Following the Color Line Part 20

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 ent.i.tle 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 princ.i.p.al 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 hards.h.i.+p 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 acc.u.mulated 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 compet.i.tion.

In the South the Negro still has the field of manual labour largely to himself, he is unsharpened by compet.i.tion; 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 compet.i.tion 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 compet.i.tive 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 cla.s.ses 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 compet.i.tive 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 j.a.panese, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 compet.i.tive 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 compet.i.tion and protect them in their labour monopoly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WARD IN A NEGRO HOSPITAL AT PHILADELPHIA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Mitch.e.l.l'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 compet.i.tion, 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 s.h.i.+pped 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, bra.s.s, and iron castings for every kind of car made by this company. He graduated at the head of his cla.s.s of sixty members in a pattern making establishment in Chicago.

Cases of this sort are exceptional among the vast ma.s.ses 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 members.h.i.+p 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 l.u.s.ty 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 inst.i.tuted 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 cla.s.ses; they open the avenues of sympathy between the busy upper world and the struggling lower world. Such is the work of Miss Bartholomew, Miss Hanc.o.c.k, Miss Wharton in Philadelphia, Miss Eaton in Boston, Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley in Chicago, Miss Ovington in New York. Miss Hanc.o.c.k, 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 cla.s.ses 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NEGRO MAGAZINE EDITOR'S OFFICE IN PHILADELPHIA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Hanc.o.c.k 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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociation 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociation, 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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: