Читать книгу The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot - Chicago Commission on Race Relations - Страница 23

Low wages.—Wages of Negroes in the South varied from 75 cents a day on the farms to $1.75 a day in certain city jobs, in the period just preceding 1914. The rise in living costs which followed the outbreak of the war outstripped the rise in wages. In Alabama the price paid for day labor in the twenty-one "black belt" counties averaged 50 and 60 cents a day. It ranged from 40 cents, as a minimum, to 75 cents, and, in a few instances, $1.00 was a maximum for able-bodied male farm hands.[14]

A Negro minister, writing in the Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser, said:

The Negro farm hand gets for his compensation hardly more than the mule he plows; that is, his board and shelter. Some mules fare better than Negroes. This, too, in spite of the fact that the money received for farm products has advanced more than 100 per cent. The laborer has not shared correspondingly in this advance.

High rents and low wages have driven the Negro off the farms. They have no encouragement to work. Only here and there you will find a tenant who is getting a square deal and the proper encouragement.

A white man, writing in the same paper, said:

There is an article in today's Advertiser headed "Exodus of the Negroes to Be Probed." Why hunt for a cause when it's plain as the noonday sun the Negro is leaving this country for higher wages? He doesn't want to leave here but he knows if he stays here he will starve. They have made no crops, they have nothing to eat, no clothes, no shoes, and they can't get any work to do, and they are leaving just as fast as they can get away. … If the Negro race could get work at 50 cents per day he would stay here. He don't want to go. He is easily satisfied and will live on half rations and will never complain.

The Atlanta Independent, white, said:

If our white neighbors will treat the Negro kindly, recognizing his rights as a man, advance his wages in proportion as the cost of living advances, he will need no ordinance nor legislation to keep the Negro here. The South is his natural home. He prefers to be here, he loves its traditions, its ideals and its people. But he cannot stay here and starve. …

When meat was 15 cents a pound and flour $8 a barrel, the Negro received from $4 to $8 a week. Now meat is 30 cents a pound and flour $16 a barrel, and the Negro is receiving the same wages. He cannot live on this and the white man cannot expect him to live in the South and live on the starvation wages he is paying him, when the fields and the factories in the North are offering him living wages.

TYPICAL PLANTATION HOMES IN THE SOUTH OF MIGRANTS TO CHICAGO

The boll weevil.—In 1915 and 1916 the boll weevil cotton pest so ravaged sections of the South that thousands of farmers were almost ruined. Cotton crops were lost, and the farmers were forced to change from cotton to food products. The growing of cotton requires about thirty times as many "hands" as food products. As a result many Negroes were thrown out of employment. The damage wrought by the boll weevil was augmented by destructive storms and floods, which not only affected crops but made the living conditions of Negroes more miserable.

Lack of capital.—The "credit system" is a very convenient and common practice in many parts of the South. Money is borrowed for upkeep until the selling season, when it is repaid in one lump sum. The succession of short crops and the destruction due to the boll weevil and storms occasioned heavy demands for capital to carry labor through the fall and early winter until a new crop could be started. There was a shortage of capital, and as a result there was little opportunity for work. During this period many white persons migrated from sections of the South most seriously affected.

"Unsatisfactory" living conditions.—The plantation cabins and segregated sections in cities where municipal laxity made home surroundings undesirable have been stated as another contributing cause of the movement.

Lack of school facilities.—The desire to place their children in good schools was a reason often given by migrants with families for leaving the South. School facilities are described as lamentably poor even by southern whites. Perhaps the most thorough statement of these conditions is given in a Study of Negro Education by Thomas Jesse Jones, made under the direction of the federal Bureau of Education, and comparing provisions for white and Negro children in fifteen southern states and the District of Columbia. He states:

In the South they [Negroes] form 29.8 per cent of the total population, the proportion in Mississippi and South Carolina being over 55 per cent and ranging in the "black belt" counties from 50 to 90 per cent of the total population. Almost 3,000,000 are engaged in agricultural pursuits. They form 40.4 per cent of all persons engaged in these pursuits in the Southern States.

Though the United States census shows a decrease in illiteracy, there are still about 2,225,000 Negroes illiterate in the South, or over 33 per cent of the Negro population ten years of age and over.

TABLE III

	White	Colored
Total population	23,682,352	8,906,879
Population six to fourteen years of age	4,889,762	2,023,108
Population six to fourteen[15]	3,552,431	1,852,181
Teachers' salaries in public schools	$36,649,827	$5,860,876
Teachers' salaries per child six to fourteen	$10.32	$2.89
Per cent of illiteracy	7.7	33.3
Per cent rural	76.9	78.8

In the fifteen states and the District of Columbia for which salaries by race could be obtained, the public school teachers received $42,510,431 in salaries. Of this sum $36,649,827 was for the teachers of 3,552,431 white children and $5,860,876 for teachers of 1,852,181 colored children. On a per capita basis, this is $10.32 for each white child and $2.89 for each colored child.

TABLE IV

County Groups, Percentage of Negroes in the Population	White School Population	Negro School Population	Per Capita for White	Per Capita for Negro
Counties under 10 per cent	974,289	45,039	$ 7.96	$7.23
Counties 10 to 25 per cent	1,008,372	215,744	9.55	5.55
Counties 25 to 50 per cent	1,132,999	709,259	11.11	3.19
Counties 50 to 75 per cent	364,990	661,329	12.53	.77
Counties 75 per cent and over	40,003	207,900	22.22	1.78

The supervisor of white elementary rural schools in one of the states recently wrote concerning the Negro schools:

"I never visit one of these [Negro] schools without feeling that we are wasting a large part of this money and are neglecting a great opportunity. The Negro schoolhouses are miserable beyond all description. They are usually without comfort, equipment, proper lighting, or sanitation. Nearly all of the Negroes of school age in the district are crowded into these miserable structures during the short term which the school runs. Most of the teachers are absolutely untrained and have been given certificates by the county board, not because they have passed the examination, but because it is necessary to have some kind of a Negro teacher. Among the Negro rural schools which I have visited, I have found only one in which the highest class knew the multiplication table."

A state superintendent writes:

"There has never been any serious attempt in this state to offer adequate educational facilities for the colored race. The average length of the term for the state is only four months; practically all of the schools are taught in dilapidated churches, which, of course, are not equipped with suitable desks, blackboards, and the other essentials of a school; practically all of the teachers are incompetent, possessing little or no education and having had no professional training whatever, except a few weeks obtained in the summer schools; the schools are generally overcrowded, some of them having as many as 100 students to the teacher; no attempt is made to do more than teach the children to read, write, and figure, and these subjects are learned very imperfectly. There are six or eight industrial supervisors financed in whole or in part by the Jeanes Fund; most of these teachers are stimulating the Negro schools to do very good work upon the practical things of life. A few wide-awake Negro teachers not connected with the Jeanes Fund are doing the same thing. It can probably be truthfully said that the Negro schools are gradually improving, but they are still just about as poor and inadequate as they can be."

Commenting on the cause of the migration, the Atlanta Constitution, a prominent southern white paper, says:

While mob violence and the falsehood which has been built upon that foundation constitutes, perhaps, a strong factor in the migration of the Negroes, there is scarcely a doubt that the educational feature enters into it. Negroes induced to go to the North undoubtedly believe they can secure better educational facilities there for their children, whether they really succeed in getting them or not.

Georgia, as well as other southern states, is undoubtedly behind in the matter of Negro education, unfair in the matter of facilities, in the quality of teachers and instructors, and in the pay of those expected to impart proper instruction to Negro children.

We have proceeded upon the theory that education would, in his own mind, at least, carry the Negro beyond his sphere; that it would give him higher ideas of himself and make of him a poorer and less satisfactory workman. That is nonsense. …