Chicago Race Riots/Chapter 8
VIII
TRADES FOR COLORED WOMEN
A colored woman entered the office of a north side establishment where artificial flowers are manufactured.
"I have a daughter 17 years old," she said to the proprietor.
"All places filled now," he answered.
"I don't ask a job for her," came the mother's reply. "I want her to learn how to do the work like the white girls do. She'll work for nothing. We don't ask wages, just so she can learn."
So it was arranged for the girl to go to work. Soon she was skilled and drawing wages with the highest in the shop. Other colored girls came in. And now the entire group of fifteen girls that worked in this north side shop have been transferred to a new factory on the south side, near their homes. At the same time a number of colored girls have gone into home work in making artificial flowers.
Such are the casual, hit-or-miss incidents by which the way was opened for colored working people to enter one industry on the same terms as the white wage earners.
Doll hats, lamp shades, millinery—these are three branches of manufacture where colored labor has entered factories and has also begun home work. Colored workers, with their bundles of finished goods on which the entire family has worked, going to the contractor to turn in the day's output are now a familiar sight in some neighborhoods. In one residence a colored woman employs seven girls, who come to the house every day and make lamp shades, which are later delivered to a contractor. The first week in July thirty girls were placed in one millinery shop.
A notable recent development, partly incidental to conditions of war industry, is the entrance of colored women into garment factories, particularly where women's and children's garments are made. In Chicago in the last year they have been assigned to the operation of power machines making children's clothes, women's apparel, overalls and rompers.
Out of 170 firms in Chicago that employed colored women for the first time during the war, 42, or 24 per cent, were hotels or restaurants, which hired them as kitchen help or bus girls. Twenty-one, or 12 per cent, were hotels or apartment houses which hired them as chambermaids. Nineteen laundries, 12 garment-factories, seven stores, and eight firms, hiring laborers and janltresses, make up the rest of the 170. The packing industry, of course, leads all others in employment of both colored men and women as workers. Occupations that engaged still others during the war were picture framers, capsule makers, candy wrappers, tobacco strippers, noodle makers, nut shellers, furniture sandpaperers, corset repairers, paper box makers. Ice cream cone strippers, poultry dressers and bucket makers.
In a building near the public library is a colored woman who conducts a hair-dressing parlor. She employs three white girls. All the patrons are white. The proprietress herself could easily pass for a Brazilian banana planter's widow, of Spanish Caucasian blood. But as she frankly admits that she is one-eighth African and seven-eighths Caucasian, she has been refused admission to other buildings when she wished for various reasons to change the location of her establishment.
Here and there, slowly and by degrees, the line of color discrimination breaks. A large chain of dairy lunchrooms in Chicago employs colored bus girls, cooks and dishwashers and depends almost entirely on colored help to do the rougher work.
More notable yet is the fact that a downtown business college informs employment bureaus that it is able to place any and all colored graduates of the college in positions as stenographers and typists. In a few loop stores colored salesgirls are employed. In one shoe store beginning this policy, a white girl filed complaint. The manager investlgated and found there was no objection except from this one white girl, who was thereupon dismissed.
A mattress factory opened wage earning opportunities to colored women in the last year. Two taxicab companies now hire women as cleaners. The foregoing list of occupations just about completes the recital of progress in this regard in Chicago in the last year.
Colored women were occupied during the war in various cities in making soldiers' uniforms, horses' gas masks, belts, puttees, leggings, razor blade cases, gloves, veils, embroideries, raincoats, books, cigars, cigarettes, dyed furs, millinery, candy, artificial feathers, buttons, toys, marabou and women's garments.
The comment of a trained industrial observer on the colored woman as a machine operator is as follows:
"Few as yet are skilled as machine or hand operators. Because of their newness to industrial work, the majority have been put on processes requiring no training and small manual ability. They are employed at repetitive hand operations, and occasionally run a foot press or a power sewing machine. In one millinery shop, however, the superintendent said that every colored worker in his shop preferred machine operation to hand work.
"Replacement for colored women, however, does not mean advancement in the same sense as for white women. Because the white woman has been in industry for a long time, and is more familiar with industrial practices, she is less willing to accept bad working conditions. The colored woman, on the other hand, is handicapped by industrial ignorance and drifts into conditions of work rejected by white workers. Colored women are found on processes white women refuse to perform. They replace boys and men at cleaning window shades, dyeing furs, and in one factory they were found bending constantly and lifting clumsy 160 pound bales of material.
"Inquiries as to the general attitude of white workers toward the introduction of colored women brought conflicting reports. About half the employers claimed that their white workers had no objection to the colored women; that they were either cordial or entirely indifferent toward them. Of the other half, some said their white workers objected when the colored workers were first hired, but felt no prejudice now. Other white workers preferred to have the two groups segregated. Still others were willing to let the colored workers do unskilled work, but refused to allow them on the skilled processes.
"At the time of the greatest labor shortage in the history of this country, colored women were the last to be employed. They did the most menial and by far the most underpaid work. They were the marginal workers all through the war, and yet during those perilous times, the colored woman made just as genuine a contribution to the cause of democracy as her white sister in the munitions factory or her brother in the trench. She released the white women for more skilled work and she replaced colored men who went into service."
The report of a study jointly directed by representatives of the Consumers' league, Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., Russell Sage foundation and other organizations recommends that greater emphasis be placed on the training of the colored girl by more general education and more trade training through apprenticeship and trade schools, and also that every effort be made to stimulate trade organizations among colored women by education of colored women working toward organization, education of colored workers for industrial leadership and keener understanding of colored women in industry among organized and unorganized white workers. And, lastly, an appreciation and acceptance of the colored woman in industry by the American employer and the public at large is urged.
A creed of cleanliness was issued in thousands of copies by the Chicago Urban league during the big influx of colored people from the south. It recognized that the woman, always the woman is finally responsible for the looks and upkeep of a household, and made its appeal in the following language:
"For me! I am an American citizen. I am proud of our boys 'over there,' who have contributed soldier service. I desire to render citizen service. I realize that our soldiers have learned new habits of self-respect and cleanliness. I desire to help bring about a new order of living in this community. I will attend to the neatness of my personal appearance on the street or when sitting in the front doorway. I will refrain from wearing dustcaps, bungalow aprons, house clothing and bedroom shoes when out of doors. I will arrange my toilet within doors and not on the front porch. I will insist upon the use of rear entrances for coal dealers and hucksters. I will refrain from loud talking and objectionable deportment on street cars and in public places. I will do my best to prevent defacement of property, either by children or adults."
Two photographs went with this creed. One showed an unclean, messy front porch, the other a clean, well kept front porch. Such is the propaganda of order and decency carried on earnestly and ceaselessly/ by clubs, churches and leagues of colored people, struggling to bring along the backward ones of a people whose heritage is 200 years of slavery and fifty years of industrial boycott.
As an aside from the factual and the humdrum of the foregoing, here is a letter, vivid with roads and bypaths of spiritual life, written by a colored woman to her sister in Mississippi. It is a frank confession of one sister soul to another of what life has brought, and as a document is worth more than stacks of statistics.
"My Dear Sister:—I was agreeably surprised to hear from you and to hear from home. I am well and thankful to say I am doing well. The weather and everything else was a surprise to me when I came. I got here in time to attend one of tht greatest revivals in the history of my life. Over 500 people joined the church. We had a Holy Ghost shower. You know I like to have run wild. It was snowing some nights and if you didn't hurry you could not get standing room.
"Please remember me kindly to any who ask of me. The people are rushing here by the thousands, and I know if you come and rent a big house you can get all the roomers you want. You write me exactly when you are coming. I am not keeping house. I am living with my brother and his wife. My son is in California, but will be home soon. He spends his winter in California. I can get a nice place for you to stop until you can look around and see what you want.
"I am quite busy. I work for a packing company in the sausage department. My daughter and I work in the same department. We get $1.50 a day and we pack so many sausages we don't have much time to play, but it is a matter of a dollar with me and I feel that God made the path and I am walking therein.
"Tell your husband work is plentiful here and he won't have to loaf if he wants to work. I know unless old man A changed it was awful with his soul. Well, I guess I have said about enough. I will be delighted to look into your face once more in life. Pray for me, for I am heaven bound. I have made too many rounds to slip now. I know you will pray for me, for prayer is the life of any sensible man or woman. Good-by."