Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York

CHAPTER V
Earning a Living—Business and the Professions

If we walk west on Fifty-ninth Street, at Eighth Avenue, we come upon one of the colored business sections of New York.Here, for a block's length, are employment and real estate agents, restaurant keepers, grocers, tailors, barbers, printers, expressmen, and undertakers, all small establishments occupying the first floor or basement of some tenement or lodging house, and with the exception of the employment agency all patronized chiefly by the colored race.Another such section and a more prosperous one is in Harlem, on West One Hundred and Thirty-third, One Hundred and Thirty-fourth, and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Streets.From the point of view of the whole business of the city such concerns are insignificant, but they are important from the viewpoint of Negro progress, since they represent the accumulation of capital, experience in business methods, and hard work. Very slowly the New York Negro is meeting the demanding power of his people and is securing neighborhood trade that has formerly gone to the Italian and the Jew. Husband and wife, father and son, work in their little establishments and make a beginning in the mercantile world.

The Negro, as we have seen, has conducted businesses in New York in the past, businesses patronized chiefly by whites.Barbering and catering were his successes, and in both of these he has lost, despite the fact that one of the city's wealthiest colored men is a caterer.But if he has lost here, he has gained along other lines.Among a number of photographers he has one who is well-known for his excellent architectural work.Two manufacturers have brought out popular goods, the Haynes's razor strop, and the Howard shoe polish.These men, one a barber and one a Pullman car porter, improved upon implements used in their daily work and then turned to manufacture.The headquarters of the Howard shoe polish is in Chicago, where the firm employs thirty people, the New York branch giving employment to twelve.

A wise utilization of labor already trained and at hand is seen in the Manhattan House Cleaning and Renovating Bureau.This firm contracts for the cleaning of houses and places of business and has also been successful in securing work on new buildings, entering as the builders leave and arranging everything for occupancy.In one week the Bureau has given employment to sixty men.

In those businesses in which he comes in contact with the white, the most pronounced success of the colored man has been real estate brokerage.The New York Negro business directory names twenty-two real estate brokers, and though a dozen of them probably handle altogether no more business than one white firm, a few put through important operations.The ablest of these brokers, recently clearing twenty thousand dollars at a single transaction, turned his operations to Liberia, where he went for a few months to look into land concessions. This broker has aided the Negroes materially in their efforts to rent apartments on better streets. His energy, and that of many more like him, is also needed to open up places for colored businesses, better office and workroom facilities for the able professional and business men and women. In New York as in the South the Negro needs to obtain a hold upon the land. In this he is aided not only by his brokers, but by realty companies. The largest of these, the Metropolitan Realty Company, in operation since 1900, is capitalized at a million dollars, and had in 1910 $400,000 paid in stock, and $400,000 subscribed and being paid for on instalment. This company operates in the suburban towns, and has quite a colony in Plainfield, New Jersey, where it owns 150 lots. It has built eighty cottages for its members, and has bought eighteen.

Among the businesses that cater directly to the colored, probably none is more successful than undertaking.The Negroes of the city die in great numbers, and the funeral is all too common a function.Formerly this business went to white men, but increasingly it is coming into the hands of the colored.The Negro business directory gives twenty-two undertakers, one of them, by common report, the richest colored man in New York.Profitable real estate investment, combined with one of the largest undertaking establishments in the city, has given him a comfortable fortune.Another large and increasingly important Negro business is the hotel and boarding-house.As the colored men of the South and West accumulate wealth, they will come in increasing numbers to visit in New York, and the colored hotel, now little more than a boarding-house, may become a spacious building, with private baths, elevator service, and a well-equipped restaurant.In today's modestly equipped buildings the catering is often excellent, and good, well-cooked food is sold at reasonable prices.Occasionally the Hotel Maceo advertises a southern dinner, and its guests sit down to Virginia sugar-cured ham, sweet potato pie, and perhaps even opossum.

Printing establishments, tailors' shops,[1] express and van companies, and many other small enterprises help to make up the Negro business world. One colored printer brings out an important white magazine. There are seven weekly colored newspapers, of which the New York Age is the most important, and two musical publishing companies. All these enterprises are useful, not only to the proprietor and his patrons, but especially to the clerks and assistants who thus are able to secure some training in mercantile work. In the white man's office, white and colored boys start out together, but as their trousers lengthen and their ambitions quicken, the former secures promotion while the latter is still given the letters to put into the mail box. If the Negro lad, discouraged at lack of advancement, leaves the white man and ventures with a tiny capital into some business of his own, his ignorance is almost certain to lead to his disaster. He is indeed fortunate if he can first work in the office of a successful colored man.[2]

We have one more census division to consider, Professional Service.The table runs as follows:

Professional Service

	Total number of males in each occupation.	Number of negroes in each occupation.	Negroes to each 1000 workers in occupation.
Actors, professional showmen, etc.	4,733	254	54
Architects, designers, draftsmen	3,966	2	0
Artists, teachers of art	2,924	13	4
Clergymen	2,833	90	32
Dentists	1,509	25	16
Physicians and surgeons	6,577	32	5
Veterinary surgeons	320	2	6
Electricians	8,131	18	2
Engineers (civil) and surveyors	3,321	7	2
Journalists	2,833	7	2
Lawyers	7,811	26	3
Literary and scientific	1,709	10	5
Musicians	6,429	195	30
Officials (government)	3,934	9	2
Teachers and professors in colleges	3,409	32	9
Total including some occupations not specified	60,853	729	12

Examining these figures we find few colored architects[3] or engineers, and a very small proportion of electricians, though among the latter there is a highly skilled workman. The New York Negro has no position in the mechanical arts. It may be that, as we so often hear, the African does not possess mechanical ability.[4] You do not see Negro boys pottering over machinery or making toy inventions of their own. But another and powerful reason for the colored youth's failing to take up engineering or kindred studies is the slight chance he would later have in securing work. No group of men in America have opposed his progress more persistently than skilled mechanics, and, should he graduate from some school of technology, he would be refused in office or workshop. So he turns to those professions in which he sees a likelihood of advancement.

Colored physicians and dentists are increasing in number in New York and throughout the country.The Negro is sympathetic, quick to understand another's feelings, and when added to this he has received a thorough medical training he makes an excellent physician.New York State examinations prevent the practice of ignorant doctors from other states, and the city can count many able colored practitioners.These doctors practise among white people as well as among colored.As surgeons they are handicapped in New York by lack of hospital facilities, having no suitable place in which they may perform an operation.The colored student who graduates from a New York medical college must go for hospital training to Philadelphia or Chicago or Washington.[5]

Colored lawyers are obtaining a firm foothold in New York.From twenty-six in the 1900 census they now, in 1911, number over fifty, though not all of these by any means rely entirely upon their profession for support.Some of our lawyers are descendants of old New York families, others have come here recently from the South.

Turning to our census figures again we see that the three professions in which the colored man is conspicuous are those of actor, musician, and minister.Instead of the average eighteen, he here shows fifty-four in every thousand actors, thirty in every thousand musicians, and thirty-two in every thousand clergymen.And since the pulpit and the stage are two places in which the black man has found conspicuous success it may be well in this connection to consider, not only the economic significance of these institutions, but their place in the life of the colored world.

The Negro minister was born with the Negro Christian, and the colored church, in which he might tell of salvation, is over a century old in New York. Today the Boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn have twenty-eight colored churches besides a number of missions. Some of the societies own valuable property, usually, however, encumbered with heavy mortgages, and yearly budgets mount up to ten, twelve, and sixteen thousand dollars. The Methodist churches lead in number, next come the Baptist, and next the Episcopalian. There are Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, as we have seen, is one of the oldest and is still one of the largest and most useful Negro churches in New York. Mount Olivet, a Baptist church on West Fifty-third Street, has a seating capacity of 1600, taxed to its full on Sunday evenings. St. Philip's gives the Episcopal service with dignity and devoutness, and its choir has many sweet colored boy singers. At St. Benedict, the Moor, the black faces of the boy acolytes contrast with the benignant white-haired Irish priest, and without need of words preach good-will to men.Only in this Catholic church does one find white and black in almost equal numbers worshipping side by side.

The great majority of the colored churches are supported by their congregations, and the minister or elder, or both, twice a Sunday, must call for the pennies and nickels, dimes and quarters, that are dropped into the plate at the pulpit's base.Contributors file past the table on which they place their offering, emulation becoming a spur to generosity.These collections are supplemented by sums raised at entertainments and fairs, and it is in this way, by the constant securing of small gifts, that the thousands are raised.

The church is a busy place and retains its members, not only by its preaching, but by midweek meetings.There are the class meetings of the Methodists, the young people's societies, the prayer meetings, and the sermons preached to the secret benefit organizations.Visiting sisters and brothers attend to relief work, and standing at a side table, sometimes picturesque with lighted lantern, ask for dole for the poor.

The Sunday-schools, while not so large as the church attendance would lead one to expect, involve much time and labor in their conduct.A colored church member finds all his or her leisure occupied in church work.I know a young woman engaged in an exacting, skilled profession who spends her day of rest attending morning service, teaching in Sunday-school, taking part in the young people's lyceum in the late afternoon, and listening to a second sermon in the evening.Occasionally she omits her dinner to hear an address at the colored Young Men's Christian Association.On hot summer afternoons you may see colored boys and girls and men and women crowded in an ill-ventilated hall, giving ear to a fervid exhortation that leads the speaker, at the sentence's end, to mop his swarthy face.The woods, the salt-smelling sea, the tamer prettiness of the lawns of the city's park, have not the impelling call of sermon or hymn.If the whole of the Negro's summer Sunday is to be given to direct religious teaching, one wishes that it might take place at the old time camp meeting, where there is fresh air and space in which to breathe it. The first of Edward Everett Hale's three rules of life as he gave them to the Hampton students was, "Live all you can out in the open air." The religious-minded New York Negro succumbs easily to disease, and yet elects to spend his day of leisure within doors.

With the exception of the Episcopalians, the churches undertake little institutional work.Money is lacking, and there is only a feeble conviction of the value of the gymnasium, pool table, and girls' and boys' clubs.The colored branches of the Young Men's Christian Association, however, are places for recreation and instruction.The lines that Evangelical Americans draw regarding amusements, prohibiting cards and welcoming dominos, allowing bagatelle and frowning upon billiards, must be interpreted by some folk-lore historian to show their reasonableness.Doubtless the extent to which a game is used for gambling purposes has much to do with its good or bad savor, and pool and cards for this reason are tabooed.Dancing is also frowned upon by many of the churches, while temperance societies make active campaign for prohibition. To New York's black folk, the church-goers and they who stand without are the sheep and the goats, and the gulf between them is digged deep.

Of the five colored Episcopal churches, St.Philip's and St.Cyprian's have parish houses.St.Philip's has moved into a new parish house on West One Hundred and Thirty-Fourth Street, where with its large, well-arranged rooms, its gymnasium, and its corps of enthusiastic workers it will soon become a powerful force in the Harlem Negro's life.St.Cyprian's is under the City Episcopal Mission, and has unusual opportunity for helpfulness since it is separated only by Amsterdam Avenue from the San Juan Hill district and yet stands amid the whites.Its clubs and classes, its employment agency, its gymnasium, its luncheons for school children, its beautiful church, are all primarily for the Negroes; but the colored rector has a friendly word for his white neighbors, tow-headed Irish and German boys and girls sit upon his steps, and his ministry has lessened the belligerent feeling between the east and the west sides of Amsterdam Avenue. St. David's Episcopal Church in the Bronx has a fresh air home at White Plains, cared for personally by the rector and his wife, who spend their vacation with tenement mothers and their children, the tired but grateful recipients of their good-will.

If there were ninety colored clergymen in New York in 1900, as the census says, a number must have been without churches, itinerant preachers or directors of small missions, supporting themselves by other labor during the day.Those men who now fill the pulpits of well-established churches have been trained in theological schools of good standing, for the ignorant "darky" of the story who leaves the hot work of the cotton field because he feels a "call" to preach does not receive another from New York.The colored minister in this city works hard and long, and finds a wearying number of demands upon his time.The wedding and the funeral, the word of counsel to the young, and of comfort to the aged, a multiplicity of meetings, two sermons every Sunday, the continual strain of raising money, these are some of his duties. With a day from fourteen to seventeen hours long he earns as few men earn the meagre salary put into his hand. But his position among his people is a commanding one, and carries with it respect and responsibility.

Strangers who visit colored churches to be amused by the vociferations of the preacher and the responses of the congregation will be disappointed in New York.Others, however, who attend, desiring to understand the religious teaching of the thoughtful Negro, find much of interest.They hear sermons marked by great eloquence.In the Evangelical church the preacher is not afraid to give his imagination play, and in finely chosen, vivid language, pictures his thought to his people.Especially does he love to tell the story of a future life, of Paradise with its rapturous beauty of color and sound, its golden streets, its gates of precious stones, effulgent, radiant.He dwells not upon the harshness, but rather upon the mercy of God.

A theological library connected with a Calvinistic church, when recently catalogued, disclosed two long shelves of books upon Hell and two slim volumes upon Heaven.No such unloving Puritanism dominates the Negro's thought.Hell's horrors may be portrayed at a revival to bring the sinner to repentance, but only as an aid to a clearer vision of the glories of Heaven.

The Negro churches lay greater stress than formerly upon practical religion; they try to turn a fine frenzy into a determination for righteousness.This was strikingly exemplified lately in one of New York's colored Baptist churches.During the solemn rite of immersion the congregation began to grow hysterical, or "happy," as they would have phrased it; there were cries of "Yes, Jesus," "We're comin', Lord," and swayings of the body backward and forward.The minister with loud and stirring appeal for a time encouraged these emotions.Then in a moment he brought quiet to his congregation and called them to the consecration of labor.Faith without works was vain.Baptism was not the end, but only the beginning of their salvation."You-all bleege ter work," he said, "if yer gwine foller der Lord.Ain't Jesus work in der carpenter shop till he nigh on thirty year old?Den one day he stood up (he ain't none er yer two-by-fo' men) an' he tak off his blue apun (I reckon he wore er apun like we-alls) an' he goes on down ter der wilderness, an' John der Baptist baptize him."

From oratory one turns naturally to music.The feeling for rhythm, for melodious sound, that leads the Negro to use majestic words of which he has not always mastered the meaning, leads him also to musical expression.He has an instinct for harmony, and, when within hearing distance of any instrument, will whistle, not the melody, however assertive, but will add a part.[6] Those who have visited colored schools, and especially the colored schools of the far South where the pupils are unfamiliar with other music than their own, can never forget the exquisite, haunting singing. When a foreman wants to get energetic work from his black laborers he sets them to singing stirring tunes. The Negro has his labor songs as the sailor has his chanties, and it would be impossible to measure the joy coming to both through musical expression.

In New York, despite their poverty, few Negroes fail to possess some musical instrument—a banjo perhaps, or a guitar, a mandolin or zither, or it may be the highly prized piano.Visiting of an evening in the Phipps model tenement, one hears a variety of gay tinkling sounds.And besides the mechanical instruments there is always the great natural instrument, the human voice.Singing, though not as common in the city as in the country, is still often heard, especially in the summer, and remains musical, though New York's noise and cheap and vulgar entertainments have an unhappy fashion of roughening her children's voices.

Music furnishes a means of livelihood to many Negroes and supplements the income of many others.Boys contribute to the family support by singing cheap songs in saloons or even in houses of prostitution. A boy "nightingale" will earn the needed money for rent while learning, all too quickly, the ways of viciousness. Others, more carefully reared, sing at church or secret society concert, perhaps receiving a little pay. Men form male quartettes that for five or ten dollars furnish a part of an evening's entertainment. There are many Negro musicians and elocutionists who largely support themselves by their share in the receipts from concerts and social gatherings.

We speak of men crossing the line when they intermarry with the whites, but there is another crossing of the line when some Negro by his genius makes the world forget his race.Such a man is the artist, Henry Tanner; and New York has such Negro musicians.Mr. Harry Burleigh, the baritone at St.George's, has won high recognition, not only as an interpreter, but as a composer of music; and one of the richest synagogues of the city has a Negro for its assistant organist.There are five colored orchestras in New York, the one conducted by Mr. Walter A.Craig having toured successfully in New England and many other northern states.

But the colored musician has usually found his opportunity for expression and for a living wage upon the stage.Probably many of the actors noted on the census list are musicians, and many of the musicians, actors; the writer of the topical song having himself sung it in vaudeville or musical comedy.Few New Yorkers appreciate how many of the tunes hummed in the street or ground out on the hand-organ, have originated in Negro brains."The Right Church but the Wrong Pew," "Teasing," "Nobody," "Under the Bamboo Tree," which Cole and Johnson, the composers, heard the last thing as they left the dock in New York, and the first thing when they arrived in Paris, these are a few of the popular favorites.Handsome incomes have been netted by the shrewder among these composers, and the demand for their songs is continuous.

With a bright song and a jolly dance comes success. Picking up the copy of the New York Age, that lies on my desk, I find jottings of twenty-four colored troupes in vaudeville in the larger cities of the North and West. Three are at Proctor's and three at Keith's. Their economic outlook is not so hilarious as their songs, for transportation is expensive and bookings are uncertain; yet pecuniarily these actors are far better off than their more sober brothers who stick to their elevators or their porters' jobs.

Twenty years ago the Negro performer probably had little anticipation of advancing beyond minstrel work, in which he sang loud, danced hard, and told a funny story.S.H.Dudley, the leading comedian in the "Smart Set" colored company, said in 1909: "When I started in business I had no idea of getting as high as I am now.A minstrel company came to the little town in Texas where I was raised, and at once my ambition fired me to become a musician.So I bought a battered horn and began to toot, to the great annoyance of my neighbors.Then I secured an engagement with a minstrel company whose cornet player had fallen into the hands of the law; and now here I am with one of the best colored shows ever gotten together and a starring tour arranged for next season." The movement from the minstrel show to the musical comedy, from the cheapest form of buffoonery to attractive farce, and even to good comedy, has been accomplished by a number of colored comedians. Williams and Walker may be considered the pioneers in this movement, and the story of their success, as Walker has told it, is a fine example of what the Negro can do along the line of decided natural aptitude. And it is important to notice this, for today, in the education of the race, æsthetic instincts are often suppressed with Puritan vigor, and labor is made ugly and unwelcome.

Bert Williams and George Walker, one a British West Indian, the other a Westerner, met in California where each was hanging around a box manager's office, looking for a job.Hardly more than boys, they secured employment at seven dollars a week.That was in 1889.In 1908 they made each $250 a week, and in later times they have doubled and quadrupled this.Their first stage manager expected them to perform as the blacked-up white minstrels were performing, but the two boys soon saw that the Negro himself was far more entertaining than the buffoon portrayed by the white man. They wanted to show the true Negro, and billing themselves as the "real coons" (their white rivals called themselves "coons") they played in San Francisco with some success. Later they came to New York, and at Koster and Bial's made their first hit.

"Long before our run terminated," Walker said in telling of those early days, "we discovered an important fact: that the hope of the colored performer must be in making a radical departure from the old time 'darky' style of singing and dancing.So we set ourselves the task of thinking along new lines.

"The first move was to hire a flat in Fifty-third Street, furnish it, and throw our doors open to all colored men who possessed theatrical and musical ability and ambition.The Williams and Walker flat soon became the headquarters of all the artistic young men of our race who were stage-struck.We entertained the late Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who wrote lyrics for us.By having these men about us we had the opportunity to study the musical and theatrical ability of the most talented members of our race."

In 1893 the World's Fair was held at Chicago, and on the "Midway" the visitor saw races from all over the world.Here was a Dahomey village, with strange little huts, representative of the African home life.The Dahomeyans themselves were late in arriving, and American Negroes, sometimes with an added coat of black, were employed to represent them.Among them were Williams and Walker, who played their parts until the real Dahomeyans arriving, they became in turn spectators and studied the true African.This contact with the dancing and singing of the primitive people of their own race had an important effect upon their art.Their lyrics recalled African songs, their dancing took on African movements, especially Walker's.Any one who saw Walker in "Abyssinia," the most African and the most artistic of their plays, must have recognized the savage beauty of his dancing when he was masquerading as an African king.

After the Dahomey episode the success of the two men was continuous."In 1902 and 1903," Walker said, "we had all New York and London doing the cake walk."In February, 1908, they appeared in "Bandanna Land," at the Majestic Theatre, and remained there for six months.Only those colored men who have made a steady, uphill struggle for the chance to play good comedy, know how important such recognition was for the Negro."Bandanna Land" was probably the most popular light opera in New York that winter next to "The Merry Widow."The singing, especially that of the male chorus, was often beautiful.Mrs. Walker's dancing and charming acting were delightful, the chorus girls were above the average in beauty and musical expression, and the two men who made the piece were spontaneously, irresistibly funny; added to this, unlike its successful rival, "Bandanna Land" was without a vulgar scene or word.

This was the last time the two men played together. Walker became seriously ill, and died in January, 1911. After their company disbanded, Williams went back to the one-piece act of vaudeville, but as a star in a white troupe. His position as a permanent actor in the "Follies of 1910" marks a new departure for the colored comedian, a departure won by great talent combined with character and tact.

Since 1908 the Majestic has seen another colored company, Cole and Johnson's, presenting a half-Negro, half-Indian, musical comedy, the "Red Moon."These two men, for years in vaudeville, have written songs for Lillian Russell, Marie Cahill, Anna Held, and other popular musical comedy and vaudeville singers.They have played for six months continuously at the Palace Theatre, London.Accustomed to writing for white actors, their own plays are not so distinctively African as Williams and Walker's.Both Johnson and Cole are of the mulatto type, and neither blackens his face.Cole is one of the most amusing men in comedy in New York.He is tall and very thin, with a genius for finding lank and grotesque costumes that are delightfully incongruous with his grave face.The words of the musical comedies are his, the music, Johnson's.He, too, has become seriously ill, and his company has disbanded.In three years the colored stage has suffered serious loss, but we see forming new and successful companies whose reputation will soon be assured.

Comedy has always furnished a medium for criticism of the foibles of the times, and there are many sly digs at the white man in the colored play.Ernest Hogan, now deceased, better than any one else played the rural southern darky.In the "Oysterman" we saw him in contact with a white scamp who was intent upon getting his recently acquired money.He was urged to take stock in a land company, to buy where watermelons grew as thick as potatoes, and chickens were as common as sparrows.The audience hated the white man heartily and sided with the simple, kindly, black youth, sitting with his dog at his side, on his cabin steps.Behind boisterous laughter and raillery the writers of these comedies often gain the sympathy of their hearers for the black race.

In this attempt to show the occupational life of the Negro, we have found that race prejudice often proves a bar to complete success, to full manhood.Something of this is true with the actor as well as with the laborer and the business man.In securing entrance in vaudeville, color is at first an advantage.The "darky" to the white man is grotesquely amusing, and by rolling his eyes, showing a glistening smile, and wearing shoes that make a monstrosity of his feet, the Negro may create a laugh where the man with a white skin would be hooted off the stage.And since the laugh is so easily won, many colored actors become indolent and content themselves, year after year, with playing the part of buffoon.But with the ambition to rise in his profession comes the difficult struggle to induce the audience to see a new Negro in the black man of today.The public gives the colored man no opportunity as a tragedian, demanding that his comedy shall border always on the farcical.And what is demanded of the actor is also demanded of the musician.Writers of the scores of some of our musical comedies are musicians of superior training and ability, but rarely are they permitted full expression.Mr. Will Marion Cook, the composer of much of the music of "Bandanna Land," for a few moments gives a piece of exquisite orchestration.When the colored minister rises and exhorts his quarrelling friends to be at peace with one another, one hears a beautiful harmony.I am told that Mr. Cook declares that the next score he writes shall begin with ten minutes of serious music.If the audience doesn't like it, they can come in late, but for ten minutes he will do something worthy of his genius.

However light-hearted a people, and however worthy of praise the entertainment that brings a jolly, wholesome laugh, let us hope that in the near future the Negro will find a more complete expression for his musical and histrionic gifts.Some actor of commanding talent, whose claims cannot be ignored, may reveal the larger life of the race.The nineteenth century knew a great Negro actor, Ira Aldridge, a protégé and disciple of Edmund Kean. He played Othello to Kean's Iago, and in the forties toured Europe with his own company, receiving high honors in Berlin and St. Petersburg.[7] A dark-skinned African, of immense power, physically and emotionally, he made Desdemona cry out in real fear, and caused Bassanio instinctively to shrink as he demanded his pound of flesh. Today's actor must be more subtle in his attack, but it may be given to him to reveal the thoughts at the back of the black man's mind. The genius of Zangwill gave us the picture of the children of the Ghetto; perhaps from the theatre's seat the American will first understand the despised black race.

CHAPTER VI
The Colored Woman as a Bread Winner

The life of the Negro woman of New York, if she belong to the laboring class, differs in some important respects from the life of the white laboring woman.Generalizations on so comprehensive a subject must, of course, meet with many exceptions, but the observing visitor, familiar with white and colored neighborhoods, quickly notes marked contrasts between the two, contrasts largely the result of different occupational opportunities.These pertain both to the married woman and the unmarried working girl.

The generality of white women in New York, wives of laboring men, infrequently engage in gainful occupations.In the early years of married life the wife relies on her husband's wage for support, and within her tiny tenement-flat bears and rears her children and performs her household duties—the sewing, cooking, washing, and ironing, and the daily righting of the contracted rooms. She is a conscientious wife and mother, and rarely, either by night or by day, journeys far from her own home.When unemployment visits the family wage earner, she turns to laundry work and day's cleaning for money to meet the rent and to supply the household with scanty meals; but as soon as her husband resumes work she returns to her narrow round of domestic duties.

After a score of these monotonous years more prosperous times come to the housewife.Every morning two or three children go out to work, and their wages make heavier the family purse.Son and daughter, having entered factory or store, bring home their pay envelopes unbroken on Saturday nights, and the augmentation of the father's wage gives the mother an income to administer.After the young people's wants in clothing and entertainment have been in part supplied, it becomes possible to buy new furniture on the instalment plan, to hire a piano, even to move into a better neighborhood. The earnings of a number of children, supplementing the wage of the head of the family, make life more tolerable for all.

These days, however, do not last long.Sons and daughters marry and assume new responsibilities; the husband, his best strength gone, finds unemployment increasing; and since saving, except for wasteful industrial insurance, has seemed impossible without sacrificing the decencies and pleasures of the children, the end of the woman's married life is likely to be hard and comfortless.

This rough description may fairly be taken to represent the life of the average New York white woman of the laboring class.It is not, however, the life of the average colored woman.With her, self-sustaining work usually begins at fifteen, and by no means ceases with her entrance upon marriage, which only entails new financial burdens.The wage of the husband, as we have seen, is usually insufficient to support a family, save in extreme penury, and the wife accepts the necessity of supplementing the husband's income.This she accomplishes by taking in washing or by entering a private family to do housework. Sometimes she is away from her tenement nearly every day in the week; again the bulk of her earnings comes from home industry. Her day holds more diversity than that of her white neighbor; she meets more people, becomes familiar with the ways of the well-to-do,—their household decorations, their dress, their refinements of manner; but she has but few hours to give to her children. With her husband she is ready to be friend and helpmate; but should he turn out a bad bargain, she has no fear of leaving him, since her marital relations are not welded by economic dependence. An industrious, competent woman, she works and spends, and in her scant hours of leisure takes pride in keeping her children well-dressed and clean.

At the second period of her married life, when her boys and girls, few in number if she be a New Yorker, begin to engage in self-supporting work, her condition shows less improvement than that of the white woman of her class.Sometimes her children hand her their whole wage, far oftener they bring her only such part as they choose to spare. The strict accounting of the minor to the parent, usual among Northerners in the past, and today common among the immigrant class, is not a part of the Negro's training. Rather, as the race has attained freedom it has copied the indulgent attitude of the once familiar "master," and regrets that its offspring must enter upon any work. Children with this tradition about them use the money they earn largely for the gratification of their vanity, not for the lessening of their mother's tasks. But a more potent factor than lack of discipline keeps the mother from being the administrator of the family's joint earnings. White boys and girls in New York enter work that makes it possible and advantageous for them to dwell at home; Negroes must go out to service, accept long and irregular hours in hotel or apartment, travel for days on boat or train. The family home is infrequently available to them, and money given in to it brings small return. Under these circumstances it is not strange if the mother must continue her round of washing and scrubbing.

The last years of life of the Negro woman, probably a little more than the last years of the white, are likely to bring happiness. With a mother at work a grandmother becomes an important factor, and elderly colored women are often seen bringing up little children or helping in the laundry—that great colored home industry. Accustomed all their lives to hard labor, it is easy for them to find work that shall repay their support, and in their children's households they are treated with respect and consideration.

The contrast in the lives of the colored and white married women is not more strongly marked than the contrast in the lives of their unmarried daughters and sisters.Unable to enter any pursuit except housework, the unskilled colored girl goes out to service or helps at home with the laundry or sewing.Factory and store are closed to her, and rarely can she take a place among other working girls.Her hours are the long, irregular hours of domestic service.She brings no pay envelope home to her mother, the two then carefully discussing how much belongs rightfully for board, and how much may go for the new coat or dress, but takes the eighteen or twenty dollars given her at the end of the month, and quite by herself determines all her expenditures. Far oftener than any class of white girls in the city she lives away from the parental home.

These are some of the differences found by the observer who looks into the Negro and the white tenement.They need not, however, rest alone upon any observer's testimony.We have in the census abundant statistics for their verification.Scattered among the volumes on Population, Occupations, and Women at Work are many facts concerning Negro women workers of New York, all of them confirmatory of the description just given.We may note the most important.

In 1900, whereas 4.2 per cent of the white married women in New York were engaged in gainful occupations, 31.4 per cent of the Negro married women were earning their living, over seven times as many in proportion as the whites.[1]

Again, in the total population of New York's women workers, 80 per cent were single, 10 per cent married, and 10 per cent widowed and divorced; while among the Negroes, the single women were only 53 per cent, the married 25 per cent, and the widowed 22.[2]

Statistics of the age period at which women are at work, show the Negro's long continuing wage-earning activity.Between sixteen and twenty is a busy time for the women of both races.Among the whites 59 per cent are in gainful occupations, among the Negroes 66 per cent.But as the girl arrives at the period when she is likely to marry, the per cent of workers among the whites drops rapidly, until for white women, forty-five and over, it is 13.5, about one in seven.With the colored, among the women forty-five years of age and over, 53 per cent, more than half, still engage in gainful toil.[3]

Family life can be studied in the census table.While 59 per cent of the unmarried white girls at work live at home, this is found to be true of but 25 per cent of the colored girls; that is, 75 per cent, three-quarters of all the colored unmarried working women, live with their employers or board.[4]

The census volume on occupations reveals at once the narrow range of the New York colored woman's working life.Personal and domestic service absorbs 90 per cent of her numbers against 40 per cent among the white.But before considering more fully the colored girl at work, we need to notice another statistical fact, the preponderance in the city of Negro women over Negro men.

Like the foreigner, the youth of the Negro race comes first to the city to seek a livelihood.The colored population shows 41 per cent of its number between the ages of 20 and 35. But unlike the foreigner, the Negro women find larger opportunity and come in greater numbers than the men. Their range of work is narrow, but within it they can command double the wages they receive at home, and if they are possessed of average ability, they are seldom long out of work. With the immense growth of wealth in New York the demand for servants continually increases, and finding little response from the white native born population, many mistresses receive readily the services of the English-speaking southern and West Indian blacks. So the boats from Charleston and Norfolk and the British West Indies bring scores and hundreds of Negro women from country districts, from cities where they have spent a short time at service, girls with and girls without experience, all seeking better wages in a new land.

Mr. Kelly Miller was the first to call attention to the presence in American cities of surplus Negro women.[5] The phenomenon is not peculiar to New York. Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans, all show the same condition. In Atlanta the women number 143 to every hundred colored men. New York shows 123 to every masculine one hundred. These surplus women account in part for the number of Negro women workers in New York not living at home. Some are with their employers, but others lodge in the already crowded tenements, for the southern servant, unaccustomed to spending the night at her employer's, in New York also, frequently arranges to leave her mistress when her work is done. In their hours of leisure the surplus women are known to play havoc with their neighbors' sons, even with their neighbors' husbands, for since lack of men makes marriage impossible for about a fifth of New York's colored girls, social disorder results. Surplus Negro women, able to secure work, support idle, able-bodied Negro men. The lounger at the street corner, the dandy in the parlor thrumming on his banjo, means a Malindy of the hour at the kitchen washboard. In a town in Germany, where men were sadly scarce, I was told that a servant girl paid as high as a mark to a soldier to walk with her in the Hofgarten on a Sunday afternoon. Colored men in New York command their "mark," and girls are found who keep them in polished boots, fashionable coats, and well-creased trousers. Could the Negro country boy be as certain as his sister of lucrative employment in New York, or could he oftener persuade her to remain with him on the farm, he would better city civilization. But the demand for servants increases, and the colored girl continues to be attracted to the city where she can earn and spend.

The table on the following page shows in condensed form the occupations of the Negro women in New York.As we see, the Negro women number forty-four in every thousand women workers.

Females Ten Years of Age and over, Engaged in Gainful Occupations in New York

	Total	Negro	Number to every 1000 workers
Professional service	22,422	281	12
Domestic and personal service	146,722	14,586	100
Laundresses	16,102	3,224	200
Servants and waitresses	103,963	10,297	99
All others	24,657	1,065	43
Trade and transportation	65,318	106	Between one and two
Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits	132,535	1,138	7
Dressmakers	37,514	813	22
Seamstresses	18,108	249	14
All others	76,913	76	1
Total including some occupations not specified	367,437	16,114	44

Federal Census 1900: Occupations, Table 43, p. 638

Ninety per cent of all the Negro women workers of New York are in domestic and personal service.This includes a variety of positions.Some Negro girls work in stores, dusting stock, taking charge of cloak or toilet rooms, scrubbing floors.Their hours are regular, but the pay, five or six, or very occasionally eight dollars a week, means a scanty livelihood without hope of advancement. The position of maid in a theatre where perquisites are larger is prized, and a new and pleasant place is that of a maid on a limited train. But the bulk of the girls are servants in boarding-houses, or are with private families as nurses, waitresses, cooks, laundresses, maids-of-all-work, earning from sixteen and eighteen to twenty-five and even thirty dollars a month. Occasionally a very skilful cook can command as high a monthly wage as fifty dollars.

The colored girl is frequently found engaged at general housework in a small apartment.Her desire to return to her lodging at night makes her popular with families living in contracted space.With the conveniences of a New York flat, dumb-waiter, clothes-dryer, gas, and electricity, general housework is not severe.Work begins early, seven at the latest, and lasts until the dinner is cleared away, at half-past eight or nine.Released then from further tasks, the young girl goes to her tiny inner tenement room, dons a fresh dress, and then, as chance or her training determines, walks the streets, goes to the theatre, or attends the class meeting at her church.Entertainments among the Negroes are rarely under way until ten o'clock, and short hours of sleep in ill-ventilated rooms soon weaken the vitality of the new-comer.Housework under these conditions does not create much ambition; the mistress moves, flitting, in New York fashion, from one flat to another, and the girl also flits among employers, changing with the whim of the moment.

Few subjects present so fascinating a field for discussion as domestic service, and the housewife of today enters into it with energy, sometimes decrying the modern working girl, again planning household economics that shall lure her from factory or shop.The only point we need to consider now is the dissatisfaction that results when 64 per cent of the women of a race are forced by circumstances into one occupation.Those with native ability along this line succeed and make others and themselves happy.The faithful, patient, loyal Negro servant is well-known, the black mammy has passed into American literature, but not every colored woman can wisely be given this position.Some of the Negro girls who take up housework in New York are capable of more intelligent labor, and chafe under their limitations; others have not the ability to do good housework; for domestic service requires more mental capacity than is demanded in many factories.In short, a great many colored girls in New York are round pegs in square holes, and the community is the loser by it.

Among these round pegs are girls who, determining no longer to drudge in lonely kitchens, contrive, as we shall see later, to find positions at other more attractive reputable work.Others, deciding in favor of material betterment at whatever cost, lower their moral standard and secure easier and more remunerative jobs.A well-paying place, with short hours and high tips, at once offers itself to the colored girl who is willing to work for a woman of the demi-monde.In the sporting house also she is preferred as a servant, her dark complexion separating her from other inmates.In 1858, Sanger wrote in his "History of Prostitution," "The servants (in these houses) are almost always colored women.Their wages are liberal, their perquisites considerable, and their work light."Untrained herself, bereft of home influence, with an ancestry that sometimes cries out her parent's weakness in the contour and color of her face, the Negro girl in New York, more even than the foreign immigrant, is subject to degrading temptation.The good people, who are often so exacting, want her for her willingness to work long hours at a lower wage than the white; and the bad people, who are often so carelessly kind, offer her light labor and generous pay.It is small wonder that she sometimes chooses the latter.

Not all the colored girls who work in questionable places and with questionable people take the jobs from choice; some are sent without knowing the character of the house they enter.A few years ago an agitation was started for the protection of helpless Negro immigrants who had fallen into the hands of unscrupulous employment agencies.A system existed, and still exists, by which employment agencies were able to advance the travelling expenses of southern girls, who on their arrival in New York were held in debt until the cost of the journey had been many times repaid.Helpless in the power of the agent, the new-comer was forced to work where he wished.Under the city's department of licenses some of the more unscrupulous of these agencies have been closed, and philanthropy has placed a visitor at the docks to give aid and advice to unprotected girls. But the danger is by no means over. Those familiar with the subject assert that there is a proportionately larger black slave than white slave traffic.

There is a gainful occupation for women, black and white, too important to be left unnoticed.The census does not tabulate it.The best people strive to ignore it, and carefully sheltered girls grow up unconscious of its existence.But the employment agent understands its commercial value, and little children in the red light neighborhood are as familiar with it as with the vending of peanuts on the street.To the poor it is always an open door affording at least a temporary respite from dispossession and starvation.How many of the colored turn to it, we do not know—certainly not a few.Some gain from it a meagre livelihood, but others, for a time at least, achieve comfort and even luxury.

Among the round pegs that the square holes so uncomfortably chafe are colored girls of intelligence and charm who deliberately join the anti-social class.Probably a few in any case would lead this life, but the history of many shows an unsuccessful struggle for congenial work, ending with a choice of material comfort however high the moral cost. In One Hundred and Thirty-fourth and One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Streets are apartments where such girls live, two or three together, surrounded by comforts that their respectable neighbors who go out to cook, wash, and iron may fruitlessly long for all their lives. A colored philanthropic worker, stopping by chance at the door of one of these places, saw an old college friend. "How can you do it!" she cried as she recognized the life the girl was leading, "How can you do it! I would rather kill myself scrubbing!" "There is the difference between us," came the answer, "I am not willing to die, and I cannot and will not scrub."

It is pleasant and encouraging to turn from colored women who have given up the struggle, to ambitious, successful workers.Some among these are in the domestic service group and enjoy with heartiness their tasks as nurse-maid or cook."This is my piano day," an expert colored washerwoman says of a Monday morning. Among the domestic service workers, as classified by the census, is the trained nurse, filling an increasingly important position in New York. In 1909, Lincoln Hospital graduated twenty-one colored nurses, some of whom remain in New York to do excellent work.

In the professions, with the women as with the men, the first place numerically is occupied by performers upon the stage.So much has been said of the Negro as an actor that there is little to add.A rather better class of colored than of white women join musical comedy chorus troupes, for fifteen or eighteen dollars a week that will attract a Negro to the stage can be made by a white girl in a dozen other ways.Lightness of color seems a requisite for a stage position, unless a dark skin is offset by very great ability, as in the case of Aida Walker, one of the most graceful and charming women in musical comedy.

No record is kept of the number of colored teachers in the city's public schools, but each year Negro graduates from the normal college secure positions.These are found from the kindergarten through the primary and up to the highest grammar grade. The colored girl with intellectual ability, particularly if she comes of an old New York family, is apt to turn to teaching. Her novitiate is long, but a permanent certificate secured, she is sure of a good salary, increasing with her years of service, and ending in a pension. This path of security has perhaps tended to keep New York colored girls from going into other lines of work. I have not yet found one who has graduated from a university. Pratt Institute and the Teachers' College have colored normal students, but they are usually from the South or West, not New Yorkers born.

Philanthropy is opening up important lines of opportunity to the Negro woman in New York.In 1903, a colored graduate nurse secured an interview with the Secretary of the New York Charity Organization Society, and so ably presented to him the need of Negro visitors among Negroes that she was appointed visiting nurse for the colored sick who came under the notice of the Society.In time the position changed into that of a colored district visitor, other colored nurses entering in numbers into district nursing work. In 1910, three nurses were employed by the Nurses' Settlement, two by the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor of Manhattan, and two by the District Nursing Association of Brooklyn. With increased knowledge of the sickness and suffering amid the Negro poor, and of their need of proper care in their homes, the number of these nurses will doubtless increase. Colored women rank high among the trained nurses of New York.

Other philanthropic work lately has been undertaken by Negro women in New York.In 1910, besides the nurses of whom we have spoken, there were at the head of societies in salaried positions, two settlement workers, two matrons of day nurseries, two matrons of homes in which much social work was carried on, many employees in colored orphan asylums, a teacher of domestic science in a home-keeping flat, a traveller's aid visitor, a playground instructor, besides workers in various religious organizations.This does not include the many colored women doing social and recreation work in the public schools and on the city's playgrounds. Indeed, the difficulty in New York is to secure trained colored women for philanthropic work, the Negro's attitude still being that of the great majority of white women a few years ago, that love for children and a sentimental kindness constitute the requisites for work among the poor. But the school of experience is training workers, and as the schools of philanthropy of New York, Boston, and Chicago also graduate colored students, we shall have in the North the intelligent, trained workers whom we need.

The little kindergarten girl who, with head erect, walked past the jeering line of boys to the green trees and soft grass of the park has her counterpart in many young women of New York.In 1909, a colored girl graduated from one of the city's dental colleges, the first woman of her race to take this degree in the state.From the first her success was remarkable.Colored girls with ability and steady purpose and dogged determination have won success in clerical and business work; but the last large and efficient group is that classified in the census under mechanical and manufacturing pursuits: the dressmakers, seamstresses, milliners.

Colored women have always been known as good sewers, and recently they have studied at their trade in some of the best schools.From 1904 to 1910, the Manhattan Trade School graduated thirty-four colored girls in dressmaking, hand sewing, and novelty making.The public night school on West Forty-sixth Street, under its able colored principal, Dr. W.L.Bulkley, since 1907, has educated hundreds of women in sewing, dressmaking, millinery, and artificial flower-making.While the majority of the pupils have taken the courses for their private use, a large minority are entering the business world.They meet with repeated difficulties; white girls refuse to work in shops with them, private employers object to their color, but they have, nevertheless, made creditable progress.The census reports the number of Negro dressmakers to have quadrupled in the United States from 1890 to 1900.Something comparable to this increase in dressmaking and allied trades has taken place among the Negroes of New York, and it has come through education and persistence, and the increase of trade among the colored group itself. Numbers of these dressmakers and milliners earn a livelihood, though often a scanty one, from the patronage of the people of their own race.

But despite her efforts and occasional successes, the colored girl in New York meets with severer race prejudice than the colored man, and is more persistently kept from attractive work. She gets the job that the white girl does not want. It may be that the white girls want the wrong thing, and that the jute mill and tobacco shop and flower factory are more dangerous to health and right living than the mistress's kitchen, but she knows her mind, and follows the business that brings her liberty of action when the six o'clock whistle blows. What she desires for herself, however, she refuses to her colored neighbor. Occasionally an employer objects to colored girls, but the Manhattan Trade School repeatedly, in trying to place its graduates, has found that opposition to the Negro has come largely from the working girls. Race prejudice has even gone so far as to prevent a colored woman from receiving home work when it entailed her waiting in the same sitting-room with white women. Of course, this is not the universal attitude. In friendly talks with hundreds of New York's white women workers, I have found the majority ready to accept the colored worker. Jewish girls are especially tolerant. They believe that good character and decent manners should count, not color; but an aggressive, combative minority is quite sure that no matter how well educated or virtuous she may be, no black woman is as good as a white one. So the few but belligerent aristocrats triumph over the many half-ashamed, timid democrats.

The shirtwaist makers' strike of 1910 was so profoundly important in its breaking down of feeling between nationalities, its union of all working women in a common cause, that the colored girl, while very slightly concerned in the strike itself, may profit by the more generous feeling it engendered.Certainly an entrance into store and workshop would be to her immense advantage.She needs the discipline of regular hours, of steady training, of order and system.She needs also to become part of a strong labor group, to share its working class ideal, to feel the weight of its moral opinion; instead of looking into the mirror of her wealthy mistress, she needs to reflect the aspirations of the strong, earnest women who toil.

Before bringing the story of the life of the New York colored working woman to a close, it may not be amiss to look closely at the discrimination practised against her, not only in her work, but in her daily life.The Negro comes North and finds himself half a man.Does the woman, too, come to be but half a woman?What is her status in the city to which she turns for opportunity and larger freedom?

Four years ago, within a few hours' time, two stories were told me, illustrative of the colored woman's status.Neither occurred in the city of New York, but both are indicative of its temper.The first I heard from a woman skilled in a difficult profession, a Canadian now residing in the United States, and the descendant of a fugitive slave. Her youthful companions had all been white, and while an African in the darkness of her skin and her musical voice, her rearing had been that of an Englishwoman. "Shortly after coming to New York, I went for the first time," she told me, "to a little resort on the Jersey coast. A board walk flanked the ocean, and on the other side were shops and places of amusement. Going out one morning with two companions, a colored man and woman, we turned into an enclosure to examine a gaily painted merry-go-round. The place was open to the public, and a few nursery maids with their charges were seated about. The man in our party, interested in the mechanism of the machine, went up to it and began to explain it to us. Quite suddenly a rough fellow, in charge of the place, walked over and called out, 'Get out of here! We don't allow niggers.' The attack, to me at least, was so overwhelming that I did not move at once. Thereupon I was again called 'nigger,' and ordered out.

"When I reached the beach, I asked my companions to leave me, and I sat on a bench looking upon the waves. After a time an old woman came to my side, and said a little timidly, 'What are you thinking about, dearie?' Looking in her face I saw that she feared that I would commit suicide. 'I am thinking,' I said turning to her, 'that I wish the ocean might rise up and drown every white person on the face of the earth.' 'Oh, you mustn't say that,' she cried horrified, and left me. After I cannot tell how many minutes or hours, I returned to my boarding-house, and then to my home in New York. I had had a great many white friends in my native home; I had played with them, eaten with them, slept with them. Now I destroyed their letters, and resolved never to know them again. That was my first affront in the United States, and while I have learned to feel somewhat differently, a little to discriminate, I can never forget that the white people in the North stand for the insult which was cast upon me."

On the evening of the same day I had learned of this happening, a man from a prominent college in New York State told me of a Negro classmate."He was a pleasant, intelligent fellow from the South," he said, "and while I never knew him well, I was always glad to see him.One day, at commencement time, when we were all having our relatives about, he boarded my car with a young colored woman, evidently his sister.Without a thought I rose, lifted my hat, and gave her my seat.Never again shall I see such a look of gratitude as that which lighted up his face when he bowed in acknowledgment of my courtesy.It revealed the race question to me, and yet I had performed only the simplest act of a gentleman."

In these two incidents we see the undecided, perplexing position of the Negro woman in New York.Today she may be turned out of a public resort as a "nigger," tomorrow she may receive the dues of a gentlewoman.And since, while I write, I hear the cry of a class in the community who adjudge the expulsion necessary since the other course must lead at once to social equality, I make haste to add that the second story did not end in wedlock.As far as I have seen, it never does.Intermarriage of white and black in New York is so slight as to be a negligible quantity, but amalgamation between the two races is not uncommon. And this we may say with certainty, the man most blatant against the "nigger" in New York as all over the country is the man most ready to enter into illicit relationship with the woman whom he claims to despise. The raising of the hat to the colored woman brings a diminution in sexual immorality.

If the Negro civilization of New York is to be lifted to a higher level, the white race must consistently play a finer and more generous part toward the colored woman.There are many inherent difficulties against which she must contend.Slavery deprived her of family life, set her to daily toil in the field, or appropriated her mother's instincts for the white child.She has today the difficult task of maintaining the integrity and purity of the home.Many times she has succeeded, often she has failed, sometimes she has not even tried.A vicious environment has strengthened her passions and degraded her from earliest girlhood. Beyond any people in the city she needs all the encouragement that philanthropy, that human courtesy and respect, that the fellowship of the workers can give,—she needs her full status as a woman.

CHAPTER VII
Rich and Poor

Of the many nations and races that dwell in New York none, with the exception of the Chinese, is so aloof from us in its social life as the Negro.The childish recollection of an old school friend, recently related to me, well illustrates this.Across the way from where she lived there was a house occupied by a family of mulattoes.They were the quietest and least obtrusive people on the block, and the wife, who was known to be very beautiful, on the rare occasions when she left her home, was always veiled.The husband was little seen, and the child, a shy boy, never played on the street.For years the family lived aloof from their neighbors, the subject of hushed and mysterious questioning.

Probably had one of the white women dropped in some day to say good-morning or to borrow a recipe book, the mystery would have been wholly dispelled,—a pity surely for the children. Few of New York's citizens are so American as the colored, few show so little that is unusual or picturesque. The educated Italian might have in his home some relic of his former country, the Jew might show some symbol of his religion; but the Negro, to the seeker of the unusual, would seem commonplace. The colored man in New York has no associations with his ancient African home, no African traditions, no folk lore. The days of slavery he wishes completely to forget, even to the loss of his exquisite plantation music. He is ambitious to be conventional in his manners, his customs, striving as far as possible to be like his neighbor—a distinctly American ambition. In consequence, after indicating the lines along which he has achieved economic success, one finds little to describe in the lives of the well-to-do that will be of interest. And yet this sketch would be open to criticism if, after so long a survey of the working class, it gave no space to those Negroes who have achieved a fair degree of wealth and leisure; and perhaps the very recital of the likeness of these people to those about them may be of importance, for the great mass of white Americans are like a vivacious Kentuckian of my acquaintance, who, on learning something of a well-to-do Negro family, assured me that she knew less of such people than she did of the Esquimaux.

Mr. William Archer, in his book, "Through Afro-America," describes a round of visits to southern Negro homes, where, with touching pride, his hostesses show their material wealth, or rather the material wealth of their race as embodied in drawing-room, dining-room, and bedroom.There seemed to be nothing remarkable about the rooms unless their very existence was remarkable.So the interiors of colored homes in New York would reveal nothing to mark them from the homes of their neighbors, save perhaps the universal presence of some musical instrument.In Brooklyn, the Bronx, and in the Jersey suburbs, Negroes buy and rent houses, sometimes with a few of their race in close proximity, sometimes with white neighbors only on the block.Brooklyn seems always to have shown less race antagonism than Manhattan (where, indeed, anything but the apartment is beyond the pocket-book of people of modest means), and it has been in Brooklyn for the past three generations that the well-to-do colored families with their children have chiefly been found.

Much pleasant hospitality and entertainment take place behind these modest doors.Visitors are common, relatives from the east and west and south, and little dinner and supper parties are numerous.If church discipline does not interfere, the women have their afternoons of whist, and despite church discipline, dancing is very common, few entertainments proving successful without it.To play well upon some musical instrument is almost a universal accomplishment, and, as with the Germans, families and friends meet the oftener for this harmonious bond.

The social life of the well-to-do colored family generally centres about the church, and with a regularity unusual among the white people, father and mother and children attend the Sunday and week-day meetings.Colored society is also at the period of the bazaar and fair, the concert and dramatic entertainment.Money is raised by this means for the church, the private charity, or to supplement the dues of the mutual benefit society.There are a number of Negroes in the different large cities who support themselves by concerts and readings, appearing at benefits in the North and South, where they receive a third or a half of the receipts.Amateur performances are also common.A young New York college man, one winter evening, saw two refined, remarkably well-dressed colored women turn in at the entrance of the Grand Central Palace.Purchasing a ticket for the benefit, as it proved, of a colored day nursery (the entertainment netted $2300), he followed them to find himself in the Afro-American social world.For while the amateur dancing and singing upon the stage were pretty and attractive, the young man was far more interested in the audience."And the disappointing thing about it," he remarked in telling of it afterwards, "was that they were exactly like other people." To use the newspaper phrase, "there was no 'story.' " They were a group of Americans, trained in the social conventions of their own land.

There are many secret and benefit societies among the Negroes in New York.The Masons have nine meeting places; the Elks, ten lodges.The Odd Fellows have twenty-two places of meeting.The United Order of True Reformers, a strong Negro organization in the South, where it conducts large business enterprises, has forty-four head-quarters in church and hall and private house, where meetings are held twice a month.Many benefit societies are closely associated with the churches.Colored men and women are very busy with their multitudinous church and society and benefit meetings.I remember once attending an evening service at a colored church when the minister preached the sermon to the benefit orders of St.Luke's and the Galilean Fishermen.The officers, some of them carrying spears with blue and red and white trimmings, marched down the aisle and took their seats at the front of the pulpit. Their leader was in purple, wearing a huge badge like a breastplate with yellow and green stones. The women, equally prominent with the men, were dressed one in yellow with green over it, and broad purple bands, two in white with golden crowns. The pageant was very pretty, even beautiful, but too artless in its simple enjoyment of color and display for the conventional society of New York, and the colored "four hundred" were not in it.

Who are the four hundred in New York's colored society?An outsider would be very bold who should attempt to answer.Twenty-five years ago the New Yorker born, especially the descendant of some prominent anti-slavery worker, would have held foremost social position.The taint of slavery was far removed from these people, who looked with scorn upon arrivals from the South.Many were proud of their Indian blood, and told of the freedom that came to their black ancestors who married Long Island Indians.But these old New York colored families, sometimes bearing historic Dutch and English names, have diminished in size and importance as have the old white families beside them. The younger generation has gone west, or has died and left no issue. And into the city has come a continual stream of Southerners and more recently West Indians, some among them educated, ambitious men and women, full of the energy and determination of the immigrant who means to attain to prominence in his new home. These new-comers occupy many of the pulpits, are admitted to the bar, practise medicine, and become leaders in politics, and their wives are quite ready to take a prominent part in the social world. They meet the older residents, and the various groups intermingle, though not without some friction. Like a country village, the New York Negro social world knows the happenings of its neighbors, gossips over their shortcomings, rejoices, though with something of jealousy, over their successes, and has its cliques, its many leaders, but also its broad-minded spirits who strive to bring the whole village life into harmony.

As we have learned from a study of the occupational life of the Negro, the majority of men and women of means are in the professional class, or in the city or federal service. Such positions do not carry with them large incomes, and remembering the high cost of living in New York, and the exorbitant rental paid by black men, we can see that, gauged by the white man's standard, the Negro with his two or three or four thousand dollars a year is poor. Yet with his very limited income the demands upon him are enormous. In the first place, he must educate his children, and this means a large expenditure, for only in the technical schools or the college can his boy or girl be prepared for a successful career. The white boy may find some business firm that will give him a chance of advancement, but the colored boy must receive such an education as shall fit him to start an enterprise by himself, unless he enters public service. So the trade or professional school or college absorbs the savings of many years.

The church is another large recipient of the Negro's slender means.Watching the dimes and quarters drop into the contribution plate as the dark-faced congregation files past the pulpit on a Sunday evening, one wonders whether any other people in America willingly give so large an amount of their income to their religious organizations.And not only will money be requested for the church's need, but special offerings will be given to home and foreign mission work.In 1907, the African Methodist Church alone raised $36,000 for home and foreign missions.The Baptists raised $44,000.Educational work demands a share: the African Methodists support twenty schools, the African Zion twelve, and the Negro Baptists one hundred and twenty.The other denominations do their share, and the Negroes also give to the schools conducted by white churches for their people.This money comes from all over the country, and the well-to-do New York Negro must contribute his part.

Home charities also help to drain the Negro's purse.Manhattan and Brooklyn have a number of colored philanthropies, orphan asylums, old people's homes, rescue missions, Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations, and social settlements. Some are supported entirely by white people, but the greater number receive some contributions from the colored, and a few are dependent for money upon that race alone. Thousands of dollars are raised yearly, among the well-to-do New York Negroes, for these institutions.

Yet, with all these various philanthropic activities, one too frequently hears that the Negro does not support his own charities.As though anything of the sort could be expected of him!A little time ago, in asking for money for settlement work among Negroes, I was asked in turn by the exquisitely dressed woman before me, whose furs and gown and jewels must have represented a year's salary of a school-teacher, the type of wealthy woman among the colored, why the well-to-do Negroes did not support the settlement themselves.No such question is asked when we demand money for work among the Italians or the Jews, who have incomparably larger means.Indeed, one may question whether the Negro is not too generous for the materialistic city of New York, whether his successes would not be greater were he niggardly toward himself and others. He lives well, dresses well, enjoys a good play, strives to give every advantage to his children, helps the poor of his race. To hold his own today in this civilization, he needs to be taught to seek first riches, waiting until much treasure has been laid up before he allows philanthropy to draw upon his bank account.

The traveller to the British West Indies finds three divisions among the inhabitants, white, colored, and black, each group having a distinct social status.In the United States, on the other hand, there are but two groups, white and colored, or as the latter is now more frequently designated, Negro, the term thus losing its original meaning, and becoming a designation for a race.But while the white race usually makes no social distinction between the light and the dark Negro, classing all alike, social lines are drawn within the color line.Years ago these were more common than they are now.Charles W.Chesnutt, the novelist, tells some amusing and pathetic stories of distinctions between colored and black.One of his mulatto heroes, upon finding, as he thinks, that the congressman who is to call upon his daughter is a jet black Negro instead of the mulatto he was supposed to be, to prevent a breach of hospitality, invents a case of diphtheria in the family and quarantines the house, only to learn later, to his intense mortification, that he has committed a mistake of identification, and that the congressman is light after all. But this story belongs with the last generation. Black men, if they are distinguished citizens, can enter any colored society, and they not infrequently marry light wives. Success, a position of probity and importance, these are attributes that count favorably for the suitor, and as they are quite as often in the man of strong African lineage as in the mulatto, they gain the desired end.

Within this little colored world of a few thousand souls, a drop in the city's human sea, there is great upheaval and turmoil.The North is the Negro's centre for controversy regarding his rightful position in the commonwealth; and in the large cities, in Boston and Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, the battle rages. The little society is often divided into hostile camps regarding party politics or the acceptance of a government position that brings the suspicion of a bribe. Political, economic, educational matters as they affect the black race, these are the subjects that fill the mind of the thoughtful colored man and woman.

In his "Souls of Black Folk," Dr. Du Bois describes the white man's tactlessness when, as always, he approaches the Negro with a question regarding his race.But the Negro, apart from his personal home affairs, impresses the outsider as having little else as subject for conversation.World politics, these concern him only as they affect the race question.Australia is a country where the government excludes Africans.England rules in South Africa and has lately recognized the right of African disfranchisement.Germany in Africa is cruel to black men.The Latin people know no color line.At home, the conflict of capital and labor is important as the Negro wins or loses in the economic struggle; the enfranchisement of woman is wise or unwise as it would affect Negro enfranchisement, one colored thinker arguing against it since it would double the white vote in the South where the Negro has no political rights; literature is the poetry of Dunbar, the writing of Washington and Du Bois, the literature of the Negro question, and art is largely comprised in Tanner's paintings.

This picture should not imply that the colored people of means are without the possibility of wide culture and sympathy.They are perhaps more sympathetic by nature than the white people about them.But each year, as the white American grows increasingly conscious of race, as he argues on racial differences, the Negro feels his dark face, is sensitive to every disdainful look, and separates himself from the people about him and their problems.

There is a struggle against this.The majority of white people have heard, in a vague way, that there is a difference of opinion in the Negro world; and again, vaguely, that it takes the form of opposition to Dr. Booker T.Washington and industrial training.But the difference of opinion among the Negroes is a difference of ideals, and reaches far beyond the controversy of industrial or cultural training, or the question of individual leadership. It is difficult to formulate, inasmuch as few, if any, Negroes hold logically to one ideal wholly to the exclusion of the other. They cannot be logical and live. But their division into radical and conservative is too important to omit; especially since, as we have seen, there is nothing in their social life to distinguish them from their neighbors; only in their thoughts are they aloof from us—aliens upon whose shoulders is the problem of a race.

How can one explain these two ideals?Roughly, they accept or reject segregation.The first looks upon the black man in America, for many generations at least, as a race apart.Recognizing this, the race must increasingly grow in self-efficiency.It must run its own businesses, own its banks, its groceries, its restaurants, have its dressmakers, milliners, tailors; it must establish factories where it shall employ only colored men and women; its children shall be brought into the world by colored doctors, taught by colored teachers, buried by colored undertakers. Education, along industrial lines, shall help train the worker to this efficiency, and a proper race pride shall give him the patronage of the Negroes about him. When, as will of course happen in the majority of cases, the Negro works for the white man, he must consider himself and his race. He must not go out on strike when the white man strives for higher wages; he is justified, if he is willing to risk a broken head, in filling the place of the striking workman, for he has to look after his own concerns.

The second point of view resists segregation.It believes that the Negro should never cease to struggle against being treated as a race apart, that he should demand the privileges of a citizen, free access to all public institutions, full civil and political rights.As a workman, he should have the opportunity of other workmen, his training should be the training of his white neighbor, and in business and the professions he should strive to serve white as well as black.And just as in the battle-field he fights in a common cause with his white comrade, so in the struggle for better working class conditions he should stand by the side of the laborer, regardless of race.Believing these things and finding that America fails to meet his demands, he thinks it should be his part to struggle for his ideal, vigorously to protest against discrimination, and never, complacent, to submit to the position of inferiority.

As I have said, few men hold logically to either of these ideals, and as that of acquiescence to present conditions is naturally popular with the whites, who are themselves responsible for discrimination, material success sometimes means a departure from the aggressive to the submissive attitude.However, the whole question of the Negro as a wage earner is yet scarcely understood by this small professional and business class.They are in turmoil, in a virile struggle, harsh, bewildering, baffling.

"I cannot conceive what it would mean not to be a Negro," a prominent New York colored man once said to me."The white people think and feel so little; their life lacks an absorbing interest."

This is the characteristic fact of the life of the well-to-do Negro in New York.He is not permitted to go through the city streets in easy comfort of body or mind.Some personal rebuff, some harsh word in newspaper or magazine, quickens his pulse and rouses him from the lethargy that often overtakes his comfortable white neighbor.Looking into the past of slavery, watching the coming generation, the most careless of heart is forced into serious questioning.A comfortable income and the intelligence to enjoy the culture of a great city do not bring to the Negro any smug self-satisfaction; only a greater responsibility toward the problem that moves through the world with his dark face.

Before turning to our last topic, the Negro and the Municipality, we ought to note two further characteristics of the Negro in New York.

There are certain statistics quoted by every writer upon the Negro, statistics of mortality and crime.We have noted these for the child, but not as yet for the Negroes as a whole.They have been left until this point in our study that we may view them in relation to what we have learned of the Negro's economic condition and his environment.

Looking for criminal statistics first, we find them difficult to obtain in New York.The courts' reports do not classify by color, but we can learn something from the census enumeration of 1904 of the prisoners in the New York County Penitentiary and the New York County Workhouse.These are short term offenders sent up from the city of New York.The enumeration is as follows:

New York County Penitentiary (Blackwell's Island)

	Total	Males	Females	Per cent Total	Per cent Females
White	582	533	49	91.8	8.4
Colored	52	33	19	8.2	36.5
New York County Workhouse
White	1126	870	256	96.5	22.7
Colored	41	12	29	3.5	70.7

In view of the proportion of Negroes to whites in Manhattan, two per cent, we find the percentage of colored prisoners high, but no higher than we expect when we remember that the Negro occupies the lowest plane in the industrial community, "the plane which everywhere supplies the jail, the penitentiary, the gallows."[1] But the very large percentage of crime among colored women calls for grave consideration. In the workhouse, imprisoned for fighting, for drunkenness, for prostitution, the colored women more than double in number the colored men. Here is a condition that we noted in the Children's Court records: an unduly large percentage of disorderly and depraved colored female offenders.

We have already touched upon the subject of morality among colored women.Various causes, some of which we have noted, go to the making up of this high percentage of crime.The Negroes themselves believe the basic cause to be their recent enslavement with its attendant unstable marriage and parental status.They point to the centuries of healthful home relationships among Americans and Europeans, and contrast them with the thousands upon thousands of yearly sales of slaves that but two generations ago disrupted the Negro's attempts at family life.With this heritage they believe that it is inevitable that numbers of their women should be slow to recognize the sanctity of home and the importance of feminine virtue.

The mortality figures for the New York Negro are more striking than the figures for crime.In 1908 the death rate for whites in the city was 16.6 in every thousand; for colored (including Chinese), 28.9, almost double the white rate.The Negroes' greatest excess over the white was in tuberculosis, congenital debility, and venereal diseases as the table on the following page shows.

The Negro's inherent weakness, his inability to resist disease, is a favorite topic today with writers on the color question.A high mortality is indeed a matter for grave concern, but we may question whether these figures show inherent weakness.If a new disease attacks any group of people, it causes terrible decimation, and tuberculosis and venereal diseases, the white man's plagues, have proved terribly destructive to the black man. But recalling the conditions under which the great majority of the colored race lives in New York, the long hours of labor, the crowded rooms, the insufficient food, we find abundant cause for a high death rate. For poverty and death go hand in hand, and the proportion of Negroes in New York who, live in great poverty far exceeds the proportion of whites.[2]

New York, 1908.	White.	Colored.
Number of deaths from all causes per 1000 population	16.6	28.9
Number of deaths per 1000 deaths:
Tuberculosis	136.0	232.8
Pneumonia	126.0	136.3
Diarrhœa and enteritis	91.8	79.0
Bright's disease	78.3	56.5
Heart disease	76.7	83.4
Cancer	45.5	24.8
Congenital debility	24.5	34.1
Diphtheria and croup	23.7	15.0
Scarlet fever	19.0	3.2
Typhoid	7.3	6.9
Venereal diseases	4.0	13.4
All others	367.2	314.6
	1000.0	1000.0

The students at Hampton Institute sing an old plantation song that runs like this:

"If religion was a thing that money could buy,
The rich would live and the poor would die.
But my good Lord has fixed it so
The rich and the poor together must go."

Some of our rich men seem to have fixed it with religion to escape from the condition the poem describes, but it depicts a reality in the Negro's life.Rich and poor, as we saw when we left our old New Yorkers, competent and inefficient, pure and diseased, good and bad, all go together.Much of the recent literature written by Negroes, and especially that by Dr. Booker T. Washington, attempts to separate in the minds of the community the thrifty and prosperous colored men from the helpless and degraded; but the effort meets with a limited success. When we can have a statistical study of some thousands of the well-to-do Negroes compared with an equal number of well-to-do whites, we may find striking similarity. From my own observations I find that the well-to-do Negroes bear and rear children, refrain from committing crimes that put them into jail, and live to an old age with the same success as their white neighbors. But they get little credit for it. Willy-nilly, the strong, intellectual Negro is linked to his unfortunate fellow. Whether an increase in material prosperity will break this bond, or whether it will continue until it ceases to be a bond as humanity comes into its own, is a secret of the future. For today the song rings true, and the rich and the poor go together.

CHAPTER VIII
The Negro and the Municipality

A capricious mood, varying with the individual, considerate today and offensive tomorrow, this, as far as our observations have led us, has been New York's attitude toward the Negro.Is it possible to find any principle underlying this shifting position?The city expresses itself through the individual actions of its changing four millions of people, but also through its government, its courts of justice, its manifold public activities.Out of these various manifestations of the community's spirit can we find a Negro policy?Has New York any principle of conduct toward these her colored citizens?This question should be worth our consideration, for New York's attitude means its environmental influence, and helps determine for the newly arrived immigrant and the growing generation whether justice or intolerance shall mark their dealings with the black race.

The first matter of civic importance to the Negro, as to every other New York resident, is his position in the commonwealth; is he a participant in the government under which he lives, or a subject without political rights?The law since 1873 has been explicit on this matter, wiping out former property qualifications, and giving full manhood suffrage.Probably, even with a much larger influx of colored people, the city will never agitate this question again.Since the death of the Know-nothing Party, New York has ceased any organized attempt to lessen the power of the foreigner, and the growing cosmopolitan character of the population strengthens the Negro in his rights.Only in those states where the white population is homogeneous can Negro disfranchisement successfully take place.

With the vote the Negro has entered into politics and has maintained successful political organizations.The necessity of paying for rent and food out of eight or ten dollars a week is the Negro's immediate issue in New York, and he tries to meet it by securing a congenial and more lucrative job. The city in 1910 showed some consideration for him in this matter. An Assistant District Attorney and an Assistant Corporation Counsel were colored, and scattered throughout the city departments were nine clerks making from $1200 to $1800 apiece, and a dozen more acting as messengers, inspectors, drivers, attendants, receiving salaries averaging $1275. Three doctors served the Board of Health, and there were six men on the police force (none given patrol duty), and one first grade fireman, while the departments of docks, parks, street cleaning, and water supply employed 470 colored laborers. Altogether 511 colored men figure among the city's employees.[1]

In her communal gifts the city acts toward the Negro with a fair degree of impartiality.At the public schools and libraries, the parks and playgrounds, the baths, hospitals, and, last, the almshouse, the blacks have equal rights with the whites.Occasionally individual public servants show color prejudice, but again, occasionally, especial kindness attends the black child.The rude treatment awaiting them, however, from other visitors keeps many Negro children, and men and women, from enjoying the city's benefactions.Particularly is this true with the public baths and with some of the playgrounds.The employment by the city of at least one colored official in every neighborhood where the Negroes are in great numbers would do much to remedy this condition.

One department of the city might be cited as having been an exception to the rule of reasonably fair treatment to the colored man.Harshness, for no cause but his black face, has been too frequently bestowed upon the Negro by the police.This has been especially noticeable in conflicts between white and colored, when the white officer, instead of dealing impartially with offenders, protected his own race.

There have been two conflicts between the whites and Negroes in New York in recent years, the first in 1900, on the West Side, in the forties, the second in 1905, on San Juan Hill. Each riot was local, representing no wide-spread excitement comparable to the draft riots of 1863, and in each case the police might easily in the beginning have stopped all fighting. Instead, they showed themselves ready to aid, even to instigate the conflict.

The riot of 1900 was caused by the death of a policeman at the hands of a Negro.The black man declared that he was defending his life, but the officer was popular, and after his funeral riots began.Black men ran to the police for protection, and were thrown back by them into the hands of the mob.[2]

The riot of 1905 commenced on San Juan Hill one Friday evening in July with a fracas between a colored boy and a white peddler; both races took a hand in the matter until the side streets showed a rough scrambling fight.Saturday and Sunday were comparatively quiet; men, black and white, stood on street corners and scowled at one another, but nothing further need have occurred, had each race been treated with justice. The police, however, instead of keeping the peace, angered the Negroes, urged on their enemies, and by Monday night found that they had helped create a riot, this time bitter and dangerous. Overzealous to proceed against the "niggers," officers rushed into places frequented by peaceable colored men, whom they placed under arrest. Dragging their victims to the station-house they beat them so unmercifully that before long many needed to be handed over to another city department—the hospital. Little question was made as to guilt or innocence, and some of the worst offenders, colored as well as white, were never brought to justice.[3] "If," as a colored preacher whose church was the centre of the storm district pointed out, "the police would only differentiate between the good and the bad Negroes, and not knock on the head every colored man they saw in a riot, we should be quite satisfied. As it is, there is no safety for any Negro in this part of the city at any time."[4]

The result of these two riots was the bringing to justice of one policeman and the placing of a humane and tactful captain on San Juan Hill.But for some time the colored man felt little protection in the Department of Police, finding that he was liable to arrest and clubbing for a trivial offence.Often the officer's club fell with cruel force.This, however, was before the administration of Mayor Gaynor, who has commanded humane treatment, and the brutal clubbing of the New York Negro has now ceased.

From the police one turns naturally to the courts.What is their attitude toward the Negro offender?Is there any race prejudice, or do black and white enjoy an impartial and judicial hearing?

As the Negro comes before the magistrates of the city courts, he learns to know that judges differ greatly in their conceptions of justice.To the Southerner, let us say from Richmond, where the black man is arrested for small offences and treated with considerable roughness and harshness, New York courts seem lenient.[5] To the West Indian, accustomed to British rule, justice in New York is noticeable for its variability, the likelihood that if it is severe tonight, it will be generous tomorrow.

"Three months," the listener at court hears given as sentence to a respectable-looking colored servant girl who has begged to be allowed to return to her place which she has held for five years."I never was up for drinking before," she pleads; "I have learnt my lesson; please give me a chance; I will not do this again."

"What should you two be fighting for?"another judge, another morning, says to two very battered women, one white and one colored, who come before him in court.And talking kindly to both, but with greater seriousness to the Irish offender, his own countrywoman, he sends them away with a reprimand.

How much of this unequal treatment comes from color prejudice or caprice or temperament, the Negro is unable to decide, but he soon learns one curious fact: while his black skin marks him as inheriting Republican politics, it is the Democratic magistrate, the Tammany henchman whose name is a byword to the righteous, who is the more lenient when he has committed a trifling offence.

"Didn't I play craps with the nigger boys when I was a kid?"one of these well-known politicians says, "and am I going back on the poor fellows now?"Of course, the Negro is assured such men only want his vote, but he believes real sympathy actuates the Tammany leader, who is too busy to bother whether the man before him is black or white.The reformer, on the other hand, big with dignity, at times makes him vastly uncomfortable as he lectures upon the Negro problem from the eminence of the superior race.

But whether Republican or Democrat, the Negro learns that it is well to have a friend at court; that helplessness is the worst of all disabilities, worse than darkness of skin or poverty. So he soon becomes acquainted with his local politician, and if his friend is in trouble, or his wife or son is locked up, pounds vigorously at the politician's door. It may be midnight, but the man of power will dress, and together they will turn from the dark tenement hall into the lighted street and on to the police-station or magistrate's court to seek release for the offender. That too often the gravity of the offence weighs little in the securing of lenient treatment is part of the muddle of New York justice. The Negro finds that he has taken the most direct way to secure relief.

As far as we have followed, we have found the municipality of New York generally ready to treat her black citizens with the same justice or injustice with which she treats her whites.Exceptions occur, but she does not often draw the color line.Perhaps, in this connection, it might be well to stop a moment and see what return the black man makes, whether by his vote he helps secure to the city honest and efficient government.

Walking through a Negro quarter on election day, the most careful search fails to reveal any such far-sighted altruism.With a great majority of colored voters the choice of a municipal candidate is based on the argument of a two-dollar bill or the promise of a job, combined with the sentiment, decreasing every year, for the Republican Party—the party that once helped the colored man and, he hopes, may help him again.The public standing of the mayoralty candidate, his ability to choose wise heads of departments, the building of new subways, the ownership of public utilities, these are unimportant issues.The matter of immediate moment is what this vote is going to mean to the black voter himself.

Such a selfish and unpatriotic attitude, not unknown perhaps to white voters, leads some of our writers and reformers to doubt the value of universal manhood suffrage.Mr. Ray Stannard Baker tells us that the Negro and the poor white in New York, through their venality, are practically without a vote."While the South is disfranchising by legislation," he says, "the North is doing it by cash.""What else is the meaning of Tammany Hall and the boss and machine system in other cities?"[6] New York's noted ethical culture teacher argues against agitation for woman's suffrage on the ground that so many of those who now have the vote do not know how to use it. But looking closely at these unaltruistic citizens, we see that after all they are putting the ballot to its primary use, the protection of their own interests. The Negro in New York has one vital need, steady, decent work. He dickers and plays with politics to get as much of this as he can. It is very insufficient relief for an intolerable situation, but it is partial relief. In another city, Atlanta for instance, he might find education the most important civic gift for which to strive. Atlanta is a fortunate city to choose for an example of the power of the suffrage, for since the Negro's loss of the vote in Georgia, educational funds have been turned chiefly to white schools, and 5,000 colored children are without opportunities for public education. 1885 saw the last school building erected for Negroes, the result of a bargain between the colored voters and the prohibitionists.[7] Should a colored teacher in New York be refused her certificate, a colored consumptive be denied a place in the city's hospital, a colored child meet with a rebuff in the city park, the colored citizen would find his vote an important means of redress. Then, too, while there are so many men to buy, it is important to have a vote to sell, lest the other citizens secure the morning's bargains. Venality in high and low places will not disappear until we are dominated by the ideal of social, not individual advancement. Before that time, it is well for the weak that they are able, at least in the political field, to bargain with the strong.

The importance to the Negro of the vote is quickly appreciated when we consider New York's attitude unofficially expressed.With the franchise behind him the colored man can secure for himself and his children the municipality's advantages of education, health, amusement, philanthropy.He is here a citizen, a contributor to the city treasury, if not directly as a taxpayer, as a worker and renter.But as a private individual, seeking to use the utilities managed by other private individuals, he continually encounters race discrimination.Private doors are closed, and were the state not so wealthy and generous, disabilities still graver than at present would follow.

A few examples will show the condition.A Negro applies by letter for admission to an automobile school, and is accepted; but on appearing with his fee his color debars his entrance.Carrying the case to court, the complaint is dismissed on the ground that the law which forbade exclusion from places of education on account of race and color is applicable only to public schools.Private institutions may do as they desire.

Again, a colored man tries to get a meal.At the first restaurant he is told that all the tables are engaged; at the next no one will serve him.Fearful of further rebuffs, he has to turn to the counter of a railway station.He wants to go to the theatre.Like Tommy Atkins, he is sent to the gallery or round the music halls.The white barber whose shop he enters will not shave him; and when night comes, he searches a long time before the hotel appears that will give him a bed.The sensitive man, still more the sensitive woman, often finds the city's attitude difficult to endure.

American Negroes have become familiar with racial lines, but the foreigner of African descent, a visitor to the city, meets with rebuffs that fill him with surprise as well as rage. Haytians and South Americans, men of continental education and wide culture, have been ordered away as "niggers" from restaurant doors, and at the box office of the theatre refused an orchestra seat. English Negroes from the West Indies, men and women of character and means, learn that New York is a spot to be avoided, and cross the ocean when they wish to taste of city life. In short, the stranger of Negro descent, if he be rash of temper, hurls anathemas at the villainously mannered Americans; or, if he be good-natured, shrugs his shoulders and counts New York a provincial settlement of four million people.

Northern Negroes believe this discrimination in public places against the black man to be increasing in New York.One, who came here fifteen years ago, tells of the simple and adequate test by which he learned that he had reached the northern city.Born in South Carolina, as he attained manhood he desired larger self-expression, broader human relations—he wanted "to be free," as he again and again expressed it. So leaving the cotton fields he started one morning to walk to New York. After a number of days he entered a large city and, uncertain in his geography, decided that this was his journey's end. "I'll be free here," he thought, and opening the door of a brightly lighted restaurant started to walk in. The white men at the tables looked up in astonishment, and the proprietor, laying his hand on the youth's shoulder, invited him, in strong southern accent, to go into the kitchen. "I reckon I'm not North yet," the Negro said, smiling a bright, boyish smile. Interested in his visitor's appearance, the proprietor took him into another room, gave him a good supper, and talked with him far into the night, urging the advantages of his staying in the South. But the youth shook his head, and the next morning trudged on. At length he reached a rushing city, tumultuous with humanity, and entering an eating-house was served a meal. To him it was almost a sacrament. He belonged not to a race but to humanity. He tasted the freedom of passing unnoticed. But it is doubtful if the same restaurant would serve him today.

Color lines, on these matters of entertainment as on others, are not hard and fast. A few hotels, chiefly those frequented by Latin people, receive colored guests; and while the foreign Negro meets with rudeness, he is rebuffed less than the native."I can't get into that place as a southern darky," a black man laughingly says, pointing to a fashionable restaurant, "I'll be the Prince of Abyssinia."But as Prince or American his status is shifting and uncertain; here, preeminently, he is half a man.

Discrimination against any man because of his color is contrary to the law of the state.After the fifteenth amendment became a law, New York passed a civil rights bill, which as it stands, re-enacted in 1909, is very explicit.All persons within the jurisdiction of the state are entitled to the accommodation of hotels, restaurants, theatres, music halls, barbers' shops, and any person refusing such accommodation is subject to civil and penal action.The offence may be punished by fine or imprisonment or both.[8]

In 1888, the attempt to exclude three colored men from a skating-rink at Binghamton, N.Y., led to a suit against the owner of the rink, and his conviction.The case[9] reached the Court of Appeals, where the constitutionality of the civil rights bill was upheld. "It is evident," said Justice Andrews in his decision, "that to exclude colored people from places of public resort on account of their race is to fix upon them a brand of inferiority, and tends to fix their position as a servile and dependent people."

But despite the law and precedent, the civil rights bill is violated in New York.Occasionally colored men bring suit, but the magistrate dismisses the complaint.Usually the evidence is declared insufficient.A case of a colored man refused orchestra seats at a theatre is dismissed on the ground that not the proprietor but his employees turned the man away.A keeper of an ice-cream parlor, wishing to prevent the colored man from patronizing him, charges a Negro a dollar for a ten-cent plate.The customer pays the dollar, keeps the check, and brings the case to court.Ice-cream parlors are then declared not to come under the list of places of public entertainment and amusement.A bootblack refuses to polish the shoes of a Negro, and the court decides that a bootblack-stand is not a place of public accommodation, and refusal to shine the shoes of a colored man does not subject its proprietor to the penalties imposed by the law.[10] This last case was carried to the Court of Appeals, and the adverse judgment has led many of the thoughtful colored men of the city to doubt the value of attempting to push a civil rights suit. Litigation is expensive, and money spent in any personal rights case that attacks private business, whether the plaintiff be white or colored, is usually wasted. The civil rights law is on the books, and the psychological moment may arrive to insist successfully on its enforcement.

If there is an increase in discrimination against the Negro in New York solely because of his color, it is a serious matter to the city as well as to the race.Every community has its social conscience built up of slowly accumulated experiences, and it cannot without disaster lose its ideal of justice or generosity.New York has never been tender to its people, but it has a rough hospitality, what Stevenson describes as "uncivil kindness," and welcomes new-comers with a friendly shove, bidding them become good Americans. After the war, the Negro entered more than formerly into this general welcome. He was unnoticed, allowed to go his way without questioning word or stare, the position which every right-minded man and woman desires. But today New York has become conscious that he is dark-skinned, and her attitude affects her growing children. "I never noticed colored people," an old abolitionist said to me, "I never realized there were white and black until, when a boy of twelve, I entered a church and found Negroes occupying seats alone in the gallery." As New York returns to the gallery seats, her boys and girls return to consciousness of color and, from fisticuffs at school, move on to the race riots upon the streets with bullets among the stones.

The municipality, as we have seen, treats the Negro on the whole with justice; its standard is higher than the standard of the average citizen.It cherishes the ideal of democracy, and strives for impartiality toward its many nationalities and races.And the New York Negro in his turn does not allow his liberties to be tampered with without protest. But the New York citizen can hardly be described as friendly to the Negro. What catholicity he has is negative. He fails to give the black man a hearty welcome. "Do you know where I stayed the four weeks of my first trip abroad?" a colored clergyman once asked me. I refused to make a guess. "Well," he said a little shamefacedly, "it was in Paris. Paris may be a wicked city—any city has wickedness if you want to look for it—but I found it a place of kindliness and good-will. Every one seemed glad to be courteous, to assist me in my stumbling French, to show me the way on omnibus or boat, or through the difficult streets. It was so different from America; I was never wanted in the southern city of my youth. In Paris I was welcome."

"How is it in New York?"I asked.

"In New York?"He stopped to consider."In New York I am tolerated."