at $963,000. Since that time wage-earning Negroes have commenced to
buy homes in still larger numbers. They usually pay something down and
the rest as rent until the entire sum is paid. In Beltzhoover there is
a settlement of a hundred or more families more than half of whom are
buying homes. To buy a house of any kind on small wages means industry
and many little sacrifices. One couple whom I visited in Beltzhoover
were buying a house of five rooms with a piazza and a generous sized
front yard. The husband, when he was married, had saved $300, which went
for the first payment. In the four years since then they had paid $800
and they had $1,000 more to pay. He was a janitor getting forty-eight
dollars a month, while his wife made six dollars a week as a seamstress.
To increase their income, they rented out a room to a man and his wife
who paid them ten dollars a month. They also raised and sold chickens
which brought in additional money. Most of the houses which colored
people of this class are buying are valued at from $2,500 to $3,300. On
Francis street, near Wylie avenue, there is a group of five six-room
houses occupied by Negroes. Three of these families were buying their
houses. One of the men was a waiter, one a porter in a bank, and one
owned a horse and wagon and did expressing.
The following experience, told me by a Tuskegee graduate, is an example
of what may be done in Pittsburgh by an industrious Negro who is
ambitious to establish a home: "I came to Pittsburgh in March, 1900," he
said, "on a freight train, arriving about three A. M. I asked for the
police station, but they wouldn't let me stay there when they found I
had fifty cents in my pocket. I was turned up Wylie avenue and finally
came to a colored lodging house. All the beds were full, but they said
that I could sit in the rocking chair for the balance of the night for
a quarter. The next morning I started out to look for work and found
it in a brick yard where I worked until August. Meanwhile I sent for
my wife and child. My wife, who is a dressmaker, soon found work. She
happened to sew for the wife of the manager of one of the steel mills.
He asked about me and said he thought he could give me something good
in the mill. I went there in August and have been there ever since. Now
I am a heater. All you see here was gotten together in the last seven
years." This man and his wife have paid $4,400 for a six-room house and
have furnished it attractively.
* * * * *
The churches have the same prominent place in Negro life in Pittsburgh
as elsewhere. They include one Presbyterian, one Protestant Episcopal,
one Congregational, one Roman Catholic church, ten Methodist churches
and between thirty and thirty-five Baptist churches and missions.
The largest is the Bethel A. M. E. Church on Wylie avenue, which has
recently been built at a cost of $50,000. Colored slaters and roofers,
colored plasterers and three colored carpenters were employed in the
building of it. The interior decorations were in charge of a Negro
firm. The building together with the land, is valued at not less than
$110,000. The people give liberally to the churches; Bethel raised over
$10,000 in ten months toward paying off its mortgage.
But there is a large number not reached by the church in any real sense.
Though the new Bethel Church is in a district where the alleys and all
the bad conditions they imply are numerous, the pastor's plans for the
year as he outlined them were: first to pay the debt on the church,
second to have a revival to fill it up. Not a word was said of the great
need for active social work at its very doors. The rank and file of the
forty or fifty Negro ministers in Pittsburgh and Allegheny have not a
very high order of equipment or ethics. There are notable exceptions.
I met one minister who seemed filled with the desire to work for the
betterment of the Negroes of his neighborhood. In connection with the
new church which he was building he was planning to have a day nursery
and kindergarten and, if possible, a gymnasium. He hoped to have a
deaconess to visit the homes and was also trying to organize a colored
Y. M. C. A. At a meeting last fall in his church, the following subjects
were discussed:
"What is the influence of the Sunday School on the children?"
"Is the church accomplishing the desired end toward the masses?"
"Practical education and character making for the masses."
* * * * *
Some of the laymen among the colored people, especially the women, are
working in similar directions. In 1880, in a small six-room house, a
group of these started a Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women. The
present beautiful home on Lexington avenue was built in 1900 at a cost
of $42,500. It contains twenty-one rooms, six bath rooms and a hospital
room. The furnishings cost about $28,000. Several rooms were furnished
by the different Negro women's social clubs. The home is attractive,
cheery, clean and well-managed. The Working Girls' Home was similarly
started three years ago by some colored women who realized how much it
was needed. Girls coming to the city not only found it difficult to get
boarding places, but they were sometimes directed to undesirable houses.
In three years after it opened, the home had cared for forty to fifty
girls. As most of these girls go out to service, they do not remain
long at the home, but by paying a dollar a month a girl may store her
trunk if she wishes, and may come back there to spend Sundays and other
days "out," and to receive her callers. This is an arrangement which
is much appreciated by the girls, and its introduction in other places
might help solve the servant problem. A few girls who are seamstresses
live in the house. They pay $1.25 a week, buy their own provisions, and
have the use of the kitchen and gas range. The home has had a struggle
financially. Last year the Legislature granted it an appropriation of
$3,000 and it moved into a somewhat larger, though still too small
house. For this house, by the way, it had to pay thirty-two dollars a
month though the rent had formerly been twenty-five and the house had
been empty for some time.
The State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs formed five years ago,
is raising money to establish a colored orphan's home in New Castle,
Pennsylvania. A year ago these twenty-eight clubs had already raised
enough to make the first payment on seven acres of land. The Colored
Orphans' Home in Allegheny is under white management, and the colored
women are ambitious to have one of their own; a colored auxiliary to the
Juvenile Court Association was formed in 1906 to care for colored boys
and girls between nine and twelve years of age who are brought to the
court. The auxiliary also pays board for a group of colored children
who are in institutions outside the state. One member is a faithful
volunteer at the Juvenile Court.
More than twenty-five social clubs are formed of colored women. The
leading social organization for men is the Loendi Club. Besides this
and other private associations there are many such orders as the Odd
Fellows, Masons, Elks, Knights of Pythias and True Reformers.
* * * * *
Since 1874, when separate schools for Negroes were abolished, the
colored children have attended the public schools with the white
children, and all the educational agencies of the city are open to them.
I was told that while a few stood well in their classes, the majority
lacked concentration. One principal attributed this to the impoverished
home conditions, lack of food and housing,--while another principal
to whose school came many of the children from the alleys, laid
their backwardness largely to their irregular attendance and immoral
tendencies. It was agreed that the average colored child requires about
two years longer than the white child to finish the grammar grades.
The total enrollment at the high school for the year 1906-7 was about
2,300, and of these only forty were colored. Forty-two were enrolled
last year, twenty boys and ten girls[11]. Few of these colored students
graduate. Five who were graduated in 1907 ranked well in their class.
[11] Transcriber 20 + 10 obviously does not equal 42
Thirty colored students attended the evening high school last year.
Two girls are in the day classes, and four in the night classes at the
Carnegie Technical Schools, and they have three colored boys. Five or
six boys have been graduated from the Schwab Manual Training School in
Homestead.
In writing of the Negroes of Chicago, Mr. Wright says "What Chicago
Negroes need is a great industrial school to teach Negroes domestic
science and the skilled trades." Greater Pittsburgh has a school that
should do this work. As early as 1849, Charles Avery, a Methodist
minister of Quaker descent, who was much interested in the colored
people, established for them in Allegheny the Avery College Trade
School. At his death he left the institution an endowment of $60,000
which has since increased in value, and it has also received a yearly
appropriation from the state. The school is controlled by a board of
trustees, of whom six are colored, three white. The principal and
teachers are colored. The courses which have been offered include
millinery, dressmaking, tailoring, music, some English courses and some
domestic science. Last spring, a hospital department was organized under
separate charter and offers a training course.
There is no doubt that the Avery school is not fulfilling the purpose
for which it was founded. It is inferior in equipment and in methods
and does not employ trained teachers. It is not reaching the colored
boys and girls of Pittsburgh and giving them the up-to-date training
which they so sorely need in those trades in which they can earn a
livelihood. It should be crowded and would be if it were offering what
the people want. Instead the enrollment at the end of the school year is
about one-third what it was at the beginning. There is no difficulty in
placing responsibility for success or failure, for the superintendent
is also secretary and treasurer. The colored people have brought many
complaints to the trustees in regard to the management of Avery but
no action has been taken. Here is a clear cut illustration of a badly
managed trust fund.
Mr. Avery also left twelve scholarships of $100 each to be awarded
to colored boys in the college and engineering departments of the
University of Pittsburgh, where a total of nineteen colored students is
enrolled.
* * * * *
Of the 1,124 cases brought before the Juvenile Court in 1906, 168 (14.9
per cent), dealt with colored children. The court records show most
miserable conditions in the homes from which such children come. Usually
both mother and father are working away from home all day, so that out
of school hours there is no one to look after the children. They stop
going to school and begin to stay out late at night and the descent to
petty thieving and other offenses is swift and easy. On the morning of
my visit to the Juvenile Court several colored children were brought
before the judge. Harry D., a boy of eleven years, was under arrest for
his second offense. Twice he had broken into a chapel, the last time
stealing a lamp. The probation officer reported that on investigation,
she found Harry had scarcely been in school for a year. His mother
worked all day, earning three dollars a week and many days she came home
only early in the morning to cook. With three brothers and a sister this
boy slept on a cot in one room in which there was no other furniture
except two plush chairs and a plush sofa. An uncle who lived with the
children had taken to drinking and had not worked for some weeks. The
neighbors also bore testimony that Harry was neglected rather than bad.
Following Harry came a group of four colored boys on the charge that
on the previous Sunday they had broken into a liquor store and done
much mischief, such as turning on the spigots, breaking bottles full of
beer and smearing pretty much everything in the store, including some
cats, with black paint. The next morning they were arrested in a new
house near by where they were stealing lead pipe. Eugene, the youngest
boy, nine years old, had been in court two months before on the charge
of incorrigibility. His father was dead but his mother, by working out
by the day, managed to keep the home fairly clean and comfortable.
But Eugene was a truant; he stayed out nights and was in the habit of
stealing. For the lack of a more suitable solution, this nine-year-old
child was committed to the reformatory at Morganza. Two of these boys,
thirteen and eleven, were brothers. Their mother was dead; their father
was at work in a blast furnace, while their nineteen-year-old sister,
who might have kept the home, had left soon after the mother died
because she thought her father was too strict. The younger boy had been
staying out nights and playing truant. The older boy had never been in
trouble before. He had a good reputation and claimed, as did the fourth
boy, that he was not stealing but was trying to get the others away.
In other cases that came before the judge the parents were themselves
immoral and it is safe to say that the colored children who reach the
Juvenile Court have, as a rule, seen little but the seamy side of life.
A ready market for any bottle or piece of junk that these children can
beg or steal is found among the numerous junk dealers. The children will
be under a constant temptation to petty thieving for the sake of a few
pennies so long as this kind of exchange with juveniles is allowed.
The percentage of commitments among the adult Negroes (fourteen per
cent), is all out of proportion to their percentage in the population
(three and six-tenths). Women are most commonly arrested for disorderly
conduct; men for fighting and cutting, petit larceny and for gambling,
of which craps is the favorite form. There is much drunkenness. For some
time the police department of Pittsburgh has been warring against the
sale of cocaine. To the mind of the warden of the Allegheny county jail
the greatest single cause of crime committed by Negro men and women is
the use of this drug.
* * * * *
It is evident that the Negroes of Pittsburgh are making commendable
progress along industrial lines. Some few have been conspicuously
successful while many more are earning a comfortable living and
attaining property. Negroes of this class present no special problems,
for they are usually good citizens and are educating and training their
children to be good citizens likewise. Their needs are the needs of the
rest of the community. They would be benefited by better housing, better
schools, better sanitation and a clearer atmosphere. But the problems in
connection with the poor, ignorant, incompetent or vicious Negroes are
many and pressing.
We have seen the need for eradicating the sale of cocaine, which
drags men under; and we have seen the need for rousing and equipping
the ambitious among them through industrial training, comparable to
that offered the southern Negro by Tuskegee and Hampton. A few of
the more obvious needs of the people who live in the alleys are day
nurseries to care for the babies of mothers who must go out to work;
some sort of supervised play after school hours, either in connection
with the schools or at playgrounds, for the older children of these
same families, settlements; and most pressing of all, a building on
lower Wylie avenue for social purposes with free baths, club rooms,
a gymnasium and other amusements as a counteracting influence to the
saloons and pool rooms that abound in this neighborhood. There is now
no place in Pittsburgh where a young colored man, coming a stranger to
the city, as so many are coming every year, may find innocent diversion
and helpful companionship. It is becoming increasingly clear that
these needs must be met by the Negroes themselves. A few, singly or in
small groups, are already working for social betterment, but so far
there has been no concerted, organized action. Left to themselves the
Negroes are slow or unable to organize but until they do, much of their
efforts as individuals will be wasted and but little definite good can
be accomplished. If the white people who have had greater experience in
dealing with civic and social needs realized this and extended to them
their co-operation, the community as a whole, no less than the Negroes,
would be richly repaid.
THE JEWISH IMMIGRANTS OF TWO PITTSBURGH BLOCKS
ANNA REED
COLUMBIAN SCHOOL AND SETTLEMENT, PITTSBURGH
The greater part of the Jewish community of Pittsburgh is situated in
what is known as the Hill District. This immigration brings with it
characteristics so entirely its own that much that is significant of the
common life was found summed up in a study of the families of two blocks
in the heart of this district. A census of them proved more surely than
even those of us who had long been residents in the neighborhood would
have anticipated, the permanence and stability of this new element in
the population. The two blocks reflected the sort of foothold which is
open to this distinctive people in what is for most purposes, a purely
industrial center; what relation their new occupations bear to their
training and experience in the old countries of Europe; and what, as
measured in terms of livelihood and accomplishment, comes to them in
this new setting.
The blocks selected were two adjoining Center avenue at different points
on the incline of the hill. Pittsburgh has no really large tenement
houses. These homes were originally built for two families, and while
some still contain but two, many have been converted so as to house a
great many more. In the process of rebuilding, downstairs front-rooms
have been changed into small stores where grocers, butchers and tailors
supply the needs of the neighborhood. The houses are of brick, and
many are garnished by a government license sign, which indicates that
somewhere in these already crowded quarters, a small stogy-factory is
located which sells in the larger market. The many synagogs where the
men still wear the old time praying shawls, and each repeats for himself
in monotonous, low, musical tones the ancient Hebrew prayers, bring
into this capital of the steel district, the wonderful and fascinating
spirit of the East. The Cheders where the Hebrew language, which every
hardworking father and mother, no matter what else is sacrificed, feel
must be taught to the boys, and the Kosher butcher-shops, where the
dietary laws are still observed, are all distinctive of a people, which
though it adopts American customs, still keeps many of the traditions in
its own communal life.
There were 1,080 people in these blocks, 817 of whom were Jewish. Of the
143 Jewish families, 110 were from Russia, twenty-seven from Roumania,
five from Austria-Hungary and one from Germany,--all largely from small
towns. Among them there were very nearly three hundred children of
school age or younger.
A third of these families had been in America over ten years and
two-thirds over five years. Of course, the fact that the census was
taken in a year of industrial depression may have had a large influence
on the comparatively small number of more recent immigrants in residence
in the neighborhood, for these would have less resources to keep them
in Pittsburgh during a period of hard times. But the actual number of
stable family groups was very considerable as shown in the following
classification:
_Under 2_, _2 to 5_, _5 to 10_, _10 to 20_, _20 to 40_
Years in
America 10 33 50 32 18
Years in
Pittsburgh 12 36 49 29 17
This permanence as an element in the citizenship of Pittsburgh is in
contrast to an uninterrupted shifting among them as tenants. On the
one hand, the latter is merely a reflex of the success of particular
families in making their way and raising their standard of life; but the
greater part of it is due to the lack of proper houses at a fair rental
in Pittsburgh. It is a common occurrence for a family to move from place
to place in an effort to secure more livable quarters. One family went
through the torture of moving six times in one year. Two have lived from
ten to twenty years in the same place, eight from five to ten, forty-six
over two, while eighty-seven had been living in their present homes less
than two years.
Unsuspected by the casual visitor, there is a background of tragedy
and national crises to such a neighborhood. Among the great nations
of Europe, Russia and Roumania have absolutely refused political
and industrial freedom to their Jewish subjects. The concrete forms
which oppression and restriction assume are very real: prohibitions
against their owning land, their exclusion in one part of Russia from
the learned professions, in another from taking part in a government
contract, and in whole districts from owning their own homes. Here in
these blocks there are many families who have lived and traded in daily
terror of an outbreak or of the tyranny of an unscrupulous governor;
who have been deprived of the rights and privileges of citizens and yet
subjected to the full strain of military law and the brunt of religious
persecution. You chance to meet a man in the corner grocery,--he is tall
and gaunt; his long beard is well sprinkled with grey. On talking with
him you find he has served in the Russo-Turkish War, that his only son
served for four years in the Russian army, and that a "pogrom" finally
drove him to leave everything behind and flee to these shores. One man
was robbed and his family outraged,--a son and brother-in-law killed in
a recent massacre; another man already past forty, had to take up his
burden, and, like the pilgrims of old, go forth and search for a new
home, because the edict had been given in Moscow.
It was found that forty-one of the families had come for purely
religious and political reasons, ninety-two to better their economic
condition and thirty-four had followed relatives, friends and townsmen
who either sent for them or urged them to make the journey. Indeed,
this personal relationship is on many counts the most important factor
in swelling the population of a Jewish neighborhood. As a rule, no
matter how poor the immigrant may be, he saves, often by the most
drastic measures, to send for some loved ones. Such was the experience
of a young man, educated in the public schools of Roumania, who had
suffered in the uprisings there. His first employment in Pittsburgh
was with a local druggist. He went through the usual apprenticeship,
and soon another brother had come over and was working as a barber.
They saved and sent part of their earnings to their parents in the
old country, while the first, by work and study, prepared himself for
entrance into the local college of pharmacy, was graduated and his
earning capacity thereby increased. Then, the parents, a sister and two
brothers were brought over and, when an opportunity for buying a drug
store offered itself to him, the combined forces of the family made the
purchase possible. To-day, after eight years of hard work, he owns a
well-established business, is married and the entire family seems well
started on the road to success.
The question of what a man does, when he comes here an uninterpreted
stranger, is interestingly reflected in these two blocks. The
stogy industry and peddling are dominant; of those who have become
stogy-makers, four were students, two grocers, one was a peddler, one a
tailor, one a lumber trader, one a merchant and another a butcher.
The peddlers represent an even larger variety of skilled trades and
other occupations. A jewelry peddler and a rag peddler were printers; a
weaver, two lumber dealers, a gardener and a grocer have become peddlers
of clothing; a carpenter sells pictures; two blacksmiths, a tailor and
a farmer are peddling rags. Of those who were skilled, a goldsmith has
become a presser, a shoemaker is working at iron beds, an umbrella-maker
runs a pool room and a Hebrew teacher is now an egg-candler.
In contrast, and much more encouraging, are the six blacksmiths, eleven
tailors, three barbers, two bakers, three shoemakers, two printers
and a locksmith, a machinist, a plumber and a glazier, who started and
continue to use the trades they learned in the old country.
One of the most interesting facts brought out was that the number of
peddlers, grew from ten in the old country to twenty-eight on their
arrival in America and to thirty-two as the first work in Pittsburgh,
dropping again to seventeen who are peddling at the present time.
The following table compares occupations in the old country with those
practiced in the new: