Chapter 8

TABLE NUMBER IIKinds of Residences of 465 Negro Migrants QuestionedSINGLEFAMILIESTOTALPERCENTTenement3013316335Rooming and Boarding223923250One Family House65112.5Camp360367.5Mission230235318147465100

TABLE NUMBER II

Kinds of Residences of 465 Negro Migrants Questioned

Of the men without families here, only twenty-two out of more than three hundred had individual bed rooms. Twenty-five percent lived four in a room, and twenty-five percent lived in rooms used by more than four people. Again only thirty-seven percent slept in separate beds, fifty percent slept two in a bed, and thirteen percent sleep three or more in a bed.

TABLE NUMBER III

NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN BED ROOM

Table displaying how many people are in a bed room

The conditions in these rooming houses often beggar description. Sleeping quarters are provided not only in bedrooms, but also in attics, basements, dining rooms and kitchens. In many instances, houses in which these rooms are located are dilapidated dwellings with the paper torn off, the plaster sagging from the naked lath, the windows broken, the ceiling low and damp, and the whole room dark, stuffy and unsanitary. In one or two instances, these rooms, with more than six people sleeping in them at one time, have practically no openings for either light or air.

A Typical Boarding House on Lower Wylie Avenue.

In the more crowded sections, beds are rented on a double shift basis. Men who work at night sleep during the day in the beds vacated by day workers. There is no space in these rooms, except for beds and as many of them are crowded in as can be possibly accommodated.

There is rarely a place in these rooms for even suitcases or trunks. Under such circumstances the rooms can be kept clean with difficulty, and there is apparently no disposition to wrestle with the dirt and litter. Very few of these sleeping rooms have more than two windows each, and many have only one window. Only a few are provided with bath rooms, while a great number have the water and toilets in the yards or other places outside the house. Many of these roomers complain that often they are not given any soap, and are never given more than one towel a week.

TABLE NUMBER IV

Rents Paid in Rooming Houses by 305 Roomers

The rents paid by these roomers are shown intable number IV. They varied from $1.50 to $3.00 per week, and in a few instances were as high as $4.00 per week. In a number of cases, the men also board in the same place in which they room, paying from five to seven or eight dollars per week for food and shelter.

TABLE NUMBER V.

ONE WEEK’S COST OF BOARD PER MAN

Table displaying how much board costs per person

The situation in the camps is not better than that in rooming houses. In one railroad camp visited, the men werelodged in box cars, each of which was equipped with four or eight beds, or they were quartered in a row of wooden houses two stories high, each room of which contained from six to eight beds. It is true that the rents charged in this camp were only the nominal sum of five cents per night, or $1.50 per month, but the men had to buy their food from the camp commissary, using company checks, and also had to prepare it themselves. Practically every man interviewed complained of the high prices charged, and that this complaint was not altogether groundless was evident from the scanty purchases being made by these men at the time of the investigator’s visit. In another railroad camp, located near Pittsburgh, which was visited in the early spring, about one hundred men were lodged in one big “bunk-house”, containing about fifty double-tier beds. Although there were adequate toilet and shower bath facilities, the beds were unclean. This company also boarded these men, making a flat weekly charge.

Box Cars in a Railroad Camp in Pittsburgh used as Living and Sleeping Quarters.

The rooming houses with one exception are conducted by colored people, who act either as janitors or as hosts. In only one case, as far as our investigation extended, did we find a white woman running a rooming house for colored people. Many of these houses are in reality run by Whites, who keep a colored janitor or manager in the House. Several of the big rooming houses on lower Wylie Avenue, for instance, are conducted for a local white merchant, who keeps a colored janitorin each of them, and only visits them to check the books and collect the rents. In many instances however, houses are operated by colored people, who either run or lease them. Most of these lessees or owners are Pittsburghers, but a few are newcomers, who, having brought a bit of capital with them have opened rooming houses as investments. Some of these people have become the prey of cunning landlords. In one case in the down town section, a colored migrant rented an old and dilapidated shack, paying fifty dollars a month, and was unaware that the contract signed by him specified that he pay for his own repairs. The Negro claims that as the house is very old and in such bad condition, it would cost him an additional fifty dollars each month to keep it habitable.

TABLE NUMBER VI

Number of Rooms Per Family of 157 Negro Families

Table displaying how many rooms each family has

The deplorable housing of migrant families is shown intable number VI. Of the 157 families investigated, seventy-seven or 49% live in one room each. Thirty-three or 21% live in two-room apartments, and only forty-seven families or 30% live in apartments of three or more rooms each.

Of these forty-seven families, thirty-eight kept roomers or boarders, totalling one hundred and thirty-one, or an average of 3.5 roomers per family. Eighty-one of the total of one hundred and thirty-nine houses inspected, had water inside the house, while fifty-eight houses secured water from yard or street hydrants or from neighbors. Only thirty-four of the total were equipped with interior toilet facilities; the rest had outside toilets. Of the latter, forty-two had no sewerage connections, and used filthy, unsanitary vaults.

The rents paid for the “residences” described above appear in the following table:

TABLE NUMBER VII

Rents Paid by 142 Families Investigated

Table displaying the rent each family pays

The sections formerly designated as Negro quarters, have been long since congested beyond capacity by the influx of newcomers, and a score of new colonies have sprung up in hollows and ravines, on hill slopes and along river banks, by railroad tracks and in mill-yards. In many instances the dwellings are those which have been abandoned by foreign white people since the beginning of the present war. In some cases they are structures once condemned by the City Bureau of Sanitation, but opened again only to accommodate the influx from the South. Very few of these houses are equipped with gas. Coal and wood are used both for cooking and heating. During the hot days of July, the visitor found in several instances a red hot stove in a room which was being used as kitchen, dining room, parlor and bedroom. This, however, did not seem to bother the newcomers, as many of the women, being unaccustomed to the use of gas, and fearful of it, preferred the more accustomed method of cooking.

A Row of Houses Unused for Several Years Until the Present Influx from the South.

A few of these families were found living in so-called “basements”, more than three-fourths under ground, a direct violationof a municipal ordinance.[4]Some rooms had no other opening than a door. The rents paid for such quarters are often beyond belief. In one of these rooms in the Hill District, where only the upper halves of the windows were level with the sidewalk, lived a man, his wife and their five children, the eldest of whom was sixteen years old. The rental was six dollars per week. Another family paid twenty-five dollars per month for three small rooms on the ground floor. The kitchen was so damp and close that the investigator found it impossible to remain for long, because it was difficult to breathe. The ceilings in many of the houses visited were very low, hardly higher than six or seven feet and the rooms were often piled high with furniture. That the owners of these houses cared little about improving their houses was indicated in several cases by the fact that water faucets and toilets had been out of commission for months, and no effort at repair had been made.

“Basement” Occupied by a Migrant Family. The Only Opening in this Dwelling Appears in the Picture.

Because of these bad conditions many peculiar maladjustments exist. A certain man lived in a rooming house, while his young wife and baby lived in another place. In addition to his own rent and board, he paid ten dollars a week for the keep of his wife and baby. In another case, a family was forced to pay six dollars a month storage on the furniture which they had brought from the South, because their new quarters were too cramped to accommodate it.

A goodly number of the migrants have evidently been accustomed to much better living conditions than are offered them here, and in spite of almost insurmountable obstacles, still preserve something of their cleanly habits. Few of these people intend to remain here unless they can get a better place to stay. All complained, some with tears in their eyes, of the bad housing accorded them. As one intelligent and hard working woman who lived in one room expressed it while packing her trunks to go back to Sylvester, Georgia, “I never lived in such houses in my life. We had four rooms in my home.” This woman was earning ten dollars per week and her husband was profitably employed, yet they choose to relinquish the comparatively large rewards of the North, rather than do without the decencies of life which they had known in the South.

TABLE NUMBER VIII

Ages of the 506 Migrants Interviewed

AGES OF MIGRANTS

Table displaying age ranges for migrants

Table number VIIIis significant because it enables us to shed light upon one important phase of the migration. It appears that more than seventy-five percent of the Southern migrants are between the ages of eighteen and forty. Only ten percent of the 506 people questioned were under eighteen or past fifty years of age. This fact is significant, both to the industrial concerns which are in need of a labor supply and to the community as a whole. For the industrial concerns, it means thatthese migrants are the most desirable laborers, men at the height of their wealth producing capacity. They satisfy the pressing need which has confronted the local manufacturers since the foreign supply of labor was cut off by the war. From the standpoint of the community, it is important to know that the influx lays few immediate burdens upon the city. There are few minors to be educated and few aged or dependent ones likely to become a public charge.

The percentage of single people between the ages of eighteen and thirty is far greater than that of the married ones, which is a natural expectation. Of the five hundred and thirty persons interviewed, two hundred and nineteen or forty-one and one-half percent were single; one hundred sixty-two or thirty and one-half percent were married, and had already brought their families here, while one hundred and thirty-nine or twenty-eight percent were married, but were here without their families. Ninety-eight of the families had children; thirty-nine of the families had no children here, and seventeen families either had some or all of the children in the South, while the remaining six placed their children under the care of relatives or institutions. The number of children per family of those who had their wives here, varied from one to ten. Forty families had one child each; twenty-three, two children each, fifteen had three children each, and twenty had four or more children each. Nineteen families had one or more children under twenty helping to support them, but only four had more than one child assisting in the support of the family. Among the one hundred and forty-nine persons whose families remained in the South, ninety-six had children and seventeen had none. Of the remainder a number stated that they had one or two of their children with them, while others gave no definite information. Sixty-three of those who had children at home had no more than two children each, while thirty-three had three or more children at home. These figures seem to indicate that the migration is largely that of small families.

The Negro migration from the South into Pittsburgh, while it has been accentuated and accelerated by the present war, which created a greater need for labor, is not in reality an altogether new thing for Pittsburgh. There has been a steady influx of Negroes, though in small numbers, since the pre Civil War days. Pittsburgh and Allegheny were important stations of the Underground Railway, and many a Negro came to Pittsburgh from the near-by slave states, as to a city of refuge. The Negro population in Allegheny County grewsteadily from 3431 in 1850 to 34,217 in 1910. The percentage of Negroes in the total population of the County has continually increased within the last four decades. (Two and two-tenths percent in 1880 and three and four-tenths in 1910). Negroes have always been attracted by the opportunities which this city with its abundance of work and good wages could offer them in improving their economic status.

The recent unprecedented influx of Negroes had made the Negro population in Pittsburgh increase more than twice as fast within the last two years as during the entire ten years preceding. The percentage of Negroes in our total population has leaped very suddenly. This fact is sufficient to warrant our serious study and active efforts toward the social orientation and adjustment of the new element in our midst.

Wooden Shacks Used as Living and Sleeping Quarters in a Railroad Camp.

From the standpoint of Pittsburgh’s industrial and business interests, however, the migration into this district, has not been at all satisfactory. Pittsburgh as the steel center of the country, is naturally playing a more important part than ever in the present crisis, and has felt a proportionate increase in the need for a labor supply. The Negro migration in Pittsburgh, it can be safely stated, has not usurped the place of the white worker. Every man is needed, as there are more jobs than men to fill them. Pittsburgh’s industrial life is for the time being dependent upon the Negro labor supply.

In spite of its necessity, Pittsburgh has not received a sufficient supply of Negroes, and certainly not in the same full proportion as did many smaller industrial towns. Pittsburgh manufacturers are still in need of labor, and this in spite of the fact that the railroads and a few of the industrial concernsof the locality have had labor agents in the South. These agents, laboring under great difficulties because of the obstructive tactics adopted in certain southern communities to prevent the Negro exodus, have nevertheless succeeded in bringing several thousand colored workers into this district. That they have had little success in keeping these people here, is acknowledged by all of them. One company for instance, which imported about a thousand men within the past year, had only about three hundred of these working at the time of the investigator’s visit in July, 1917. One railroad, which is said to have brought about fourteen thousand people to the North within the last twelve months, has been able to keep an average of only eighteen hundred at work.

It must be admitted that the labor agents, because of their eagerness to secure as many men as possible, are not particular as to the character of those they are bringing here, and there is therefore a goodly number of idle and shiftless Negroes who are floating and undependable. On the other hand we must not fail to recognize that most migrants come through their own volition, pay their own fares, leave their native states, and break up family connections, because they are in search of better opportunities, social and economic. As a class they appear to be industrious, ambitious, pious and temperate, and are eager to get established with their families.

In the foregoing pages, we have discussed the housing and rooming situation which confronts the Negro. An examination of the kind and hours of work and wages received, discloses another reason why many of these people do not remain here.

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