were first fitted with industrial departments, so that
for a time the cost of education per capita in Indianapolis was higher for
coloured children than for white. When I expressed my surprise at this
unusual condition I was told:
"Of course, the immediate need of the Negro was greater."
Night schools are also held in the public school buildings from November
to April--two schools for Negroes especially, where coloured people of all
ages are at liberty to attend. It is a remarkable sight: Negroes fifty and
sixty years old mingle there with mere children. The girls are taught
sewing and cooking, the men carpentry--besides the ordinary branches. One
old man from the South was found crying with joy over his ability to write
his name. For the very young children, Negro equally with white, there is
Mrs. Eliza Blaker's Kindergarten. For the aged coloured women a home is
now supported principally by the coloured people themselves.
_The Morals of Negro Women_
I saw a good deal of these various lines of activity and talked with the
people who come close in touch with the struggling masses of the Negro
poor. I wish I had room to tell some of the stories I heard: the black
masses of poverty, disease, hopeless ignorance, and yet everywhere shot
through with hopeful tendencies and individual uplift and success. In
Indianapolis, as in other Northern cities, I heard much to the credit of
the Negro women.
"If the Negro is saved here in the North," Miss Smith told me, "it will be
due to the women."
They gave me many illustrations showing how hard the Negro women
worked--taking in washing or going out every day to work, raising their
families, keeping the home, sometimes supporting worthless husbands.
"A Negro woman of the lower class," one visitor said to me, "rarely
expects her husband to support her. She takes the whole burden herself."
And the women, so the loan association visitors told me, are the chief
savers: they are the ones who get and keep the bank accounts. I have heard
a great deal South and North about the immorality of Negro women. Much
immorality no doubt exists, but no honest observer can go into any of the
crowded coloured communities of Northern cities and study the life without
coming away with a new respect for the Negro women.
Another hopeful work in Indianapolis is the juvenile court. A boy who
commits a crime is not immediately cast off to become a more desperate
criminal and ultimately to take his revenge upon the society which
neglected him. He comes into a specially organised court, where he meets
not violence, but friendliness and encouragement. Mrs. Helen W. Rogers is
at the head of the probation work in Indianapolis, and she has under her
supervision a large corps of voluntary probation officers, thirty of whom
are coloured men and women--the best in town. These coloured probation
officers have an organisation of which George W. Cable, who is the foreman
of the distributing department of the Indianapolis post-office, is the
chairman. A Negro boy charged with an offence is turned over to one of
these leading Negro men or women, required to report regularly, and helped
until he gets on his feet again. Thus far the system has worked with great
success. Boys whose offences are too serious for probation are sent, not
to a jail or chain-gang, where they become habitual criminals, but to a
reform school, where they are taught regular habits of work.
_Why the Negro Often Fails_
As I continued my inquiries I found that the leading coloured men in most
cities, though they might be ever so discouraged over the condition of the
ignorant, reckless masses of their people, were awakening to the fact
that the Negro's difficulty in the North was not all racial, not all due
to mere colour prejudice, but also in large measure to lack of training,
lack of aggressiveness and efficiency, lack of organisation. In New York a
"Committee for Improving the Industrial Condition of Negroes" has been
formed. It is composed of both white and coloured men, and the secretary
is S. R. Scottron, an able coloured man. The object of the committee is to
study the condition of the Negroes in New York City, find out the causes
of idleness, and try to help the Negro to better employment.
This committee has experienced difficulty not so much in finding openings
for Negroes, as in getting reliable Negroes to fill them. Boys and girls,
though educated in the public schools, come out without knowing how to do
anything that will earn them a living. Although the advantages of Cooper
Institute and other industrial training schools are open to Negroes, they
have been little used, either from lack of knowledge of the opportunity,
or because the Negroes preferred the regular literary courses of the
schools. So many unskilled and untrained Negroes, both old and young, have
discouraged many employers from trying any sort of Negro help. I shall not
forget the significant remark of a white employer I met in Indianapolis: a
broad-gauge man, known for his philanthropies.
"I've tried Negro help over and over again, hoping to help out the
condition of Negro idleness we have here. I have had two or three good
Negro workers, but so many of them have been wholly undisciplined,
irresponsible, and sometimes actually dishonest, that I've given up
trying. When I hear that an applicant is coloured, I don't employ him."
Upon this very point Professor Bulkley said to me:
"The great need of the young coloured people is practical training in
industry. A Negro boy can't expect to get hold in a trade unless he has
had training."
R. R. Wright, Jr., who has made a study of conditions in Philadelphia,
says:
"It is in the skilled trades that the Negroes are at the greatest
disadvantage. Negroes have been largely shut out of mechanical trades
partly because of indifference and occasional active hostility of labour
unions, partly because it has been difficult to overcome the traditional
notion that a 'Negro's place' is in domestic service, but chiefly because
there have been practically no opportunities for Negroes to learn trades.
Those Negroes who know skilled trades and follow them are principally men
from the South, who learned their trades there. The poorest of them fall
into domestic service; the best have found places at their trades. For the
Negro boy who is born in this city it is difficult to acquire a trade, and
here, I say, the system has been weakest."
With the idea of giving more practical training School No. 80 in New York,
of which Professor Bulkley is principal, is now opened in the evenings for
industrial instruction. Last year 1,300 coloured people, young and old,
were registered. In short, there is a recognition in the North as in the
South of the need of training the Negro to work. And not only the Negro,
but the white boy and girl as well--as Germany and other European
countries have learned.
_The Road from Slavery to Freedom_
At Indianapolis I found an organisation of Negro women, called the Woman's
Improvement Club. The president, Mrs. Lillian T. Fox, told me what the
club was doing to solve the problem of the coloured girl and boy who could
not get work. She found that, after all, white prejudice was not so much a
bugaboo as she had imagined. The newspapers gave publicity to the work;
the Commercial Club, the foremost business men's organisation of the city,
offered to lend its assistance; several white employers agreed to try
coloured help, and one, the Van Camp Packing Company, one of the great
concerns of its kind in the country, even fitted up a new plant to be
operated wholly by coloured people. Last fall, after the season's work was
over, one of the officers of the company told me that the Negro plant had
been a great success, that the girls had done their work faithfully and
with great intelligence.
Just recently a meeting of coloured carpenters was held in New York to
organise for self-help, and they found that, by bringing pressure to bear,
the Brotherhood of Carpenters was perfectly willing to accept them as
members of the union, on exactly the same basis as any other carpenters.
In short, the Negro is beginning to awaken to the fact that if he is to
survive and succeed in Northern cities, it must be by his own skill,
energy, and organisation. For, like any individual or any race, striving
for a place in industry or in modern commercial life, the Negro must, in
order to succeed, not only equal his competitor, but become more
efficient. A Negro contractor said to me:
"Yes, I can get any amount of work, but they expect me to do it a little
better and a little cheaper than my white competitors." Then he added:
"And I can do it, too!"
Those are the only terms on which success can be won.
For so long a time the Negro has been driven or forced to work, as in the
South, that he learns only slowly, in an intense, impersonal, competitive
life like that of the North, where work is at a premium, that he himself,
not the white man, must do the driving. It is the lesson that raises any
man from slavery into freedom.
_Pullman Porters_
So much for industry. The Negro in the North has also been going into
business and into other and varied employment. The very difficulty of
getting hold in the trades and in salaried employment has driven many
coloured people into small business enterprises: grocery stores, tailor
shops, real estate or renting agencies. If they are being driven out by
white men as waiters and barbers, they enjoy, on the other hand, growing
opportunities as railroad and Pullman porters and waiters--places which
are often highly profitable, and lead, if the Negro saves his money, to
better openings. A Negro banker whom I met in the South told me that he
got his start as a Pullman porter. He had a good run, and by being active
and accommodating, often made from $150 to $200 a month from his wages and
tips.
But the same change is going on in the North that I found everywhere in
the South. I mean a growing race consciousness among Negroes--the building
up of a more or less independent Negro community life within the greater
white civilisation. Every force seems to be working in that direction.
_Business Among Boston and Philadelphia Negroes_
As I have showed many Negroes in Boston (and indeed in other cities) have
made a success in business enterprises which are patronised by white
people--or rather by both races. Coloured doctors and lawyers in Boston
have more or less white practice. Of course, coloured men who can succeed
without reference to their colour and do business with both races, wish to
continue to do so--but the tendency in the North, as in the South, is all
against such development and toward Negro enterprises for the Negro
population. Even in Boston numerous enterprises are conducted by Negroes
for Negroes. I visited several small but prosperous grocery stores. A
Negro named Basil F. Hutchins has built up a thriving undertaking and
livery establishment for Negro trade. Charles W. Alexander has a
print-shop with coloured workmen and publishes _Alexander's Magazine_. A
new hotel called the Astor House, conducted by Negroes for Negroes, has
250 rooms with telephone service in each room, a large restaurant and many
of the other attractions of a good hotel. But in this growth the North is
far behind the South. Scores of Negro banks are to be found in the South,
not one in the North. Cities like Richmond, Va., Jackson, Miss.,
Nashville, Tenn., have a really remarkable development of Negro business
enterprises.
Perhaps I can convey a clearer idea of the great variety of employment of
Negroes in Northern cities by outlining the condition in a single city,
Philadelphia--information for which I am indebted to R. R. Wright, Jr. The
census of 1900 shows that out of 28,940 Negro males (boys and men), 21,128
were at work, and out of 33,673 girls and women, 14,095 were wage-earners.
Here are some of the more numerous occupations of Negro men:
Common labourers 7,690
Servants and waiters 4,378
Teamsters and hackmen 1,957
Porters and helpers in stores 921
Barbers and hairdressers 444
Messengers and errand boys 346
Brick and stone masons 308
Most of these are, of course, low-class occupations--the hard wage-work of
the city in which the men often sink below the poverty line. On the other
hand the census gives these figures:
Negro professional men (415) and women (170)
including doctors, clergymen, dentists, teachers,
electricians, architects, artists, musicians,
lawyers, journalists, civil engineers, actors,
literary and scientific persons, etc. 585
Retail merchants, men (297), women (22). 319
Hotel keepers 13
One Negro runs a men's furnishing store; another, a drug store; others,
groceries, meats, etc. The beneficial society has grown to a regular
insurance company, the renting agent has become a real estate dealer.
Within the past twelve months Negroes have incorporated two realty
companies, one land investment company, four building and loan
associations, one manufacturing company, one insurance company, besides a
number of other smaller concerns.
The civil service has proved of advantage to the Negro of Philadelphia, as
of every other large Northern city. In the post-office there are about 150
clerks, carriers and other employees, on the police force about 70
patrolmen, and 40 school-teachers and about 200 persons in other municipal
offices.
_Wherein Lies Success for Negroes_
I have thus endeavoured to present the conditions of the Negro in the
North and show his relationship with white people. I have tried to exhibit
every factor, good or bad, which plays a part in racial conditions. Many
sinister influences exist: the large increase of ignorant and unskilled
Negroes from the South; the growing prejudice in the North, both social
and industrial, against the Negro; the high death-rate and low birth-rate
among the Negro population, which is due to poverty, ignorance, crime, and
an unfriendly climate. On the other hand, many encouraging and hopeful
tendencies are perceptible. Individual Negroes are forcing recognition in
nearly all branches of human activity, entering business life and the
professions. A new racial consciousness is growing up leading to
organisations for self-help; and while white prejudice is increasing, so
is white helpfulness as manifested in social settlements, industrial
schools, and other useful philanthropies.
All these forces and counter forces--economic, social, religious,
political--are at work. We can all see them plainly, but we cannot judge
of their respective strength. It is a tremendous struggle that is going
on--the struggle of a backward race for survival within the swift-moving
civilisation of an advanced race. No one can look upon it without the most
profound fascination for its interests as a human spectacle, nor without
the deepest sympathy for the efforts of 10,000,000 human beings to
surmount the obstacles which beset them on every hand.
And what a struggle it is! As I look out upon it and see this dark horde
of men and women coming up, coming up, a few white men here and there
cheering them on, a few bitterly holding them back, I feel that Port
Arthur and the battles of Manchuria, bloody as they were, are not to be
compared with such a conflict as this, for this is the silent, dogged,
sanguinary, modern struggle in which the combatants never rest upon their
arms. But the object is much the same: the effort of a backward race for a
foothold upon this earth, for civilised respect and an opportunity to
expand. And the Negro is not fighting Russians, but Americans, Germans,
Irish, English, Italians, Jews, Slavs--all those mingling white races
(each, indeed, engaged in the same sort of a struggle) which make up the
nation we call America.
The more I see of the conflict the more I seem to see that victory or
defeat lies with the Negro himself. As a wise Negro put it to me:
"Forty years ago the white man emancipated us: but we are only just now
discovering that we must emancipate ourselves."
Whether the Negro can survive the conflict, how it will all come out, no
man knows. For this is the making of life itself.
_PART THREE_
THE NEGRO IN THE NATION