Following the Color Line Part 21

"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 princ.i.p.ally 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 ma.s.ses of the Negro poor. I wish I had room to tell some of the stories I heard: the black ma.s.ses 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 ill.u.s.trations showing how hard the Negro women worked--taking in was.h.i.+ng or going out every day to work, raising their families, keeping the home, sometimes supporting worthless husbands.

"A Negro woman of the lower cla.s.s," one visitor said to me, "rarely expects her husband to support her. She takes the whole burden herself."

And the women, so the loan a.s.sociation 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 ma.s.ses 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 Inst.i.tute 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 princ.i.p.al, 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 a.s.sistance; 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 compet.i.tor, 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 compet.i.tors." 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, compet.i.tive 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-cla.s.s 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociations, 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 munic.i.p.al offices.

_Wherein Lies Success for Negroes_

I have thus endeavoured to present the conditions of the Negro in the North and show his relations.h.i.+p 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, b.l.o.o.d.y 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 emanc.i.p.ated us: but we are only just now discovering that we must emanc.i.p.ate 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.