Page:The Philadelphia Negro A Social Study.djvu/340

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
286
Pauperism and Alcoholism.
[Chap. XIV.

a real sense of manhood or leads them to lose aspiration and self-respect.

For the last ten or fifteen years young Negroes have been pouring into this city at the rate of a thousand a year; the question is then what homes they find or make, what neighbors they have, how they amuse themselves, and what work they engage in? Again, into what sort of homes are the hundreds of Negro babies of each year born? Under what social influences do they come, what is the tendency of their training, and what places in life can they fill? To answer all these questions is to go far toward finding the real causes of crime and pauperism among this race; the next two chapters, therefore, take up the question of environment.