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 neigh-
31
