INTRODUCTION
This little study of the Negro Migration to Pittsburgh was first suggested as a thesis subject in a university class in Social Economy in May, 1917. Our great steel city of the North calls many unskilled workers to its mills. The migration of Negroes to fill the gaps in the ranks of this labor force, opened up by the cessation of European immigration following the war has been under way for nearly eighteen months. Expanding steel production continues to call for more workers. From the first labor agents of railroads and steel mills as well as private employment agencies have been at work gathering in the new army of laborers.
By last spring newspaper reports of housing congestion, and of suffering from pneumonia and other diseases, and tales of the increase of crime and vice were being spread. There was spoken comment of the new situation on every hand. But these reports were inaccurate; they gave no concrete estimate of the number and character of the newcomers; and no definite statement of their life here or the problems of community adjustment created by the influx of strange people.
It is to be hoped that the attempt at an intensive and supervised investigation represented by these pages will prove of value to those members of both races who have already seen in the migration new opportunity for a people whose need has been bitter, as well as a chance for manifold human service. Perhaps the all-too-faulty product may justify the painstaking effort of the investigator who toiled through the hot summer months and the generosity of the public-spirited citizen whose interest made the study possible.
The report may be of value also in offering suggestions to those workers in other cities who are dealing with the same many-sided and baffling problem, so full of pathos and tragedy and so expressive of the need of community co-operation. At least they may avoid the pitfalls upon which we have stumbled. For Pittsburgh it may well be that the material gathered here will be used to assist in carrying forward a constructive program for adjusting the new workers permanently to our community life. Industrial production here in a time of crisis depends in part upon our Negro labor supply, the stability and efficiency of which can be permanently secured only by successful experiments in the fields of housing, health, and recreation.
FRANCIS TYSON,Professor of Social Economy.
University of Pittsburgh,December, 1917.