The Negro at Work in New York City, by George Edmund Haynes This Ebook Is for the Use of Anyone Anywhere at No Cost and with Almost No Restrictions Whatsoever
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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Negro at Work in New York City A Study in Economic Progress Author: George Edmund Haynes Release Date: February 28, 2008 [eBook #24712] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEGRO AT WORK IN NEW YORK CITY*** E-text prepared by Jeannie Howse, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For a complete list, please see the end of this document. Click on the images to see a larger version. STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Volume XLIX Number 3 Whole Number 124 THE NEGRO AT WORK IN NEW YORK CITY A Study in Economic Progress BY GEORGE EDMUND HAYNES, Ph.D. Sometime Fellow of the Bureau of Social Research, New York School of Philanthropy; Professor of Social Science in Fisk University New York COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., AGENTS LO NDO N: P.S. KING & SO N 1912 CO PYRIGHT, 1912 BY GEORGE EDMUND HAYNES PREFACEToC This study was begun as one of the several researches of the Bureau of Social Research of the New York School of Philanthropy, largely at the suggestion of Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay, the director, to whose interest, advice and sympathy its completion is largely due. Sincere thanks are due the Bureau for making the investigation possible. The material was gathered between January, 1909, and January, 1910, except about four weeks in August, 1909, during the time that I was pursuing studies at the School of Philanthropy and at Columbia University. The investigation necessarily involved many questions concerning the personal affairs of many Negroes of New York and it is a pleasant duty to acknowledge the unvarying cheerfulness with which they rendered assistance in securing the facts. I wish to acknowledge especially the help of Dr. William L. Bulkley in making possible many of the interviews with wage-earners, of Dr. Roswell C. McCrea for criticism and encouragement in preparation of the monograph, and of Dr. E.E. Pratt, sometime fellow of the Bureau of Social Research; Miss Dora Sandowsky for her careful and painstaking tabulation of most of the figures. They should not be charged, however, with responsibility for any of the errors that may be detected by the trained eye. The study as now published is incomplete. Part I, the Negro as a Wage-earner and Part II, the Negro in Business, were to be supplemented by Part III, the Negro in the Professions. But the time absorbed in gathering the material for the first two parts prevented the securing of a sufficient amount of personally ascertained data for the third; it seemed best to concentrate on the first two for the sake of thoroughness. The summaries following the data on the several points and at the end of each chapter, and the conclusion at the end of the volume contain some repetitions which may be open to criticism, but they have been retained with the hope of making the monograph useful to those who wish to know the conclusions from the succession of figure upon figure and percentage upon percentage, without necessarily going through these details. At the same time, anyone who may wish to weigh the inferences in the light of the facts has the details before him. Conditions among Negroes in Philadelphia have been adequately studied in the work of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and Dr. R.R. Wright, Jr. It is to be hoped that some time soon the need of similar inquiries in other cities—East, West, North and South—may be realized and that provision may be made in this way for the guidance of the growing impulses of those who wish to better conditions in urban centers. I am aware that there are good reasons for criticism of these pages. But what has been done was done in the search for the truth, that the enthusiasm of reform may be linked with the reliability of knowledge in the efforts to better the future conditions of the city and the Negro. GEORGE EDMUND HAYNES. FISK UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN., APRIL 1, 1912. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I PAGE PREFACE 7-8 THE NEGRO AS A WAGE EARNER CHAPTER I THE CITY AND THE NEGRO—THE PROBLEM 13 CHAPTER II THE NEGRO POPULATION OF NEW YORK CITY 45 CHAPTER III GENERAL CONDITION OF WAGE-EARNERS 1. Sex and Age of Negro Wage-Earners 54 2. Nativity of Negro Wage-Earners 57 3. Marital Condition of Wage-Earners 60 4. Families and Lodgers 61 CHAPTER IV OCCUPATIONS OF WAGE-EARNERS 1. A Historical View of Occupations 66 2. Occupations in 1890 and 1900 69 3. Occupations in 1905 72 CHAPTER V WAGES AND EFFICIENCY OF WAGE-EARNERS 1. Wages in Domestic and Personal Service 78 2. WAGES IN OTHER OCCUPATIONS 82 3. EFFICIENCY OF WAGE-EARNERS 83 PART II THE NEGRO IN BUSINESS IN NEW YORK CITY CHAPTER I THE CHARACTER OF NEGRO BUSINESS ENTERPRISES 1. The Business Promise 93 2. A History of the Negro in Business 94 3. The Nature of the Establishments in 1909 98 4. Ownership of Establishments 100 5. Size of Business Enterprises 104 CHAPTER II THE VOLUME OF BUSINESS 1. Valuation of Tools and Fixtures 109 2. The Amount of Merchandise on Hand 111 3. Gross Receipts in 1907 and 1908 113 CHAPTER III DEALING WITH THE COMMUNITY 1. Age of Establishments 117 2. Permanence of Location 118 3. Business Methods 120 4. Credit Relationships 122 5. The Purchasing Public 123 CHAPTER IV SOME SAMPLE ENTERPRISES 1. Individuals and Partnerships 127 2. The Negro Corporation 137 143 CONCLUSION APPENDICES, A, B, C 149 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 154 INDEX 157 PART I THE NEGRO AS A WAGE EARNER IN NEW YORK CITY CHAPTER IToC THE CITY[1] AND THE NEGRO—THE PROBLEM The city of to-day, the growth of the past century, is a permanent development. Dr. Weber has effectively treated the history, nature, causes and effects of the concentration. He shows[2] that the percentage of urban population has varied in different countries; and that this is due mainly to the varying density of population and to the diverse physical features of the countries which have been differently affected by the Industrial Revolution and the era of railroads. The causes of this concentration have been the divorce of men from the soil, the growth of commercial centers, the growth of industrial centers, and such secondary and individual causes as legislation, educational and social advantages. In the United States, city growth has been affected by all of the several causes that have operated in other countries, modified at times and in places by exceptional influences.[3] In the discussions concerning the Negro and his movement cityward, it is often assumed that his migration is affected by causes of a different kind from those moving other populations; or that it is not similar in respect to the movement of the white population under similar conditions; or that the concentration can result only in dire disaster both to himself and to the community into which he moves. Such facts as are available suggest that these assumptions are ill-founded. The efforts that are being put forth to improve rural conditions and to advance agricultural arts among Negroes are highly commendable and effective. The thesis of this chapter is that, notwithstanding improvements resulting from these efforts for rural districts, wherever similar causes operate under similar conditions, the Negro, along with the white population, is coming to the city to stay; that the problems which grow out of his maladjustment to the new urban environment are solvable by methods similar to those that help other elements of the population. In the first place, so far as we know now, the general movement of the Negroes, speaking for the South, does not seem to have been very different from that of the whites. Professor Wilcox says,[4] It is sometimes alleged that the migration to cities, which has characterized nearly all countries and all classes of population during the last half century, has affected Southern whites more than Southern negroes, and that the latter race is thus being segregated in the rural districts. That such a movement may have gone on, or may now be in progress, in parts of the South can neither be affirmed nor denied on the basis of the present figures, but it may be said with some confidence that, as a general statement applied to the whole South, it is not correct.