By Hamilton Andrews Hill, of Boston, Massachusetts (pp. 86-98)

A Paper from the Proceedings Of The Conference Of Charities, Held In Connection With The General Meeting Of The American Social Science Association, Detroit, Michigan, May 1875.

This subject has already been treated before this Association in a paper, by Mr. Friedrich Kapp, of much breadth and ability, read at the meeting held in New York in October, 1869. The questions, why do people emigrate, who are those who emigrate, and why is the United States the favorite land of the emigrant, were then so well and so fully answered that nothing more need be attempted under these heads. The further questions discussed by Mr. Kapp, as to the capital value of immigration to this country, the relation of immigration to the population and wealth of this country, and the respective duties of the general government, and of the several States, to the immigrant, will be referred to more or less directly, in presenting such considerations as may now be suggested, and may perhaps receive some fresh elucidation from what has been taking place during the last five or six years.

Our attention will naturally be first directed to the present falling off in immigration to the United States. The tide from Europe reached its maximum height in 1854, when the arrivals were 427,833. Only once since, we believe, have they exceeded 400,000 in any one calendar year; this was in 1873, when they were 422,545. In 1874 they declined to 260,814. This was less considerably than the immigration of any previous year since 1864, and less. by nearly forty per cent. than that of 1873.*

* The immigration to the United States during the first six months of the current year, 1875, was 106,825. The immigration during the fiscal year, ended June 30, 1875, was 227,498, which was less by 85,841, than that of the previous fiscal year. For these figures we are indebted to Dr. Young, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, Washington.

The reason of this decline it will not be difficult to find. Mr. Kapp has tersely stated the rule which governs the movement of emigration to the United States: ” Bad times in Europe regularly increase and bad times in America invariably diminish immigration.” In the present instance, certainly, there can be no doubt that “‘ bad times in America ” have led to the diminished numbers. However serious the great failures of the autumn of 1873, and the general depression of trade throughout the country subsequently, have been felt to be by those at home, they have seemed much more serious when regarded from abroad, and especially by foreigners who know comparatively little of the resources and understand still less the recuperative powers of this young and vigorous country. Nor does the press of Europe at such times err on the side of underestimating financial and industrial difficulties in the United States. On the continent the ruling influence is directly opposed to emigration to any and all countries, and in Great Britain, it not unnaturally prefers and favors the British colonies. It can readily be understood, therefore, why many who may have been proposing, a year and a half ago, to cross the seas and settle among us, should have been induced, by what they have heard and read, either to postpone their emigration or to change their destination; and why many more, who, during the same period, may have been brought to consider emigration as a question personal to themselves and their families, should have left the United States out of the account. Perhaps, under all the circumstances, the wonder is that at such an unpropitious time, more than a quarter of a million of the people of Europe had the discernment and the courage to come hither in 1874 and cast in their lot with us.

There has not only been a check in the flow of the stream in this direction, but there has been a strong current setting from the United States towards the shores of Europe. The general dulness of trade in America, in connection with unprecedentedly low rates of railway and steamship fares, afforded an opportunity to our foreign born citizens, particularly to those engaged in mechanical and manufacturing industries, to return to their old homes for the purpose of visiting their friends, or of obtaining temporary employment, or for the two purposes combined. At one time last summer, owing to the severe competition among both the railway and the steamship companies, passengers were conveyed on through tickets from Chicago to Queenstown or Liverpool for seventeen dollars each, currency; and it is easy to see how strong the inducement to take a trip across the Atlantic must have been to those who, at the time, were out of employ, or could not obtain such wages as they desired. Instances there undoubtedly were of personal disappointment and loss among those who filled the steamship steerages between America and Europe last year; but we believe them to have been altogether exceptional, and that the large majority will return to us at no distant day. The number of those who landed from homeward bound steamers at Queenstown and Liverpool in 1874 is reported as 77,146 against about 38,000 in 1873. We’have not been able to ascertain the number of passengers who landed at German ports, but we are informed that about 4,000 persons returned to Sweden during the year. It is probable not only that most of these people will return to the United States, but that they will bring with them, or influence the coming of, many others. It will appear, in due time, that they have been serving as most efficient promoters of emigration, in the countries to which they have gone, and the information they will impart in their personal contact with friends and acquaintances, and the encouragement which their appearance and experience will afford, will, no doubt, help to swell the numbers of immigrants to the United States for years to come.

2. This brings us to our second point, the probabilities with regard to the extent of immigration to this country in the future. While we may confidently expect that circumstances on this side of the Atlantic, which have caused the present falling off in the arrivals on our shores, are temporary only and will cease to be operative before long, we may be sure, also, that the reasons which lead multitudes in Europe to decide upon changing their residence and allegiance, are, to say the least, becoming no less potential from year to year. Excepting in Ireland, emigration has caused no perceptible diminution in the population which crowds the countries of the old world; while many things conspire to render emigration desirable, if not indispensable, to an increasing number both of individuals and families.

Ireland has been our chief source of supply in the past, and during the last forty years has contributed to our population nearly three millions of her people. During the years 1847 to 1854 inclusive, the arrivals from Ireland averaged one hundred and fifty thousand per annum. In only one year since 1854 have they reached one hundred thousand; this was in 1867, when they were 108,857. Ireland still stands second in the tables, after Germany, which, since 1865, has been first. The exceptional circumstances and conditions which in past years increased Irish emigration to such large proportions do not now exist, and in the future it will be governed mainly by the same considerations which affect emigration in England and in Scotland.

Since 1869 the emigration of English to all parts of the world has been larger than that of Irish, and while the latter has hardly held its own from year to year, the former has been steadily increasing. In 1873 the English emigration outnumbered the Irish in the proportion of three to two, although, of course, it was far below the Irish when the respective populations are taken into account. In 1872, upwards of eighty thousand English arrived in the United States, and as soon as times improve with us we may expect a repetition of these numbers, and probably an advance upon them. Not only in the classes represented by Ginx’s Baby and Little Hodge, but in all others the size of English families is such, as a rule, that except among the very rich adequate provision cannot be made for the younger children at home, and the increase in the cost of living seriously aggravates the difficulty.*

*There is hardly a family in England which has not one or more of its members in America, in Australia or In India, many of them having gone abroad when quite young. Dickens wrote, rather sadly, of his son Walter, the fourth of nine children, on his departure for India, where he died, that he was going before he well knew he was alive, or what life was, which, indeed, he added, seems to be rather an advanced state of knowledge.

Land is steadily increasing in value, and so much more capital is required now than formerly for its cultivation that, as the Daily Telegraph said, not long ago, it will soon have to be cultivated with a ” silver plow.” The position of the English farmer is a very trying one, between the landlord on the one hand, and the agricultural laborer on the other. In his relations with the former he has to deal with many perplexing questions connected with the granting and renewal of leases, and the value of exhausted and unexhausted improvements, which, fortunately, we know nothing about in the United States; and he finds himself still more embarrassed by the demands of the laborer for more wages, backed as these are by union organizations. There can be little doubt that when the farmers of England, and especially the younger men among them and their sons, shall come to understand, as some of them are beginning to do, the advantages offered them by a settlement in this country, where there is plenty of land and free scope, where they can at once become their own landlords, and where they can buy a farm for what the rental for one year would be in England, or less, there will be such a movement hither from among this class as will take most of us by surprise, and from other classes also, for most Englishmen are fond of the land and take kindly to agricultural pursuits.

The settlers in the British colonies are English in about the proportion of two to three, but three-fourths of the total emigration from the United Kingdom is to the United States. Until 1873 the proportion of English going to the colonies as compared with other destinations had not varied much for several years; but during 1873 and 1874, by means of “assisted passages,” ” free grants,” and other inducements offered in the interest of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, there has been a large increase in the number of emigrants to these countries especially to that last named. The emigration to New Zealand alone, for 1874, is reported at about forty-two thousand, which is nearly three times as many as the departures for Australia and New Zealand combined in 1872. A large number of these people were agriculturul laborers and their families. The preponderance of even English emigration, however, will continue to be in favor of the United States, not to name other reasons, because of the shortness of the voyage hither, as compared with Australia and New Zealand, and the superiority of the climate and the’ land, as compared with most of Canada.

Scotch emigration has taken a new start since 1868, and is now about twenty thousand a year. Of this number the United States receives rather more than one-half. Canada has succeeded in attracting a large share of these settlers, wlo, as agriculturists and horticulturists especially, are a most valuable acquisition to any country. It has been said of Scotchmen that ” they are never so much at home as when they are abroad,” and certainly there are no better emigrants than they, and none who more readily adapt themselves to new conditions and to a new country. In Scotland, also, as in England, the large capital now required for cultivating the soil, presses the alternative of emigration upon the attention of farmers and their sons. Professor Caird says that on a farm in the Lothians, rented at ~1,000, while ~25 was the outlay on foreign manures forty years ago, at the present day twice the rent would not be thought an extravagant expenditure on fertilizers and cattle food.*

*See the Times, January 11, 1875.

The emigration from Sweden and Norway has become important since 1866. Nearly the whole of it is attracted to this country, and as much pains have been taken of late to spread information about the United States in the North of Europe, and as the facilities for transportation hither are improving year by year, a large gain may be looked for from this source. Nothing could help this more than the return of the four thousand persons last year to whom reference has been made.

From Russia some important communities, Mennonites and others, have begun to transfer their homes to the United States. The arrivals in 1873 and 1874 (together about 11,000) were more than in all the previous years together, and are only the advanced guard of a great movement.

Germany has already sent us more than two and a half millions of people, and will, no doubt, continue to be our largest source of supply. The arrivals in 1873 were 133,141; in 1874, 56,927. The laws of the empire relating to military service and conscription, together with the prevailing fear of further continental wars, stimulate emigration from Germany more than all other considerations combined. The recent enactment of the Imperial Parliament which in the event of war, will render every able-bodied man in the empire, between the ages of eighteen and sixty, liable to do military duty, and which makes more stringent even than heretofore, all the regulations relating to military service, will influence thousands upon thousands to come to the United States, who, but for these laws and for the misgiving that occasion may come for their enforcement, would greatly prefer to remain in their native land. The German Government, which during the last few years, has bitterly opposed the emigration of its subjects, will, no doubt, seek to render it still more difficult for them to get away, but the effect of this opposition will probably be to make them only the more anxious and the more determined to leave.

3. Something may be inferred as to the character and value of the immigration now reaching us and likely to come hither in the future, from what has already been said; but more may be added on this point.

Abject poverty, which, at one time was the rule, is now the exception among those who arrive in the United States as immigrants. In 1851 the Marquis of Lansdowne gave free emigration to America to ” every man, woman and child in the poor-house, or receiving relief, and chargeable to his estate” in Ireland, and during that year 3,500 paupers were sent over from the Union of Kenmare alone.*

*Mr. W. Steuart Trench, author of “Realities of Irish Life,” testified before the select committee of the House of Lords on the Irish Tenure of Land bill, that in the years immediately succeeding the famine, the Marquis of Bath expended ~7,988 in assisting 2,459 persons to emigrate, and the Marquis of Lansdowne ~17,059 for 4,616 persons. Mr. Trench was agent in Ireland for both these noblemen; and in his interesting book above named, a remarkable contrast is drawn between what these people were when they left their native land, and what they had become a few years later. He says; ” It must be admitted that the paupers despatched to America on such a sudden pressure as this were of a very motley type, and a strange figure, these wild batches of two hundred each, most of them speaking only the Irish language, made in the streets of Cork. * * * * * I am happy to say that the most favorable accounts have been received, and are to this day coming back from every quarter to which the emigrants were despatched. Money in large quantities has been sent home by them to their friends.”

Within the limits of that Union, 5,000 had died of starvation during the famine, and the more intelligent and enterprising among the landed proprietors in Ireland and their agents, saw no other course before them but (to use the words of one of them) ” …to free the estates from the mass of pauperism which had been allowed to accumulate upon them, and to put the people in a far better way of earning their bread than they had ever known before.” There was less excuse for the deportation to America, at the expense of the landlords or of the government, of Ribbonmen and other dangerous characters. But those sad times have passed away, let us hope never to return. It is said that Mr. Gladstone’s Irish land law increased the selling value of Irish property from twelve to twenty per cent. This has made it practicable for the landlords to deal more liberally with their tenants in terminating their leases and in compensating them for improvements, so that those of them who emigrate are able to provide themselves with good outfits, and they all start with more or less money in their pockets. The English, Scotch and Germans who come to us are almost all fairly supplied with capital in clothing, tools and money, and many of them bring large sums with them. The Topeka Commonwealth, in referring last autumn to the arrival in Kansas of a Mennonite colony consisting of two thousand persons, said that the capital they brought with them amounted to a million and a half of dollars.

From the nature of the case it is impossible to arrive at any precise estimate of the amount of money annually brought into the country by immigrants. An attempt was made a few years ago at Castle Garden to obtain information on this point from the passengers themselves, and, as the result of the inquiry, the Immigration Commissioners fixed upon $68 as the estimated average amount for each passenger. There is no doubt, however, that many of these people failed to make correct returns, naturally hesitating to talk about their private affairs, or to display their means, to strangers. Mr. Kapp, who found evidence of this in the course of his own observation, fixed the average amount at $150. This was several years ago, and it is our belief that since then the amount of capital in money or effects brought by ilnmigrants has greatly increased, and that the estimate of $150 would now be much within the truth. At this moderate estimate, however, and with the reduced immigration of 260,000, our country is gaining from this source of wealth at the rate of nearly $40,000,000 per annum.

What is the economic value of each immigrant to the land of his adoption? Mr. Kapp, from carefully considered data, places it at $1,125. Dr. Edward Young, of Washington, thinks this too high, and has fixed it at $800. Other statisticians would perhaps reach still different results. But whatever process we may adopt in making our calculations, it is evident that the annual increase to the capitalized wealth of the country, by this influx from beyond the sea, must be reckoned by more than tens of millions.

Here is still another view of the subject. Dr. Young says: ” It is impossible to make an intelligent estimate of the value to the country of those foreign born citizens who have brought their educated minds, their cultivated tastes, their skill in the arts, and their inventive genius. In almost every walk of life their influence has been felt. Alike in the fearful ordeal of war and in the pursuits of peace, in our legislative halls and in the various learned professions, the adopted sons of America have attained eminence.”

4. It remains for us to speak of our duties to immigration and to the immigrant.

It need hardly be said that the general government should encourage such immigration as has been referred to, in every practicable way. Not that it is called upon to send its agents to the Old World to make the people there dissatisfied with the institutions and conditions under which they have been born and trained, and to urge their coming across the sea to us. These people are finding out for themselves, in a natural and spontaneous way, the advantages to be gained by emigration, and they receive all the special information they desire from our consuls, from the representatives of the great railroad companies which have lands to sell, and from the steamship companies which are competing among themselves for their conveyance to the New World. Nor need we offer assisted passages or any pecuniary inducement to those who, without them, cannot emigrate at all. We will extend every opportunity, on their arrival, to those who may land upon our shores absolutely poor, and will point them to the encouraging example of hundreds of thousands of the same condition who have preceded them, and who, by industry and Providence, have marvellously changed their circumstances for the better; but we can afford to let the majority of this class go to the colonies, where they are needed more than by us, leaving those to come here who bring something with them with which to make their own start in life.

The duty of the general government in this matter, as we conceive, is to protect the immigrant, by suitable enactments, in his passage across the sea; to welcome him on his arrival, with the promise, after the lapse of a proper interval, of full and equal citizenship; and to secure him in the enjoyment of all his newly acquired rights, by treaty with the power from whose sovereignty and protection he has separated himself; and this threefold duty the government has already sought in good faith to perform.

Both the United States and Great Britain have endeavored by stringent legislation to regulate the steerage passenger traffic on the Atlantic, and with a good degree of success. Of all classes of travellers, none, probably, are protected in their lives and persons by such thorough precautions, as emigrants. The English Emigration Commissioners, in a recent report to the Colonial Office, stated that during a period of twenty years, the percentage of loss of life on board emigrant ships was only seventeen in every ten thousand, or less than two in every thousand emigrants. Something more than mere safety also has been aimed at. Macaulay speaks of “that sensitive and restless compassion which pries into the stores and water casks of every emigrant ship,” and the result of this enterprising philanthropy is, that in the vessels of the great steamship lines which navigate the Atlantic, the wants of the steerage passengers are, upon the whole, well cared for, and there seems to be an honest desire on the part of the companies to do all that, under the circumstances, can be done for their comfort. Still, for every reason, this traffic should be closely watched, and it is most desirable that the laws which regulate it should be uniform on both sides of the Atlantic. There should also be treaties among the several powers interested, so that the jurisdiction of each and all over the officers and crews of vessels employed in the conveyance of emigrant passengers, and over their acts upon the high seas, may be fully secured and clearly defined.

When the passenger has been landed and has passed through the custom house with his effects, the direct responsibility of the general government with regard to his movements, terminates and ceases; and it would be most undesirable, as, indeed, it would be found most impracticable, to seek to extend it further. The several States and the several municipalities under whose jurisdiction immigrants come, after the custom house officer has done with them, are abundantly able to protect them; and they may safely be trusted to frame such local legislation in the interest of this traffic, as will attract to each, and enable each to hold its proper share of it. All things considered, Castle Garden is open to but little criticism, while the arrangements at Boston and Baltimore are unexceptionable. We would take occasion, however, to protest against the imposition of the head money or capitation tax at the port of New York. Massachusetts, in the interest of her commerce, and as a matter of principle, has abolished this tax. She does not wish to support any of her hospitals, asylums, or other charities, at the expense of the immigrant, or to levy upon him, in any form, a toll for the privilege of crossing her domain on his way to the West. It is said, to be sure, that the steamship company, and not the immigrant, pays this tax; but there can be no question that every outlay incurred by a steamship company in bringing immigrants to this country and in landing them here, is and must be taken into the account beforehand in determining the rate of passage; and as competition increases and the margin of profit is continually diminishing, every particular expenditure, large or small, must be carefully scrutinized and allowed for. It is by no means clear that the capitation tax is a constitutional one; its collection, certainly, is unworthy of any of the great commonwealths on the seaboard; and it is opposed to the interests of the country at large.*

* On this point the writer is compelled to differ from Mr. Kapp.

Nothing more liberal can be asked for than our naturalization laws as they now stand. The treaties also, into which our government has entered with various European powers, by which the absolute American citizenship of those who transfer their allegiance to the United States is recognized and confirmed, are satisfactory. We hope, however, that the government will hesitate before giving its consent to the limitation of these treaties in any of their existing provisions. It is said, for example, that German parents, anxious to save their sons from involuntary military service, send them to America, where they remain long enough to become American citizens, and are then recalled to Germany to take up their permanent abode there. There are such instances, undoubtedly, but they are exceptional, and no law or treaty can be found to meet every exceptional case that may arise under it. It is the duty and privilege of the United States to throw wide open the portals of its citizenship, and to welcome all who come hither, without seeking to inquire into the particular motives of self-interest which prompt each instance of immigration. Neither can our government undertake to deal with the considerations which lead naturalized citizens to return, for a longer or shorter period, to their native country. It is not its fault if these motives, in the one case or the other, are thought to conflict with the supposed necessities of nations, which, for their own purposes, maintain immense military organizations, and which enact stringent military laws under which their people grow restive. It must protect everywhere those who have sworn allegiance to it, leaving them free to go and come at their pleasure. No citizens of the United States, native or naturalized, are more warmly attached to their country than those of German birth; still, various circumstances may and do require many of them to return to and for a time to remain in fatherland, and there should be no difficulty, whether of treaty stipulation or of any other nature, in the way of their doing so.

The unwillingness of the countries from which we are drawing population to part with that which in such volume flows towards us, may fairly be taken as measuring for us the importance of this immigration to the national prosperity. Sir Walter Scott makes one of his characters, in “‘ Peveril of the Peak,” say: ” The land has shaken from her lap, as a drunkard flings from him his treasures, so much that is precious in the eyes of God and His children.” This is not the estimate now put by the nations of Europe, on either individual emigrants or emigrating classes. Even Great Britain, overcrowded as she is,* looks wistfully after the tens of thousands of her vigorous and enterprising children who, year by year are leaving their island home, and, at the least, she would retain their services and their fealty under her flag in the various colonies, the younger sisters of the United States, which still cling to their old mother. We have seen what the feeling of Germany is. The Swiss government regards with as little favor as any of its neighbors, the disposition of its people to become citizens of the Great Republic. Russia, for special reasons, is just now permitting the emigration of certain communities outside the Greek Communion, but we believe a limit has been fixed to the time during which this movement will be permitted.

*Mr. Trench and others, who in the midst of the horrors of the Irish famine promoted the emigration of naked and starving paupers, were bitterly denounced, then and long afterwards, as enemies of their country.

It is more than probable that, for all these nations, there are compensations that more than make up to them for what they are losing numerically by emigration; but however this may be, it becomes us to be no less closely observant than they of the perpetual tendency of population to migrate from the Old World to the New; and we ought to make it manifest to the immigrant on his arrival among us, that his coming here is as much an occasion of gratification to us as his departure from his native land is a cause of dissatisfaction to those he is leaving behind him.

Source: National Conference on Social Welfare Proceedings On-Line. The web site for this resource is:  http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

The proceedings of annual meetings of the NCSW, 1874-1983, are available on the web thanks to a digitization project undertaken by the University of Michigan Library, with assistance from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota.  The web site for this resource is: http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

By: John E. Hansan, Ph.D.

Introduction: At the 1929 annual meeting of the National Conference of Social Work in San Francisco a delegation of public agency representatives voted to organize a national membership organization open to all levels of government. In 1930, approximately forty persons from twenty different states met in Boston to found the new organization. Initially, the organization was named the American Association of Public Welfare Officials and its mission was to help and improve the activities of public welfare organizations throughout the nation. The name was changed in May 1932 to the American Public Welfare Association (APWA); and in 1998 it was changed again to: American Public Human Services Association.”  The description below is from an APWA document written in 1978.

(Note: For more information about the early history of APWA go to: American Association of Public Welfare Officials. For information about the American Public Human Services Association contact: http://www.aphsa.org/Home/News.asp

HISTORY  OF  APWA

The American Public Welfare Association was founded in  1930, as a voluntary membership organization, national  in scope and composed  of  individuals  and agencies interested  in or working for public welfare  programs.  From its  inception, the association has  been an important factor  in the development  of  social  service programs in  the  United States.

APWA aided in implementation of the new National Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which was to be the nation’s first effort to  standardize public welfare programs and guarantee a minimum income to needy segments of the  population.  Acting as a liaison with state agencies under a contract with the Social Security Administration, APWA was able to influence the direction of this program.

APWA has continued to represent membership on every major public welfare issue and has been actively involved in effecting legislation on   regulations in the areas of social  services, food stamps, income maintenance, and health.

Today, members include all  state and  territorial  public welfare agencies, and 1,700 local and federal agencies, and several thousand individuals  who work in or have an interest in public welfare.

GOALS

The American Public Welfare Association has a dual purpose:

• To exert a positive influence on the shaping of national social policy;  and
• To promote the professional development of  persons working in public welfare.

Underlying APWA’s  efforts  to meet these two objectives is the philosophy that the most constructive social policies are those developed through a blend of national and local concerns, social and economic goals, and professional and administrative viewpoints. The  association brings together different disciplines and interests when recommending  positions on social welfare issues.  Furthermore, the association values policies which can be translated into effective and manageable programs and  services at the state  and  local levels.

The  Association provides leadership in identifying the forces which adversely affect the welfare of individuals and families and fosters the public’s participation with public welfare agencies towards the solution of such problems. By carrying out independent policy analysis and policy research on a national level, APWA staff is able to inform and interpret to the public results of this work. The  association provides consultation  whenever possible to public welfare agencies in developing and improving internal operations by formulating guides, principles  and sound standards.  APWA initiates and responds to the need for cooperative relationships and efforts in matters of mutual concern between public welfare agencies and other public services and voluntary associations.

By: Michael Barga

Introduction: Mary Church Terrell served as a professor and principal at Wilberforce University and became the first black woman appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education in 1895.  The following year, Terrell became president of the newly formed National Association of Colored Women.   She was an active writer with numerous black and foreign newspapers and occasionally the Washington Post, less accepting of her race-related topics.  In 1904, she spoke at the International Congress of Women held in Berlin, Germany and was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  In 1940, Terrell released her autobiography entitled Colored Woman in a White World, and in her later years, she helped organize desegregation activities in Washington, D.C..

Education and Career: Mary Church Terrell was one of the first black women to earn a college degree in the United States, graduating with a Bachelor in the Classics from Oberlin College and a Master’s degree four years later in 1888.  In 1892, Terrell was elected president of the prominent Washington, D.C. black debate organization “Bethel Literary and Historical Society,” the first woman to take the position.  In 1913, Terrell became an honorary member of newly founded Delta Sigma Theta sorority at Howard University, and she received an honorary degree in humane letters from Oberlin College in 1948, as well as honorary degrees from Howard and Wilberforce Universities.

She was born Mary E. Church to a family of former slaves in Memphis, Tennessee.  Although her parents were divorced, Terrell describes the arrangement as cordial and supportive even after her father re-married.  Terrell was given a primary education in Ohio where she enjoyed great success, and her father supported the decision to get a higher education in the same geographical area.  In describing her experience at Oberlin College, she believes  “it would be difficult for a colored girl to go through a white school with fewer unpleasant experiences occasioned by race prejudice than I had.”₁ Terrell was voted class poet, involved in the Aelioian literary society, given access to orators, singers, and orchestras, generally treated well by professors, and had her articles published in the campus newspaper, Oberlin Review.  In and out of school, she took advantage of every opportunity possible during this fairly carefree time in her life and even visited Washington, D.C. where she would meet Frederick Douglas, a lifelong friend.

Upon graduation, Terrell secured a position at Wilberforce University where she taught for two years.  In 1886, she was offered a position teaching at M Street Colored High School in Washington, D.C. and began working with Robert Heberton Terrell in the foreign language department.  After completing her Master’s degree in 1888, Mary Terrell took a two-year leave of absence studying in France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany to further her language competency.  Upon returning to Washington, D.C., Mary and Robert continued to work together although the relationship became increasingly personal.  Terrell describes later that “…I enjoyed assisting him in the Latin department so much, I made up my mind to assist him in all departments for the rest of my natural life”.

The two were married in 1891 in great celebration but faced difficulty in the first five years of the marriage since the couple had three children who died soon after birth.  In 1895, the District of Columbia’s Board of Education appointed Mary Church Terrell to one of the three available positions reserved for women. Terrell was the first black woman to be a member of the board. After six years, she resigned from the board due to a conflict of interest involving a vote for her husband to become school principal.  Her activities were varied including administration of a black school district and Congressional appropriations requests for D.C. schools.

In the midst of her educational and personal responsibilities, Terrell attended National Woman Suffrage Association meetings and befriended Susan B. Anthony.  On a number of occasions, Anthony and the association allowed her to speak on suffrage and its relation to “colored women.”  Her connection of the two issues led to an eventual involvement in Delta Sigma Theta.  The sorority, which took part in woman’s suffrage activities early in its foundation, was formed in 1914 at Howard University, and the 51-year old Terrell was considered an honorary member.

In 1892, Terrell founded the Colored Women’s League of Washington and contributed as a teacher and organizer.  She was instrumental in the group’s merge with the National Federation of Afro-American Women to form the National Association of Colored Women in 1896.  Ladies from both original organizations felt she was a fair and trustworthy person, and Terrell was elected as the first president of the organization.  She was re-elected then given the title of honorary president for life after completion of her second term.

During her time as president, the most notable event was a Chicago convention that included an invitation by Jane Addams of Hull House for a luncheon.  Although Hull House and similar groups failed to take a stand against discrimination at the time, the NACW achieved greater standing nationally and received favorable extensive press.  Terrell established the Monthly Notes newsletter to promote the organization and placed an emphasis on the need for members to form kindergartens, nurseries, and mother’s clubs in black communities.  Local federation chapters also developed homes for the aging, schooling for girls, clinics, and other support networks during Terrell’s tenure, and it was recognized as the leading black women’s organization in the United States.

Mary Church Terrell developed greater public speaking skills which were commonly employed in addressing crowds about the progress of “colored” women, the inaccuracy of racial stereotypes, and the brutality which lynching and other practices posed against blacks.  Her connection to black leaders expanded, and W.E.B. Dubois as well as Booker T. Washington invited her to their schools’ respective commencements.  When Mary’s husband was appointed a judge with great controversy, some suggested that Booker T. Washington had used his influence to help secure the position for him.  In 1909, Terrell became a charter member of the NAACP at a time when many declined due to fear of losing their jobs.

Terrell had become well-known around the United States for her unique ability to accurately and intelligently describe the difficulties which black women faced at that time.  Her husband had always been very supportive, and Robert Terrell had nothing but encouragement when an invitation came for Mary Church Terrell to address the world.  Despite some financial obstacles, Terrell spoke at the International Congress of Women on June 13, 1904 in Berlin, Germany.  She gained respect and notoriety for her speech’s content and form; Terrell had made the speech in German and French and given the audience a look into a world they had never imagined.  Many foreign members had not realized that she was considered a “colored” person until Terrell informed them.

During WWI, Terrell offered her linguistic services to the federal government and managed to obtain a low-level clerk position despite facing severe discrimination from recruiters.  Terrell had experienced similar difficulties in buying a house, seeking other employment opportunities, and traveling in the south.  Eventually, she resigned from the clerk position due to the racial prejudice she experienced.  Terrell did not have the level of influence which she had briefly held with Theodore Roosevelt’s administration; on one occasion, she had spoken to Secretary of War Taft about suspending a motion to dismiss black troops until a proper investigation could be made.  The suggestion was placed into motion within hours.

Mary Church Terrell had two daughters and successfully managed a family with her husband Robert in the midst of her continued speaking, writing, and teaching engagements.  Her husband passed away in 1925, and she spent her time primarily in Washington, D.C. for the rest of her life.  Terrell became involved in the political campaign of Ruth Hanna McCormick who ran for an Illinois senate seat and later advised the Republican National Committee during the Hoover campaign.  In 1940, she released her autobiography Colored Woman in a White World.  One of the final chapters describes carrying on and her intent to stay active as she aged.  Awards like the honorary doctorate of humane letters bestowed by Oberlin College in 1948 and similar honorary degrees from Howard and Wilberforce University seemed to only further motivate Terrell to action.

In 1950, she and a number of colleagues became one of the earliest activist groups in a new era of civil rights.  A lawsuit was filed against Washington, D.C.’s Thompson Restaurant when the establishment refused to serve them because of their race.  D.C. segregation was officially challenged and declared unconstitutional in 1953, and Terrell had helped organize sit-ins, pickets, boycotts, and surveys around the city leading up to the ruling.  Many regarded her leadership as key in this early court battle to desegregate America.  She also successfully lobbied the National Association of University Women to admit blacks while in her eighties.  Terrell died at the age of 91 just days before the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that reversed the “separate but equal” stance that she had seen come and go.  Mary Church Terrell’s boundless energy had been shaped by pioneers like Frederick Douglas, brought into the struggle for women’s suffrage and the welfare of black women, and culminated in her early contribution to a movement that would directly challenge formal segregation across the country.

Sources: 1. Terrell, Mary Church.  Colored Woman in a White World (pgs. 45, 102). “Mary Church Terrell House” National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior website.  “Mary Church Terrell and the National Association of Colored Women: 1896-1901” and “Before Montgomery and Greensboro: The Desegregation Movement in the District of Columbia, 1950 – 1953” by B.W. Jones.

Photo Sources:

Terrell in Early Years – http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/index_archive/index35.html

Terrell in Later Years - http://tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/suffrage/beginning.htm

Terrell Given Award – http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/gallery_commencement.html

For More Information: See Mary Church Terrell’s autobiography Colored Woman in a White World and the Library of Congress’ Mary Church Terrell Papers for further research.

By Rev. William F. O’Ryan, St. Leo’s Church, Denver, Colorado

A Presentation at the 52^nd Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare, Denver, Colorado, June 10-17, 1925

I can only briefly indicate my views on the church in its relation to local community work. I believe these views are common to most clergymen of my denomination; indeed, I cannot imagine any of them thinking differently. To all finely organized and highly purposed community endeavor the church can have no other feeling than generous commendation. Whether we take the whole village, or town, or city, or the unfortunately placed district where our underprivileged fellow-citizens are compelled to live, all organized inspiration and work for the advancement and edification of our fellows is precisely of the very essence and purpose and only justification for the existence of the church.

Among the energies of today, the neighborhood house in the poorer and congested districts of our cities, when properly conducted, is an institution that must meet the church’s warmest approval. Indeed, many of our parishes, in the larger cities especially, have such houses for social, educational, and recreational conveniences among the parishioners, and it would appear today to be the immediate ambition of all our parishes to have such a center. And this is true not of American cities only, but of many through the world. I visited last summer in London two such settlements in the very wretched districts of the East End; I found them in charge of wealthy ladies of the noblest blood of England. I was pointed out two or three in the Dublin slums. To be sure, these were not in the widest way community houses, their work being confined to one denomination.

Forty years ago I was familiar with the young university settlements of London, which have in modern times been the inspiration and suggestion of all our neighborhood and community houses. They were fine and inspiring, doing a noble work in the sad sections of London.

The parish house, excellent and helpful as it is, cannot supply needs that are clamorous in every large American city, because it narrows its work to one denomination. Every Catholic priest who is able to understand anything understands that the community rises or falls together. We have spots of hideous poverty in all our large cities. Our industrial life, great as it may be in many respects, is horribly callous and careless of human life and welfare; it is an iron machine, grinding pitilessly the bodies and souls of men. There are many of our fellows who cannot keep step in the awful march which we call progress; they fall by the wayside. We see them in every city, the poor, the stunted, the broken, the unfit, those who have never enjoyed opportunity, and those who failed; ill-fed in mind and body, they live in congested and unsanitary apartments. They necessarily congregate together; the slum is their portion and inheritance; they breathe the same physical and spiritual atmosphere and are poisoned together. They must be assisted together as a community, irrespective of creed or race.

These poor people are the chiefest concern of any church which deserves to exist, and consequently every fine effort finely conducted for such communities must receive the warm approbation and support of every church. In America such localities are heterogeneous in the composition of their inhabitants. There are racial and religious problems among them that must be wisely and delicately met. I think we all agree that the neighborhood house, prudently managed and offering generously recreation, education, and inspiration, is the best means with which to combat the conditions I have mentioned; it will be the point of light in their darkness, of health in their disease.

What does the Catholic priest think of the introduction of religion into the community house? What can he think but that, considering the diverse religions and races, the introduction of any religious allusion that could offend the susceptibilities of a part of the community would be infinitely stupid and destructive in its very shadow. For the life of the community house depends, from the beginning of its existence, upon an atmosphere of kindliness, and good will, and brotherhood-a very human and sympathetic understanding of the prejudices and idiosyncracies of the whole body. There are enough fine spiritual and human things of life, education and art, that will occupy the time of those in charge; there are ambitions to be fostered, young and old to be advised, unhappinesses to be allayed, lame dogs to be lifted over stiles, without trespassing on that domain where the soul communes with its God.

And whom would a Catholic priest place in charge of a community house? It goes without saying: people adapted for the work by apparent vocation and thorough special training. Anyone who understands the Catholic church knows how she trains her workers. The nun, fitted for teaching, teaches; she is not placed among the hospital sisterhood; the orphanage sister is chosen and pre  pared for her own special work. Her priests have many years of training; they may not be all brilliant geniuses, but they are trained, and each for his own place and work in the church.

Human sympathy is splendid and human love very mighty; but all the sympathy and human tenderness in the world will wreck a community house if those who guide its destinies have not the preparation of intelligent training.

I make no mention of what organizations should direct and support the community house. I may say that I do not believe it the function of the school board, nor of the civic authorities; they may help. At its best, the community house, as it springs from the patriotism and humanity of good citizens, will find its best management from among them.

I think you will understand that I am an enthusiast for the community center. Curiously, I have become more so in recent years. No one understands any better than I the evil of the old neighborhood saloon; I hated it and fought it. And still it had its good side. It was some social center for the workingman, and human nature is invincibly social; it had light and warmth and a certain comfort for the tired man in the evening; it was a little parliament house where he joyfully discussed the world and its problems. We have, unfortunately, nothing which replaces that aspect of the saloon today. If to offer men that recreation and social opportunity were the sole purpose of the community center, I think it would justify its existence.

Let me tell you of the community house of old, for the idea is not new. There were several centuries in which every city of importance in Europe had not one, but many, community houses; every rural district had its community house of a fine kind. It may be distasteful to some not of my creed, and whose knowledge of history is not intimate, that I should mention the great Bene-,dictine monasteries that were so numerous in Europe from the sixth century onward. They were in a sense community houses. They guided the agriculture and civilization of Europe after the breakdown of the Roman Empire; they had. beside the internal monastic school, the school at monastery gates for everyone; they relieved the poor; they assisted the sick with simple remedies; out of them went all the instruction and letters and most of the arts and crafts of the long ago. They were the chief sources of light in dark times.

And again, when you visit Europe you will ask the reason for the enormous churches and cathedrals of the twelfth and successive centuries. Surely the population of the time did not demand their hugeness. Apart from honoring God in their magnificence, they had another purpose: they were the great meeting houses for all the people, the great community houses of other days. In them the people met for other than purely spiritual purposes; they were places where the community and national needs were often discussed, where great popular synods and fairs were held, where often the mystery and miracle plays (the beginning of our modern drama) were enacted. They were, indeed, great neighborhood houses. People then believed that religion embraced every social  and kindly duty, and the cathedral was indeed the mother church and center for the diocese, or bishop’s district.

But the true community house of long ago, found numerously in every city, flocked to by simple and gentle, were the houses of the guilds of the Middle Ages. From the twelfth century to the sixteenth, in every city of importance all over Europe, the citizens were practically all enrolled in guilds. Some of these were purely spiritual, but every art and craft had its own guild and guild house, and guild possessions; every merchant had his guild and guild house, each for his own class of merchandise. In the guild chambers, as in the church, there met master and apprentice, rich and poor, and they were brothers. They understood the inevitable differences of rank and retinue, but they also understood, as it is seldom understood today, the true equality from which true democracy proceeds-the equality in the order of nature and in the eyes of God. It is well worth while to read the story of the Italian, or German, or French, or English guilds. For their story is the beginning of the art of Europe and of that human independence before which finally went down the tyranny of the feudal barons. They made the democracy of the Middle Ages; they made pauperism, as we know it in this industrial age, impossible; they were socialistic in that finer sense of ideal socialism; they lifted labor up to nobility and art. Their destruction was a catastrophe.

Says Dr. Jessop: “The guilds were benefit clubs, they were savings banks, they were social unions, they were very powerful supporters of the needs of the parish.” Thorold Rogers says: “The town and country guilds obviated pauperism in the Middle Ages, assisted in steadying the price of labor, and formed a permanent center for those associations which fulfilled the function that in more recent times trade-unions have striven to satisfy.” Bishop Hobhouse tells us how “the guild fellowships enhanced all the other bonds in drawing men to share their worldly goods as a common stock. Covertly, if not overtly, the guildsman bound himself to assist his needy brother in sickness and age.”

Perhaps you may think this interjection regarding the guilds is foreign to my subject. I introduce it for the sake of anyone who doubts the value of the community house. Let him read of the ancient guilds and he will see that the analogy between the guild house of the past and the community house of today is very intimate.

But there is no need to go back to the past to find sufficient argument why I, or any churchman, should support the idea of the community center and its humane activities. If a churchman will not be faithful to his solemn profession, where shall fidelity be found? And we profess to be Americans, to accept as holy the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. If we clergymen cannot condemn and hold up to scorn the mouthing hypocrite who praises our republic and glorifies our democracy while ignoring the fact that multitudes of our citizens are left in ignorance of our Constitution, live in unsanitary conditions, and are given no opportunity toward a life worth living, or a liberty worth possessing, or a happiness worth enjoying-if we do not speak, who will?

To adapt Lincoln’s great saying, Democracy cannot exist half in luxury and half in wretchedness. Democracy is not so sure of her step today; she is betrayed in several European countries and threatened in others. The thoughts of many of our fellow-citizens, and especially our foreign-born, must sometimes be rather cynical when we glorify our brotherhood and democracy. The ugly spots, the districts where our unfortunate live and die, must be our care if we are true to ourselves and our national creed. I believe the best beginning of wise and scientific and brotherly care for the unfortunates in the unfortunate districts can be made through the community house.

Source: National Conference on Social Welfare Proceedings On-Line. The web site for this resource is:  http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

The proceedings of annual meetings of the NCSW, 1874-1983, are available on the web thanks to a digitization project undertaken by the University of Michigan Library, with assistance from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota.  The web site for this resource is: http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

Forrester B. Washington, Director of Negro Work, Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Washington, D.C.

A Presentation Given at the 61st Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare, Kansas City, Missouri, May 20-26, 1934

NEGRO’S EFFORTS TO HELP HIMSELF FUTILE

The Negro of the masses, in trying to escape from the dilemma which faces him, is doing many things that are obviously futile and some that would be fantastic and ridiculous if they were not so tragic. It must be borne in mind, however, that he is desperate, and that he is in the position of a drowning man who clutches at even a straw.

Some Negroes are joining religious movements which are new to them, in the vain hope that a new type of church affiliation will help them improve their economic plight. Perhaps the most interesting example of this attempted strategy is the increasing number of Negro Protestants who have joined the Roman Catholic church during the last three years.

The Negro is also attempting to improve his economic status by changing his politics. It is generally known that there was a large trek of Negroes from the Republican to the Democratic party at the last election; but it is not generally known that black voters were beginning to switch their party allegiance in elections two or three years before this. They had become disappointed in the Republican party as a solution for their economic problems as they had been disappointed in the Protestant church. More Negroes than ever before supported the Socialist party at the last election, although this affiliation was confined to leaders rather than to the proletariat.

A growing number of Negroes are turning toward communism, especially in northern cities, and a much larger number would probably be found associated with this movement in southern cities if it were not for the ruthless methods by which southern authorities suppress communisitic activities. Negroes of the masses do not know any more about ideology of communism than the common man knows about the theory of relativity, but they do know that the communist party advocates economic equality whether they obtain it for the Negro or not. Undoubtedly, this is disturbing to those who believe in the American form of government, and, undoubtedly, the Negro prefers the American type of government; but the attitude of many Negroes can be summed up in Lord Byron’s famous expression: “What care I how fair she be, if she be not fair to me?” In other words, the Negro takes the position that it does not make any difference to him how ideal the government of the United States may be if that idealism is not applied to him.

Moreover, in addition to changing his religion and his politics, a certain element of Negroes, out of the pressure of job displacement, are changing their “color,” and a large number of Negroes who at former censuses had allowed themselves to be counted as “colored” took advantage of their extreme light complexion for the first time at the I930 census and chose to have themselves classified as “white.”

But all this is practically futile. The Negro cannot lift himself by his bootstraps. The cards are stacked against him.

DIFFERENCE OF OPINION REGARDING FAIRNESS TO NEGROES

There are two schools of opinion as to what the F.E.R.A. has meant to the Negro. To the average white person it appears that the Negro has obtained more than his share of government support; that the F.E.R.A. has leaned over backward in aiding the Negro. On the other hand, the majority of Negroes, and many white sympathizers, claim that this is only a superficial observation; that while the relief administration has carried an inordinately large number of Negroes on its direct relief rolls and on the rolls of the unskilled phases of its work program, it has seriously neglected all Negroes above the lowest socio-economic class.

Complaints in the form of sworn affidavits sent to my office in reference to conditions in the capital city of a certain commonwealth state:

“We have not one representative on the clerical force of any of the C.W.A. projects, and only one as foreman on a paint project. There are now employed in the city on C.W.A. projects 167 carpenters of which number only six are colored, whereas, there are in the city 50 colored carpenters and carpenter foremen who are in destitute circumstances and burdened with families.

“We have registered and have been waiting for months for calls to service and when we call to find out when to go to work we are told “There is no place for people of your type!”

From another capital city in the North with a Negro population of almost  150,000, which constitutes 27 per cent of the total population, have come repeated complaints of Negro civic organizations that the placement of “white-collar” workers has been confined almost wholly to colored projects. This has resulted in colored persons obtaining less than 5 per cent of the white-collar positions. These organizations also complained that it was a policy to confine the placement of colored workers in industry to the unskilled occupations.

Another letter from a Negro organization in a city with one of the largest Negro populations in the country calls attention to the fact that more than twenty-five school buildings are being erected using C.W.A. labor and that not one of them-not even the one which is attended by 98 per cent colored pupils-is using a single skilled colored laborer.

In other words, taking the country as a whole, very few skilled Negro mechanics or Negroes of the professional classes, or Negroes of the clerical classes, were provided with employment. The truth lies somewhere between the two extremes of opinion -one which maintains that the Negro is obtaining more than his share of public relief and the other which maintains that only one element of the Negro group is being aided.

The legislation which created the F.E.R.A. specifically stated that there should be no discrimination as regards race. The F.E. R.A., itself, in its policies and pronunciamentoes has taken more than a negative stand in the matter. In fact, in work bulletins issued by the National Office, it has been specifically stated that there should be no such discrimination. On the other hand, there is no question that in many local communities-in fact, in the average local community-there has been discrimination ranging from that which might be called slight to that which amounted practically to criminal malfeasance in office. It is, of course, not much consolation to a Negro white-collar worker in a local community to know that the national office of the F.E. R.A. is opposed to discrimination if he or she is unable to obtain a white-collar job in his local community because he is a Negro.

Therefore, summing the matter up, the situation seems to be that while the Negro has bulked large on relief rolls of the F.E.R.A., he has bulked large in direct relief and in the unskilled phases of work relief.

RELIEF ADMINISTRATION A GODSEND TO NEGRO

But, on the other hand, it must be recognized that, in spite of its shortcomings locally, and in spite of the fact that it has meant very little, taking the country as a whole, with one exception, to the skilled Negro mechanics, the Negro technician, the Negro of the profession, and the Negro business man, the F.E.R.A. has been a godsend to the Negro of the masses.

Before I discuss what it has meant to the Negro of the masses, I wish to make clear the one exception in the technical classes to which I referred. I have in mind the large number of college trained Negro men and women who have been hired by the various state and local relief administrations as case workers and case work aides. Previous to the establishment of the F.E.R.A. there were a little less than three hundred paid Negro case workers in the country; today a conservative estimate puts the figure at something over three thousand. An increase in the employment of Negroes of I,ooo per cent in one skilled occupation cannot be overlooked or sneered at.

I have said that the F.E.R.A. has been a godsend to the Negro of the masses. Without it he could hardly have survived. It even brought to some Negroes a standard of living superior to that to which they had been accustomed before the depression. In some communities the minimum budget for food and necessities exceeds their previous highest wages. It is a curious commentary on industrial conditions in the South that at the height of prosperity many Negroes never earned as much or ate as well as is the case under relief-and no fair-minded person claims that relief budgets have been extravagant anywhere in the South. The rural rehabilitation program of the F.E.R.A. is the first ray of hope that thousands of Negro share croppers and tenant farmers have seen in decades. It must not be forgotten that under the C.W.A. more was done for Negro schools than any state has ever done. The C.W.A. opened schools for rural Negroes at a rate known equal only to that of the Rosenwald Fund in the old days.

Moreover, the adult illiteracy classes which were set up under C.W.A. auspices in many sections have brought a new outlook on life to thousands of Negroes, especially in the South. A letter addressed to President Roosevelt and referred by one of his secretaries to my office within the last few days with reference to an adult illiteracy school maintained by the F.E.R.A. in a certain southern state reads:

“The Adult School here is the grandest thing that has ever happened since the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There have been many old white haired grown up colored people made proud after learning to read and write. After knowing that they were eager to learn I put forth every moment I had to help them, working over time day and night. There were some that could not attend day school so they would come at night.

“This work has been a joy of my life to help my own people and really give service. And the adults are asking if the school will continue next fall. Please.

“I am enclosing letters from some of my adult students from the age of fifty-three up. They could not write their names when we opened last November; could not even count five. And now you see how well they are getting along. They asked me to send these letters to you that you may know they appreciate what is being done for them.

“May God bless you and family.”

Let me make my point of view on this situation clear. I believe the advantages to the Negro of the F.E.R.A. program far outweigh all the suffering growing out of irregularities in local administration and the totality of the injustices.

We must remember that the.F.E.R.A. was an emergency organization developed almost overnight. Its personnel was practically drafted. Results had to be obtained in a hurry. Under such circumstances the F.E.R.A. could not be expected to change instantaneously the mores of whole sections of the country which the government itself has been unable to change during the seventy years since emancipation-even during times when conditions were normal.

MODIFIED CENTRALIZED CONTROL HIS ONLY HOPE

About the only source to which the Negro can look for real aid today is the United States government. Experience has shown that local authorities cannot be trusted to administer equably government funds in many sections of the country so far as Negroes are concerned. I am satisfied that the national administration is eminently fair and wants to reach out and see the benefits of its recovery program extended to every citizen, but this ideal is neutralized in many local communities. On the other hand, one does not need to argue for complete centralized control by the federal government, but rather for a degree of protection for a group which experience has proved suffers at the hands of local administrators. Some definite and vigorous precaution should be taken to prevent the perversion of the intentions of the federal government. The Negro of the masses feels this keenly, as is evidenced by the thousands of letters he is now writing to the national headquarters of the government in Washington and particularly to the President, whom many of them have come to look upon as a sort of “great white father.”

There was something more than humor in the case of the Negro farmer, Sylvester Harris of Mississippi, who got through a long-distance call to President Roosevelt. Fundamentally, it was an expression of the lack of faith in the possibility of getting a square deal locally and an indication that the Negro has learned to complain and believes his chief hope is in the federal government.

This feeling on the part of the Negro that he needs more protection from the national government is not confined to the Negro masses. In a speech at the twenty-eighth anniversary of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the oldest and largest Negro College Fraternity in the country, on December 28, I933, Rayford W. Logan, distinguished Negro historian and professor at Atlanta University, made the following statement:

“It was the national government that freed the great masses of Negro slaves. It is the state governments that have allowed them to remain in peonage. It was the national government that gave the freedmen the right to vote. It is the state governments that have curtailed those rights. It is the national government that gives employment to thousands of Negroes. It is the state and municipal government that refuses to give them that employment in the South. Count, for example, the hundreds of Negro mail carriers against the total absence of state employees in even a liberal Southern state like Virginia. It is the national government that pays Negroes equal salarieswith many limitations of advancement, it is true. Let the mail carriers again serve as an example-colored mail carriers are paid the same salaries as whites, while Negro school teachers almost universally in the South receive a much lower wage than do white school teachers. The Second Morrill Act requires States with separate land grant schools to make equitable appropriations for Negroes whereas the iniquitous allocation of Southern state funds through the counties is a shame that stinks to heaven-and I use those words advisedly.”

RECOMMENDATIONS

It is imperative that the following seven remedial measures be undertaken to change the situation:

First, the President, or some public power almost as important, must impress upon the employing class, both in the North and in the South, that they are committing not only a social injustice but a civic blunder in deliberately throwing the support of the Negro labor on the relief arm of the federal government. I think this same power should be brought to bear-and for the same reasons-upon certain local political officeholders who have used their legislative or executive power or the influence of their position to encourage the discharge of Negro labor. Again I think some sort of federal curb should be placed upon certain private organizations who for the last six or seven years have been definitely organized for the purpose of ousting Negroes from industrial employment.

Incidentally, I think that it is as much a function of the relief arm of the national and state governments to diagnose those general evils within the business and industrial life of the nation which have caused unemployment and the pathological consequences of unemployment as it is to administer relief, and to bring to the attention of the President and Congress, for remedial treatment, these underlying evils which have been discovered.

Second, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration must so integrate the Negro into its work program that it will preserve the industrial stability and morale of Negro labor which private industry is destroying.

Third, the F.E.R.A. should put at the disposal of the Negro group the full benefits of its self-help program in order that cooperatives and government subsidized industries may be developed in Negro communities.

Fourth, organized labor should be compelled to remove the bans that are set up against Negro membership in the worthwhile crafts unions, or these unions should not be allowed to have any preferential treatment from the N.R.A., the P.W.A., or any other agency which, expends funds of the federal government.

Fifth, that Negroes be placed on all committees having to do with the distribution of government funds intended for the rehabilitation of victims of the unemployment crisis. This is the only satisfactory means to guarantee equitable distribution of these funds to Negroes.

Sixth, that colored workers be used throughout the relief organization in communities where there is a considerable Negro population. This will further insure equitable distribution of government funds in local communities and, incidentally, is the only effective way to reduce Negro case loads where there happen to be Negroes who are taking advantage of the relief organizations, for Negro case workers can locate resources, relatives, etc., of whom white investigators would know nothing.

Seventh, special efforts should be made by the federal government at Washington to insure that the right kind of administrators are appointed in various local communities. This could best be obtained if the national heads of every department of the recovery program would see to it that their state administrators are sound on race. These state administrators can do more than anyone else to put a stop to the exploitation of Negroes in local communities. There would not be much of a problem if local authorities were persons of fairness and vision. The best way to obtain this type of local authority is for the centralized government to see that state administrators are persons of fairness and vision.

Thus, while there would not be, strictly speaking, centralized control, it would exist in a modified form, and I make no apology for advocating such moderate and modernized, centralized control, because, as I have already said, it is the only way that the Negro can be guaranteed a fair chance for rehabilitation now, during the depression, and in the future.

Source: National Conference on Social Welfare Proceedings On-Line. The web site for this resource is:  http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

The proceedings of annual meetings of the NCSW, 1874-1983, are available on the web thanks to a digitization project undertaken by the University of Michigan Library, with assistance from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota.  The web site for this resource is: http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

Forrester B. Washington, Director of Negro Work, Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Washington, D.C.

A Presentation Given at the 61st Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare, Kansas City, Missouri, May 20-26, 1934

The most striking fact in connection with the Negro and relief is that the Negro bulks on the rolls of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration all out of proportion to his numbers in the general population, both in the country as a whole and in practically all of the states. A survey made by the F.E.R.A. last October (1933) showed that Negroes constituted 18.4 per cent of all families on the relief rolls, while in 1930 the census showed that they constituted only 9.4 per cent of the entire population.

This is due largely to factors which can be controlled, but which are not in the control of the Negro; for instance, in the South many plantation owners have deliberately placed the Negro on the relief rolls during the “lay-off” season when plowing, chopping, and cotton-picking were over, and in the North, as well as the South, manufacturing concerns have forced him on the relief rolls by instituting color bans, either in the open or under cover, when they think public opinion is opposed to the employment of Negro labor, while white men and women are out of work. Thus, the United States government has become a subsidizer for southern and northern, rural and urban, employers of Negro labor during off-seasons in industry.

This practice of the displacement of Negro labor by white labor began even before the depression. The Negro felt its effect as early as 1927. From the very beginning it has been stimulated by outside forces. For instance, an organization called the Blue Shirts was set up in Jacksonville, Florida, about 1926 for the express purpose of replacing Negroes in employment with white men. An organization called the Black Shirts was formed at Atlanta, Georgia, late in 1927 for the same purpose. The  Black Shirts, whose regalia consisted chiefly of black shirts and black neckties, published a daily newspaper. They frequently held night parades in which were carried such signs as “Employ white man and let ‘Niggers’ go”; “Thousands of white families are starving to death-what is the reason?”; and “Send ‘Niggers’ back to the farms.”

Dishonesty and dissension within their own ranks put the Blue Shirts and the Black Shirts per se out of existence, but their purposes and policies have been perpetuated by new organizations who picked up where they left off. Public officials have made public statements urging the displacement of colored labor, immediately preceding and during the period of the depression. For instance, the mayor of a certain Virginia City said, “I will employ as few Negroes as possible on public works,” and added, “Private business should take the hint.” Again the secretary of agriculture of a certain state, who is now its governor, stated, “It is a shame that Negroes are employed in the hotels of the capital city and other cities when there are so many young white people unemployed.”

Public ordinances have been successfully urged by white politicians in such cities as West Palm Beach, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, restricting the use of Negro labor. Moreover, organized white labor, directly and indirectly, because of its insistence upon, and relative success in, dictating that only union members shall be employed under the recovery program, is an accessory in forcing the Negro on relief rolls, because so many of the important international crafts unions or locals thereof have bans against Negro membership.

The fourth factor in forcing Negroes upon relief rolls has been the inequitable local administration of certain departments of the government’s own recovery program, particularly in the rural South. For instance, in a recent report submitted to the secretary of one of the major departments of the government by an investigator, the following statements were made:

“One of the most striking difficulties encountered by Negro farmers in the South has been incident to the securing of credit. The Farm Credit Administration has not corrected this situation. In many instances, responsible persons working in the program for the agricultural development of the state showed me farms upon which Negroes had been unable to obtain a reasonable loan. In Jones County, for example, the tendency was to grant loans to colored farmers, but to limit the size of the loan to such an amount as to make it useless for the borrower to accept the offer. A Negro farm owner in the same county asked for $3,ooo on I20 acres. He was given $800. A white neighbor across the road from him received $900 on 30 acres. The nature and state of repairs of the buildings were about the same in both instances. Again a Negro farmer who applied for $i,ooo was offered $250. Appraisers for the Federal Farm Credit Administration have been most unsympathetic in their treatment throughout the state of colored farmers, and needless to say there are many cases in which colored farm owners are losing their property because of their inability to meet their obligations.”

Let me explain how the cotton-acreage reduction plan has been administered locally in such a way as to throw thousands of Negro rural families on relief. The cultivation of cotton gives rise to the employment of more Negroes than the production of any other commodity. Only about 12 per cent of the Negro farmers are owners in the cotton states. The great bulks are either share tenants, share croppers, or farm laborers. The chief benefits of the cotton-acreage plan goes to the owners and cash tenants. The direct payments are made to them.

Altogether too large a proportion of the owners are taking advantage of the reduction plan to exploit the share cropper and share tenants. First, they have not kept their promise to maintain the same number of families on their farms after the reduction as before; second, where they have not actually displaced families, they have given them only shelter and fuel and have failed to provide that one thing which is basic to the existence of the share cropper or share tenant, that is, a contract whereby he can produce a crop. Without such a contract, which provides seeds, subsistence, and equipment, there can be no income, and the helpless sharecropper has no certain means of supplying himself and his family with food and clothing.

In many cases the tenant farmers have not received the full amount specified by the I933 cotton plow-up contract. Landlords have been allowed to take advantage of certain confusion in classification of types of tenants in the I934 contract and have, contrary to the law, reduced the status of their share tenants to that of share croppers. This allowed the landlords to receive the full payments from the acreage-reduction plan without having to share with his tenants. Moreover, when landlords did pay tenants a share, in many cases, the latter have not received the full amount specified by the I933 contract.

While the type of landlords to whom reference has been made are exploiting both white and black share croppers, they are exploiting the Negro most because they have less to fear from him and from public sentiment.

A large section of the plantation-owning class believes that the prosperity of their group is dependent on the maintenance of what might best be described as “serf labor.” Naturally this section of the plantation-owning class will be opposed to the extension to that serf labor of political rights, equal educational opportunities, justice before the law, and the like. Clark Foreman, adviser on Negro affairs in the Department of the Interior, in an article published in Opportunity last month says:

“Down-trodden and terrorized into peonage by those who claim that “white supremacy” must be insured by such measures, the majority of rural Negroes are confined to abject servitude and hopeless poverty. Time and time again it has been publicly stated by spokesmen of the exploiting land owners that the only way to treat a Negro is to work him as hard as possible and give him just enough to live on. The economic advantage to the landlord of such a precept is obvious.”

These local abuses in the administration of federal aid to the Negro farmer did not begin with the initiation of the recovery program. They existed in connection with the federal farm-relief measures inaugurated during the Hoover administration.

The following statement is quoted from a picture of the situation prior to the New Deal presented at a Conference on the Economic Status of the Negro, held under the auspices of the Rosenwald Fund at Washington last May:

“The feed, seed and fertilizer loans have been variously administered. Although in a few black areas the tenants received and spent their loans according to the intent of the law, the planters often got control of the tenants’ checks. As a matter of fact, the landlord virtually forces the tenant to deliver  the check to him; the landlord explains to the tenant that he will not waive his rent to the government-one of the requirements for the loan-unless the tenant agrees to bring the check to him when it comes. When the check came it was delivered to the landlord and the latter often took the money and deposited it to his own account, issuing cash back to the tenant as he felt the tenant needed it. For this service the planter usually charged eight per cent interest. “Thus, the tenant pays double interest-six per cent to the government for the money and an additional eight per cent to the planter for keeping it for him.” This practice is common in the upper part of the Georgia Black Belt.”

Of course, white share croppers and share tenants suffered too, but the difference between their situation and that of the Negro was that whatever effective protest there was against this exploitation was available, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, only to the white share croppers and share tenants. They had the strongest weapon of defense, namely, the ballot, which in a majority of southern communities the Negro did not possess. A voteless people cannot bring much pressure to bear and conversely are not to be feared.

But this back-fire against the Negro of local application of various divisions of the government’s recovery program has not been confined to the agricultural division.

The imposition of the N.R.A. codes has resulted in the discharge and forcing on relief of many Negro workers. Southern manufacturers, particularly, have put up a stubborn fight to pay the Negro a lower wage than the codes provided, and where they have been unable to accomplish their purpose they have, in many cases, discharged Negro employees rather than pay the same wages someone else was paying whites. It was more a blind allegiance to the mores than anything else, because if they could not have afforded to pay the wages demanded by the codes, they would have closed their shops. It was simply part of the southern tradition not to pay Negroes the same wages as whites, and so they took on whites.

Many of the occupations had been held traditionally by Negroes, hence the employers had no factual basis for concluding that white labor would be more efficient than black in the particular trades in question. In fact, there were instances in which the white labor proved so unsatisfactory that the employers turned back to Negro labor.

Perhaps I have dwelt at too great a length upon conditions in the South. I have done so, however, only because the great mass of Negroes still reside in the South-and especially in the rural South. But, I do not wish to give the impression that the North is guiltless in disfranchising the Negro in industry and forcing the race to become in large numbers clients of the relief organizations.

In industrial and commercial centers throughout the North, the Negro has been (and is being) displaced by whites in jobs which he has held traditionally. If space permitted I could insert a long list of occupations in northern cities in which pale faces have been substituted for black ones.

It does not destroy the validity of the argument if these displacements do not always take place in the large concerns. The aggregate effect of the displacement, in thousands of small businesses, of Negro elevator operators, waiters and waitresses, porters, bellmen, hotel maids, teamsters, and the like is just as serious as if the same number had been displaced in a few industries which are large employers of Negro labor. An individual Negro is just as much a financial charge upon the relief organization whether he was a car-washer in a small garage or a carmaker in a great Detroit automobile factory.

For instance, the significance of the displacement of Negro domestics in northern cities must not be overlooked. Whites are being “taken on” in large numbers in positions formerly held by Negro household workers. If anyone doubts this-all he or she has to do for confirmation-is to compare the “want ads.” columns of any northern newspaper of seven years back with those of the same paper today. The great increase in advertisements today which ask for white domestics, as compared with a few years ago, will, I am sure, be surprising.

I think I ought to make the observation that some of the larger northern firms are “canny” and retain a mere handful out of a formerly large Negro force, so that it cannot be said (theoretically) that they have instituted a color ban. But, practically, the effect is the same. What difference does it make if ninety-eight or a hundred out of a hundred Negro workmen are replaced by whites? The fact remains that the racial policy of the company has changed and that the 98 per cent of the Negro employees will soon be on the relief rolls.

And so the Negro finds himself, in his endeavor to maintain some semblance of a status in industry in America, caught between the two horns of a dilemma-the employer on one side and organized labor on the other.

All these various factors which have been cited have operated not only to make him the worst victim of the depression, but they have also operated, as was stated at the outset, to throw him on the relief rolls of the government in numbers all out of proportion to his numbers in the general population.

DANGERS INVOLVED IN THIS SITUATION

There are potential dangers involved in this situation. First, there is the danger of making the Negro, as a race, a chronic dependent and forcing upon the Federal Emergency Relief Administration a fourth major problem, that is, Negro relief, in addition to the three it now recognizes as basic, namely, the care of distressed rural families, the unemployed of the cities, and stranded populations; and, second, there is the danger of developing racial friction through creating resentment on the part of the majority public against the presence of so many Negroes on the relief rolls. Already community-chest executives in certain cities have stated that they are averse to the publication of data touching on the number of Negroes on relief rolls because, in spite of the fact that community-chest agencies are not carrying Negroes on relief, nevertheless, certain of their large contributors have indicated an intention to discontinue their contributions if so many Negroes continue to be supported on relief.

Even some employees of various local relief administrations are becoming emotional and “jittery” on the subject, and in their exasperation are beginning to blame the Negroes themselves for their presence in large numbers on relief rolls. These social workers have become blinded by the masses of Negroes to the underlying factors which are forcing them on the relief organizations. They are predisposed to allow one or two examples of Negro “chiseling” to convince them that the great mass of Negroes are “chiselers.” They use this assumption as a justification in proceeding to solve the problem by arbitrarily reducing Negro case loads.

These arbitrary methods of reducing the preponderance of Negroes on the relief rolls do not by any means solve the problem. The process does get the Negroes off the rolls, but it does not get them employment. In fact, it makes criminals out of many of them and the communities simply have to take care of them in correctional institutions instead of taking care of them as relief cases. This exchange in the method of caring for the Negro is stupid because it substitutes for a possible program of rehabilitation at public expense a program of demoralization also at public expense and at an expense which is considerably more costly.

The loss of employment and the consequent reduction in income of the Negro has reflected itself throughout his entire socio-economic structure.

A large amount of the progress the Negro has made, especially as a result of his migration to the industrial centers during and after the World War, has been lost. He no longer has a secure place in industry, he is losing the decent housing he had acquired for himself; his death-rate, which had been declining, is now rising, and he has seen crime within his group increase. His forward movement in education has been-at least temporarily -checked, as many of his schools and colleges have been forced to close.

The first real advance he has made in business has been all but swept away, and, in general, his community and family life has become seriously disorganized.

Therefore, as has already been stated, the Negro has massed very largely on the relief rolls as a result of the depression. He massed on these rolls before the F.E.R.A. was set up, when unemployment relief was administered by the local communities or states exclusively, which proves that his present massing on the F.E.R.A. rolls is due to conditions other than the attractiveness of public over private relief. The fact is that the Negro was hit so much harder than any other group in the country by the depression and the economic conditions immediately preceding it that he would have massed large on any relief rolls, whether public or private, federal or local.

It is interesting, on the other hand, to recall that previous to the depression the number of Negroes on the rolls of relief agencies was less than their proportion of the general population in the majority of communities. The standard of their living and working conditions may have been lower than that of any other group in the community, but they cared for themselves, and only extreme necessity forced them to seek organized, private, or public charity. But it is possible by sheer attrition to convert a group that has not been seekers of charity into professional mendicants.

(Note:  This presentation continues in THE NEGRO AND RELIEF: Part II)

Source: National Conference on Social Welfare Proceedings On-Line. The web site for this resource is:  http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

The proceedings of annual meetings of the NCSW, 1874-1983, are available on the web thanks to a digitization project undertaken by the University of Michigan Library, with assistance from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota.  The web site for this resource is: http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

and Director of the National Urban League

Born in Newport News in 1897, he was a graduate of Dartmouth College and took postgraduate work at New York University and studied at the New York School of Social Work His career in social work began in 1922 as an extension worker in Bordentown. He also at one time was secretary on negro welfare of the Welfare Council of New York City.

He joined the National Urban League’s workers educational section from 1934 to 1938, served as assistant executive secretary in 1940-1941 and as executive director from 1941 to 1961. Mr. Granger had been a member of the President’s Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Arm Forces and of the Federal Advisory Council on Employment Security, serving at one time as its chairman. (Note: Lester Granger gave a presentation on Community Organizations  at the 1947 meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare.  To read it go to: Social Work: Community Organization Process.)

He had been a special consultant to Navy Secretaries James V. Forrestal and Charles S. Thomas and was instrumental in drawing up the Navy’s post-World War II integration program and later helping solve problems arising from the Navy’s abolishing segregation. For his contributions, Mr. Granger was awarded the Navy Medal for Distinguished Service and the President’s Medal for Merit.

He was the first black to serve as President of the National Conference of Social Welfare and the International Conference for Social Work. He also had been vice president of the American Association of Social Workers, honorary president of the International Council on Social Welfare and a member of the board of directors of the Council on Social Work Education. He was president of one of the seven organizations that merged to form NASW.

After retiring from the National Urban League, he served for a number of years as a visiting professor of sociology at Princeton, Loyola, Tulane and Dillard Universities.

Source: www.naswfoundation.org/pioneers/g/granger.htm

By Forrester B. Washington, Director, Atlanta School of Social Work

A Presentation Given at the 55th Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare,

Memphis, TN, May 2-9, 1928 (pp.466-478)

My paper is a continuation of the discussion introduced by Mr. Thomas. He has discussed the changed economic conditions in the South with reference to the replacement of Negroes in industry by white working men and women even in those occupations which have been considered as belonging to the Negro by tradition. He has also discussed two outstanding social problems affected by the changed economic conditions, namely, housing and recreation.

The problems which I will discuss are health, education, delinquency, crime and family disorganization. They follow logically those discussed by Mr. Thomas. In addition, I will attempt to summarize his paper and my own and present our combined recommendations.

It is not an easy task to prove by statistics that the changed economic conditions have affected the Negro’s living standards. The usual sources of statistics for the subject under discussion are social agencies, governmental bureaus such as state and municipal boards of health, the courts, and the like. However, because one cannot obtain a great mass of statistics that will throw light on the situation is no reason why discussion should not be given to as important a subject as this. While we cannot point out definite social changes, we can point out trends.

If we refrain from doing anything about the sociological trends growing out of the changed economic conditions until cases have begun to accumulate in large numbers with family societies, courts, and other remedial and correctional agencies, conditions will necessarily have become acute, and perhaps chronic. The purpose, then, of this paper is to use what data we have to point out tendencies so that we may nip these developing social problems in the bud and thus prevent conditions from becoming acute and chronic. There are a number of organizations and individuals which are not found in the category in which we usually look for social welfare statistics whose recent experiences may be of considerable value in determining just what is happening.

Health: The Negro’s health in the South is not as good today as it has been in recent years. According to figures given by the Georgia State Board of Health to the Atlanta Tuberculosis Association, “The death rate among whites in Fulton County seems to be falling, but there are more deaths being recorded among Negroes.”

A prominent Atlanta doctor who is an official of the National (Negro) Medical Association states that there has been a considerable increase in sickness among Negroes in Georgia during the last six months over the same period last year. He says, however, that Negro doctors are unable to collect pay for treatment. He also states that as a result of this situation a number of colored doctors now in the South are planning to leave that section as soon as possible for the North, where they think the Negro is enjoying a better financial income and the industrial situation of the race is more stable. He further says that he has begun to notice another situation which he believes will have serious consequences. He has noticed that many Negroes are sending for the doctor only as a last resort, because they have not the money to pay him. He cites the case of a woman whose relatives called him in recently at midnight when she was seized with an acute and painful illness. He ordered her to remain in bed for several days and left a prescription to be filled. When he called the next morning he was told that she had gone to work and had left a message to the effect that jobs were so scarce for colored people in Atlanta that she had felt compelled to go to work to hold her job.

The Gray Clinic of Grady Hospital, Atlanta, reports that during the first five months of I927 there were I,IO9 colored bed patients, but during the first four months of I928 these had increased to I,153; that this increase has taken place during the most recent months; and that if the Negro cases increase at the rate of April admissions the situation will be very serious. This situation is not due to the old myth that the Negro is inherently unhealthy, for up to the last three years the Negro mortality and morbidity rate in southern cities had been decreasing. It is safe to conclude that this impairment of Negro health has been due to the changed economic conditions, for they are the only social factors which have not remained stationary. There have been no epidemics, no great changes in the type of Negro population, no decrease in public health facilities and public health education for Negroes. The real trouble is that the forced unemployment of Negroes through their replacement by white men has cut off the Negro’s income, and he is consequently unable properly to nourish his family.

It has been shown by a study made for the University of Georgia that the Negro in Georgia spends io per cent of his income on food. With the high cost of housing, clothing, etc., he cannot afford more. Add to the limited amount of food its inferior quality and lack of variety, and (because the woman must work) the hastily prepared and irregular meals, and you have a fruitful cause of ill health. Washerwomen often begin early in the morning and do not eat breakfast until noon. They often leave home before breakfast without feeding their children, and the latter eat what is left over from the day before. The Negro is unable to pay now for medical and dental care when necessary. He has always been unable to get credit at drug stores, and there is not enough aggregate capital to provide their own drug stores in many communities; therefore the obtaining of medicine during times of illness is always difficult. He is unable to continue to provide from his own pocket in a group way those health facilities denied him because of race, such as private hospitals and the like.

As Mr. Edwin R. Embree, president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, says in Modern Hospital for April, I928, “The Negroes are still lacking in individual or corporate control of capital.” A small number of Negroes, becoming prosperous are subscribing probably beyond the average in America to various aspects of social welfare, including hospitals; but relatively speaking there is little money in Negro hands. Furthermore, tax funds are still almost exclusively controlled by white groups. With few exceptions small sums indeed have gone from government sources to hospitals. This situation will be corrected as colored people get increasing wealth. A list recently compiled by the National (Negro) Hospital Association reports approximately two hundred institutions throughout the entire country, including regular hospitals, infirmaries, and sanitoriums, taking into account institutions supported by public authorities, by fraternal organizations, and private endowment or subscription or as the personal projects of individual physicians or other groups of physicians. While the total figure is sufficiently small, the picture is not seen at all until the conditions of most of these hospitals are kept in mind. Only nine of these hospitals are on the accredited list of the American Medical Association as proper institutions for the training of internes, and only fifteen are on the list of the American College of Surgeons as having adequate minimum hospital standards. This means that less than twenty hospitals for Negroes exist in the entire country that are of acceptable minimum American standards. Fortunately, several of the acceptable hospitals that are available for Negroes are of excellent quality. They stand out as beacons toward which Negro hospitalization as a whole is struggling. As poor as the Negro hospitals are, yet, according to Mr. Embree, “Most of these have been provided by the Negro’s own effort.” Now, by the taking away of the means of the Negro’s earning a decent wage, the source for the establishment of even these second rate hospitals is destroyed. Nothing that I have said I wish construed to mean that I believe that hospitals provide all of the facilities needed for a well rounded program of health. I am mindful of the value of clinics for mothers and babies, public health facilities, protection of water and food, and war against human and animal carriers of disease. As Mr. Embree points out, the lack of hospital facilities, unfortunately, is simply typical of an equal lack in these very aggressive branches.

Education: The Negro’s educational standards have also been affected by the changed economic conditions. This is rather difficult to show statistically because for some time educational facilities for Negroes in the South, especially in the case of public schools, have been woefully inadequate. Duplicate, triplicate and even quadruplicate sessions are now common in many city schools. However, in spite of the long distance which some Negro children have to travel to attend school, and the necessary carfare involved, and the disagreeable conditions due to overcrowding in the rooms, Negro parents have persisted in sending their children to school. This too, in most cases, is in cities where there are so few attendance officers, in proportion to the number of Negro children, that they might fairly be considered as nonexistent. However, authorities now claim that the changed economic conditions have somewhat dampened the ardor of Negro parents, especially of the low wage earning class, for the education of their children, and that there is an increase in the number of children being withdrawn from school as soon as they reach working age. During the first six months of I928, according to Mrs. M. Agnes Jones, supervisor of Atlanta Negro Public Schools, there has been a marked increase in the number of children being taken out of school to go to work.

Mr. J. F. Lee, head of the Sunday school department of the C.M.E. Church and a prominent minister of Charlotte, North Carolina, reports that a number of his best parishioners have not only been forced to take their children out of high school and college, but have been forced to give up homes they were buying, and in some cases have actually left the community and gone North. Who can measure the effect upon the general level of intelligence of the race when those who would normally finish high school and college are being withdrawn from school.

Negroes are finding it increasingly difficult to provide from their own pockets in a group way these educational facilities which have been denied them through the separate school systems. As is well known, it is becoming the custom for philanthropists to give money to Negro educational institutions only in proportion as Negroes raise money themselves for the support of these institutions. The curtailment of the Negro’s earning power has affected his ability to match money granted in this way. Negro schools suffer not only a loss of money formerly contributed by Negroes but also money contributed from white sources that the Negro’s contribution would release. Morris Brown University and other institutions supported entirely by Negroes find it even more difficult than usual to raise funds. Morris Brown has been unable to pay some of its teachers at all this year, and none of them for all the year. This situation is particularly deplorable as it affects technical schools because it is only through this type of institution that the Negro can overcome the handicap imposed upon him in industry through denial of the opportunity of apprenticeship. If all but a few of the Negro industrial schools must languish and die, and if only a constantly diminishing number of Negroes can afford to attend them, then the Negro will retrogress more than ever in industry because he has no other way of acquiring skill and knowledge of the crafts.

Crime: There has been an increase in Negro crime and delinquency in the South during the past year. This situation is certainly not due to the old myth that Negroes are inherently criminal, because up to the past year statistics show that the Negroes’ crime rate in the South has been decreasing. The chief of police of Atlanta reports that the number of Negroes arraigned in court during the past twelve months from May 1, I927, to April 30, 1928, was 16,912, as compared with 15,596 white people. Here is a situation where more Negroes than whites were arraigned and tried in court in a community where the whites outnumber the Negroes 3 to 1. Moreover, the chief of police reports that while the number of both races being arraigned in court was on the increase, yet the rate of increase among Negroes during the past six months has been greater than that among whites. It can be due to nothing else but changed economic conditions, for there has been no other general disorganizing influence in the Negro communities. This point hardly requires any argument, for it is commonly known that when men and women, irrespective of race, are hungry and cold they will steal and commit other atypical acts to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families.

One of the ways in which people who are cut off from their jobs have been supporting themselves has been in the selling of whiskey. Mr. B. H. Townsely, who handles approximately 350 “rent houses” in Atlanta, reports that Negroes are selling liquor who have never been engaged in such traffic before. He says that one can walk down alleys whose Negro residents were always respectable though poor and smell whiskey from the outside of the houses. There is a Negro bootlegger in Atlanta who specializes in dealing with these poor families. He furnishes poor women out of work with liquor on credit. Once they have gotten started in business they are always able to pay him “spot cash.” It is upon this class of people who have not yet learned the technique of paying for protection, that the police prey, and this has a good deal to do with the increase of Negroes in the police court.

Another proof of the growing amount of crime among colored people is the situation in the juvenile court. The number of colored children tried during the first four months of 1926 was 1,o88, but during the first four months of 1927 the total number was 1,155. This is an increase of 67 colored children. On the other hand, during the first four months of 1926 the total number of white children was 1,097, but during the first four months of I927 it was, 0008. This is a decrease of 89 white children.

Family disorganization: The report of family welfare societies in a number of sections of the South shows an increase in desertion and other domestic relation cases among Negroes. The Family Welfare Society of Atlanta reports an increase in the intake of colored cases this spring of about Io per cent over the same period last year. Ordinarily the work becomes lighter in the spring. Moreover, the ratio of colored cases to white cases, new cases coming in, is 13 to 8 which is also a greater ratio than usual. This situation cannot be traced to low family standards of Negroes because until recently they had been improving. Here again the only social factor that has changed has been the economic situation. The Associated Charities of Memphis reports an increase in cases of family life where the fathers were formerly employed in the saw mills, furniture mills, and other industries and have been succeeded by white men. Family men of the low wage earning classes, white or black, when out of work, become discouraged and frequently desert. In the case of the Negro husband, his replacement by whites was frequently the “last straw.” His ties to his family had been under many previous strains. There had been first the irregular domestic conditions on the plantations from which many had come, and then the sudden movement from a rural to an urban environment which added to the general disturbance, and finally the discouraging struggle after arriving in the city to make a small salary meet the increased cost of living. A number of family societies report that they have had no increase in unemployment cases among Negroes because their increase has been in families where there are no men. Such cases should be considered in the light of the observations made previously. The underlying cause in many cases was really unemployment, for the men had deserted recently and the women were either ashamed to admit it or did not care to admit it because they felt they would be more apt to receive assistance if it was thought they had been deserted over a long period.

Colored women have always been compelled to work in large numbers because of the low wages of colored men. It has been estimated that about 76 per cent of the colored families of the South depend upon an income that is made up of the wages of several members of the family. Less than 24 per cent of the colored fathers of the South support their families without assistance from the mothers or other members. They cannot do it; it is a mathematical impossibility. Yet they are blamed for not supporting their own, and moreover industry is now turning more of them out of work and making the situation even more complicated. The replacement of colored working men by whites means a vast increase in this group of employed colored women. The prolonged absence of the latter from their homes, especially if they are mothers, results in all kinds of family disorganization, including neglected children, which in turn means truancy, juvenile delinquency, and the like.

Another index of the effect upon the Negro family of the replacement of colored working men by whites in industry is the experience of insurance companies. The head of the Conservation Department of the National Benefit Insurance Company, southern division, reports a io per cent increase this year in Negroes who have allowed their policies to lapse. Many letters written to the Conservation Department by policyholders whose premiums have lapsed state that they have lost their jobs to white men and hence cannot keep up their premiums.

Moreover, some of the other social problems caused by the changed economic conditions have a disorganizing effect on the Negro family. A restricted income compels families to live under even worse housing conditions than would have been their lot ordinarily. While there has always been an overcrowding among Negro city dwellers, yet with the increased unemployment two things are happening in regard to hou9ng. In some cases several families are thrown together to save rent. This means a mixing of the sexes, which results in family disorganization. In others single families are breaking up, the members distributing themselves among relatives in different sections of the city. This has proved equally unsatisfactory and the cause of family trouble. This situation is working a terrific hardship on the Negro race. It is bringing all Negroes to the same level, and unfortunately this level is a low one. The better element are leaving bad elements behind them in the country districts. In the present situation the better elements become bad themselves, in the course of time. Thus the process is one of leveling down. The head of the Georgia Baptist Association, who superintends 5,362 churches, claims he sees an increasing number of such families going to pieces, that conditions are much worse this year than they were last year. He claims that a pastor used to be at least one stabilizing influence among the people who came from the rural districts and settled down in semi-isolation. Now, because of the inability of these people to pay the pastors, many of the churches are closing and the people are without any wholesome community leadership whatever. This authority states that there is more desertion now than he has heard of in forty years. He states that these reports come from ministers.

One of the reasons why there were no strong ties on the married colored man during slavery time was that when marriage occurred it was not an economic marriage. Both the husband and wife belonged to the master. The man did not have to support the wife in the ordinary sense of the word. At least he did not have any direct obligation toward her. Even since slavery times a great mass of Negroes have been kept in the South in that relationship whereby they were only half responsible for the support of their families, the wife contributing the other half. They have never felt the entire responsibility of maintaining the home. This was no fault of their own either. They have never been allowed to earn enough to maintain the full support of the home. In recent years they have been gradually emerging from this situation, and part of this emerging has meant more home responsibility and stronger marriage ties. Miss Louisa De B. Fitz Simons, of the Georgia Study of Negro Child Welfare, maintains that one of the stabilizing influences in Negro family life is contact with “fine old white families.” In her study of a number of cases handled by her organization she finds that those Negro families which preserve the strongest family ties between husband and wife are those who have kept up the most permanent connection with the best type of white families. But is this a very sound basis on which to build family standards? Isn’t the matter of perpetuating family ties in such colored families a matter of imitation rather than responsibility?

I have seen whole sections of industrial centers like Detroit taken over by rural Negro laborers from the South and the homes built up and the finest kind of family life established because these men earned enough to allow their wives to stay at home rather than go out to work.

Summary:  It would appear from what has been said that although the Negro occupied a very undesirable social status in the South formerly, although he was relegated to the lowest paid jobs and the worst housing conditions, although he was denied access to wholesome recreational facilities and most of the social agencies for the promotion of happiness, decent family living, and adequate educational opportunities, yet, in spite of these handicaps, he was making improvement, and in many cases through his own efforts. Now comes this new economic situation which tends to set the Negro back to a status that is even worse than was his former lot. It not only takes away the few improvements in living standards that he had gained, but also takes away the opportunity and the means by which he had achieved these improvements. The Negro is the one race in America which has never been allowed a stable status. America seems to be continually playing battledore and shuttlecock with him. I realize that unemployment produces social problems in all races, and that unemployment is affecting the white races as well as the Negro in America today. However, it is the apparent hopelessness of the Negro’s situation which makes it differ from the whites. A white man can keep up some sort of morale and refrain from stealing or deserting and what not because he knows that he has a chance at whatever jobs there are. But the Negro soon discovers that in times of depression there are no jobs at all for him. There is a constant bogey of unemployment hanging over the Negro. It looks to me as if the employing class is using the Negro as a sort of reserve army which is only brought in when labor is scarce or to break strikes, but the difference is that a reserve army is paid and fed while this Negro who is used in times of strikes and great prosperity is left to shift for himself at other times.

Will the white people of the South continue to impose greater and greater strain on the social fabric of the Negro until it has been stretched to the breaking point and a rip takes place which will slough off into such pathological conditions as dependency, ill health, delinquency, family disorganization, and the like? Will the white man never be satisfied until he has crushed all that is elevating, all that is noble, all that is really worth while out of the Negro, leaving nothing but the open road to poverty, ill health, and general degradation? If this deterioration takes place, can we blame the Negro? Moreover, will the Negro be the only race which will lose as the result of changed economic conditions? Cannot the whites of the South also lose in several ways by destroying a source of labor which they may need again? Is it not possible that with the return of prosperity and the continued shift of the industrial center of America from the North to the South that the latter section will need the Negro again in industry because all of the available white labor will have been employed? Is it not possible, then, that the South will find that it has driven its Negro labor, or the best of it, out of the South, and that it has rendered that left behind inefficient by enforced idleness? I do not believe you can develop a sound democracy, certainly not an economic democracy, based upon a substratum of folks whom you employ irregularly, allowing them to deteriorate socially at other times.

Cannot the whites lose also in this replacement of Negro labor by the creation of social liabilities which they will have to take care of in one way or the other? Is it not more desirable to care for Negroes in the South by allowing them to work and support their own families, and even contribute something to the wealth and prosperity of the community, than to force them out of employment and oblige the state to support them in the correctional institutions which house thieves, prostitutes, and other delinquents? Is it not better to have the Negro maintain the health of himself and family through honest labor than for the state to support him and his family in hospitals and other health institutions?

Perhaps, as Professor Charles E. Merriam, of the University of Chicago, maintains, “Migration from farms to cities is inevitable and will continue to be tremendous, and cities of the next generation are going to be so large that we will have a change in the form of government, and you will see such new political units as the states of Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and the like. And the United States will be dominantly urban in the next generation; the combination of wealth and prestige will absolutely necessitate the rule of cities rather than of states.” So here is the colored brother caught up again in another maelstrom over which he has no control. Relieved by the war and such legislation as the Johnson Bill of the industrial competition of the foreign born immigrant, he saw a temporary ray of sunshine for a few years after the war in the cities of the North. Now the question arises, Is the Negro in the cities of the South going to meet another form of competition even more to be feared than the foreign born immigrant, namely, that of the native born white man who is shifting from the rural districts to the cities of the South? Over this new type of industrial competitor the Negro has no advantages, such as a knowledge of the language and the like.

This fact must be faced, namely, that the South cannot escape the responsibility of supporting the Negro in one way or the other. Failure to assume this responsibility will injure the white as much as the black. As has been stated many times before, disease cannot be segregated, and the Negro criminals do not prey on their own race alone. If the white people of the South deliberately develop a process that tends to deteriorate another race, the penalty is that at the same time they are creating a social menace to themselves.

Recommendations: I would recommend that the white people of the South refrain from dispossessing Negroes from the field of industry. During the present period of unemployment I do not think any fairminded colored man would object to jobs being allocated to the race according to its proportion in the population. In a number of cities of the South there are large public building operations going on, such as the two viaducts in Atlanta, where large numbers of laborers are employed. I think that social workers would be doing a much better piece of case work if they would direct their efforts at this time toward persuading public officials to employ Negroes in proportion to their numbers in the population on public works rather than to direct their efforts, as I have heard so many of them admit at the present conference, toward supplementing the budget of families of unemployed colored men.

Next, I would recommend that colored people pay more attention than ever to efficiency and regularity in employment; however, I do not agree with a large group of Negro leaders that this is the only solution, for I have talked with a number of employers who have frankly stated that in a number of processes where they had supplanted Negroes with white men they really believed the Negro was just as efficient, but that public opinion in the community, expressed sometimes in threats to raise taxes and at other times physically to interfere with their business, had forced them to employ their own color.

I would recommend to Negroes that they put greater emphasis on developing group economy among themselves. A race that invests as much money in fine churches and fraternal buildings as does the Negro should invest more in business and manufacturing, which would give employment to their own group. I have seen factories manned entirely by Negroes in the South. In Atlanta there is the Pioneer Garment Factory. There are silk textile mills at Fayetteville and Durham, North Carolina, which employ all Negroes, and there are a number of other such plants in the South. The whites who own these plants found they could make money by employing Negroes, who would work for less than white men. It seems to me that if white men can operate a plant manned by Negroes and make money because Negroes work cheaper than Caucasians, then Negroes ought to be able to operate such a plant themselves and make the profit for themselves; and more than that, when times of unemployment, such as we are facing now, develop, Negroes would have jobs for their  own kind. Since, as Mr. Thomas has said, white people are taking over even the least desirable of jobs in the South, such as street cleaning and garbage collecting, work which was traditionally supposed to belong to the Negro, it will not be long before they will be willing to work for as little as the Negro in these factories which are now manned entirely by Negroes. If the Negro Baptists can, as has been claimed, raise $3,500,000 in a year in their 37,000 congregations, they ought to be able to spare $1oo,ooo or even $500,000, to furnish the necessary capital for an industrial plant which would give employment to thousands of Negroes. Most of the few businesses that Negroes have gone into on a large scale have been successful. There are many Negro insurance companies which are giving employment to thousands of colored men and women throughout the country. And yet they are not the type of economic organizations I would urge as a final solution of the problem. They are parasitic in nature. In fact, most of the economic enterprises of the Negro are parasitic at the present time. They do not produce, but live off the wages of working Negroes. The thing that I am urging is the entrance of Negroes into manufacturing which is not parasitic but is primary and productive.

I would also recommend that the Negro give more thought to a “back to the farm” movement. Farming in the South is not necessarily a failure in itself. It is ignorant farming that is a failure. Authorities say that there never was a better time for Negroes to buy farms in the South than at present. White farmers have become discouraged at the yields from the farms which they have ignorantly cultivated and are leaving the rural districts for the cities. Negroes can buy farm land at a very low price which was never before available to them at any price. Under intelligent management, diversified crops, and cooperative marketing these farms can be made to produce a yearly profit. The capital needed by these farmers could be supplied by the same type of Negro organizations that I have indicated might finance manufacturing enterprises. I can see no reason why Negro fraternal organizations and the like cannot supply the capital that is necessary to form cooperative marketing organizations for farmers. To acquire ability to manage intelligently, to diversify crops, and to develop cooperation in production and marketing calls for better industrial schools for the Negro. The supervision Negro farmers are getting from the Negro workers under the Smith-Hughes Fund is an excellent service, but there is not enough of these men. Moreover, Negroes returning to the farm would need credit, and some arrangement would have to be made along these lines.

The most important person in the world is he who owns the land which produces the food of society. The Negro has produced a large proportion of the food of the South, but he has not the recognition that goes along with this fact and which would make him important because he has not owned the land on which the food was produced. Now is the time for the Negro to take advantage of the opportunity to attain this kind of power. There is no reason why the Negro could not develop the same type of strong agricultural cooperation as the Italian fruit growers of southern California. On these two points, the matter of business and manufacturing and a “back to the farm” movement, Dr. W. E. B. Dubois says, in an editorial in the Crisis of May, I928:

“There is to my mind only one way out: manufacturing and consumers’ cooperation among the major part of the 12,000,000 people on a wide and ever increasing scale. There must be the slow but carefully planned growth of manufacturing trusts. Beginning with the raising of raw material on Negro farms, extending to its transportation on Negro trucks, its manufacture in Negro factories, its distribution to Negro cooperative stores supported by intelligent and loyal Negro consumers. Such an organization is above and beyond race prejudice and trust competition. Once established on the basis of the English, Scandinavian, German, and Russian cooperatives, it would insure the economic independence of the American Negro for all time.

“Beside this could grow credit systems and cooperative banks which could bring the Negro American group into carefully articulated cooperation with the West Indies and South America, with West Africa and South Africa.

“It is more than idiotic, it is criminal, for American Negroes to stagger blindly on, hugging the fond illusion that white philanthropy through industrial education is going to furnish them with future employment and economic independence. It is equally idiotic to hope that white laborers will become broad enough or wise enough to make the cause of black labor their own. These things will never be done in our day. Our economic future lies in the hands of carefully trained thinkers, technical engineers, and the unswerving will to sacrifice on the part of intelligent masses.”

Conclusion:  I believe I can leave an optimistic note with you, and I am not saying this just because I think that it is a pleasant thing to do. Somehow I have great faith in a successful economic society; that is, a society where everyone is making a decent living. Certainly in this sort of society there is hope, and in it there exists the most harmonious race relations. The most harmonious race relations I have seen are where whites and blacks have been working together in industry, as for instance in the auto plants of Detroit or in the Stockyards of Chicago.

The old slave system in the South was an artificial and unnatural relationship. It was an accommodation adjustment. The numerically small aristocracy and the blacks were close together and got along without trouble through the master-slave arrangement. But Uncle Tom has gone to join old Massa. We look back on them reverently as representing a romantic era in American history. But I think every intelligent white person in the South, as well as every black person, realizes today that there is no more place in the program of the progressive advancing South for the slow, humble, servile, uninitiative Uncle Tom than there is for the feudal baron type of Old Massa. Let us hope they are both happy, one with banjo in some Elysian cotton field and the other being served mint julep on the porch of some celestial “big house.”

The great mass of whites of the South in slavery times and for some time after were out of touch with either class. It was inevitable that this arrangement could not exist permanently with the so called “poor whites” industrially  expatriated. It was inevitable that they would demand and could obtain expression in industry, politics, and in the life of society in general. This will only be worked out permanently in a situation where the great mass of whites and blacks of the South are gainfully employed together in industry. I firmly believe that this is coming through the industrial development of the South, especially when it has reached that point where the whites coming in from the rural districts cannot supply the needs of southern industry. I believe that this time is coming in the not far distant future. Then the Negro will fit into the industrial structure of the South as he did formerly and as he is at present fitting into the structure of the major industries of the North, except where unemployment has thrown both white and colored men out of work.

Source: National Conference on Social Welfare Proceedings On-Line. The web site for this resource is:  http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

The proceedings of annual meetings of the NCSW, 1874-1983, are available on the web thanks to a digitization project undertaken by the University of Michigan Library, with assistance from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota.  The web site for this resource is: http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

Mary E. Richmond, Director, Charity Organization Department,

Russell Sage Foundation, New York

A Presentation at the 44th Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare,

Pittsburgh, PA, June 6-13, 1917 (pp.112-114)

First of all, it would seem necessary for the social case worker to stake out his claim to the word social, for I find that some members of this year’s Conference are inclined to dispute it. They assert, for instance, that a recent book of mine should be called Individual Diagnosis because it is not and does not pretend to be a diagnosis of the ills of society. Well, in medicine a diagnosis describes disease as it appears in the individual organism; in botany it describes not the genus but the combination of points which are characteristic of the individual plant. When, therefore, we describe the social difficulties of a human being, as we more completely understand them through a study of his social relationships, it would be tautological to call the description “an individual diagnosis.” But it may well be distinguished from physical diagnosis on the one hand and from mental diagnosis on the other by calling it social diagnosis. There may be other uses of these two words in combination, but the use now rapidly being adopted by social case workers is both literal and sound.

It is true that the word social has many meanings. As it has been adopted in the usage of this Conference and is now incorporated into the Conference title, it has a meaning at once more inclusive and more exclusive than some who glibly use the word seem to realize. The criterion of the social, its indispensable element always, is the influence of mind upon mind. This influence may be exercised in a small group, such as the family, the kindred, or the other personal contacts of a given subject, or it may be the result of a loose-jointed but vital international fellowship. Many things termed social lack this essential  element utterly because there is no mental interaction within the group. The dependent classes, about which we have heard so much in these conferences, are not a social group at all, nor is any other arbitrary grouping likely to become so. The approach to social questions is a varied one. One may be deeply interested in the manifestations of social relationships in the individual-realizing, indeed, that the individual is their product, that his central self is bounded “by his conscious interests and affections”; or one may instinctively begin at the other end and seek a better adjustment of social relationships by the manipulation of larger units, by what we call mass betterment. Social work includes both approaches; so closely do they interplay that it would be a topheavy and ineffective thing if either were neglected.

Dr. Cabot has just pointed out the folly of trying to treat a portion of the eye without knowing the whole eye. The social life of man is even more complicated than the mechanism of the eye-so complicated that this evening’s program might be taken as a partial demonstration of the need of combining many points of view and many explanations when we attempt to be social. The social case worker can hardly hope to effect the best possible adjustment in but one human life awry without seeking the special knowledge of others about occupations, recreations, government, or without seeking the aid of still others whose art is healing the body, and of others again who heal the mind. The social case worker has a specialty, too, however. His, too, is an artthe art (if I may venture a definition) of bringing about better adjustments in the social relationships of individual men, or women, or children. It matters not in what agency, public or private, this is achieved. If this chiefly is what we are doing-whether in a school, a courthouse, a hospital, or wherever-we are social case workers.

It should not have needed these three years, or nearly three, of war to convince us that such adjustments are going to have to be made and on a large scale. That they should be made not athwart the stream of mass progress but in closest sympathy with it, and in closest co-operation, too, with such professions as are represented on this platform tonight, should be self-evident also.

The attitude of some of the social reformers in this Conference toward the social case workers who make up the bulk. of its membership reminds me of an anecdote of the Spanish-American war. A young woman, approaching at that time a man in uniform, inquired, “Are you one of the nation’s heroes?” “No, ma’am,” he replied. “I’m just a regular.” We social case workers are not heroes and do not so regard ourselves, because there are so many of us. The study of men, however, and the advancement of their welfare through the study of their social relationships is no mean task.

We were all interested two years ago in Mr. Flexner’s analysis at Baltimore of our professional standing. We had to acknowledge that in so far as (under the name of social case work) we were merely matching folks and disabilities; in so far as we were tagging the one with the other and trying to call in the appropriate practitioner, we richly deserved his characterization of middlemen. Is that really all that we are doing? Too often it is. A reader of social case records sometimes gets the impression that the one who does such work has only to be a good shot. You drop your clients into one pigeon-hole or another, and there you are! The trouble is that there they are, too. But as we listened to Mr. Flexner we were more or less aware that quietly and behind his back, apparently, there was developing a skill quite different in method and in aim from the work that he described. We were not all behaving like the telephone girl at the switchboard who pulls out one plug and pushes in another; many of our social agencies were something better than animated clearing-houses, we felt. In fact, the distinguishing marks of their work were, first, skill in discovering the social relationships by which a given personality had been shaped; second, ability to get at the central core of difficulty in these relationships; and third, power to utilize the direct action of mind upon mind in their adjustment.

If not now, then very soon, the social case workers of this Conference are going to be recognized by the different professional groups that deal with human beings one by one-by the doctors, the jurists, the teachers, for example-as collaborators in a division of work among equals. We shall have a skill of our own, a point of view of our own, and shall act as middlemen to the extent that any professional worker who wants to do a good all-round job must so act, and no further. Nor will the fact that our skill was first developed and first practiced in certain charities damn us utterly, either. More than one of the other professions have worked out their technique under the same capacious mantle.

It seems natural enough to draw my only illustrations of this development, and of the line that I believe it must soon take, from the contacts of the social case worker with medicine. From none have we had more generous recognition of the things that we know how to do than from the best of the physicians.

I have told elsewhere of the first instance on record of seeking social case work advice for a well-to-do patient. The request came from a physician who knew what such skill had meant in his hospital practice and felt that he could not cure his private patient without it. Others have followed this lead in a number of places. Only a few weeks ago a fresh instance came to my attention from a part of our country in which medical-social work is unknown. I found that the secretary of a charity organization society in a town in the far south was often asked by local physicians to help them in pellagra cases which were not complicated by poverty. These doctors had learned to value the art of a social case worker who could discover and touch the hidden springs of interest in patients who were suffering from the horrible depression characteristic of one stage of that disease. They had learned that aggressive cheerfulness was worse than useless with pellagra patients, but that one who knew how to fill in social backgrounds and foregrounds could often find in them somewhere the one thing that would make life seem to the patient worth living.

It would be easy to cite other illustrations in fields far removed from the medical, but I must pass on to the one other point that there is time to make; namely, – to our great need of a deepened sense of professional solidarity and of professional standards. “Battles are not won by phrases” but by knowing every inch of the ground and by a% detailed working together, through methods which all have mastered, toward a common goal. The developments that point toward more social case work under public auspices will be a dismal failure unless we can work out standards and then achieve an enthusiasm for them which will assure their maintenance in our city and state departments.

I was impressed anew with the importance of bestirring ourselves about this after a recent visit from a surgeon who was interested in improving the clinical records of hospitals and dispensaries. He felt that they had been rendered worthless for medical study and progress in the past by the way in which they had been kept, and by the fact that the terminology used for disease had been whatever the private judgment of the different house officers happened to dictate. On the medical side he and his colleagues were making progress in remedying this, but, recognizing the importance of making social data a part of the medical record, he was seeking a terminology of social case work which could be placed beside a medical terminology already adopted in a number of the larger hospitals. It was impossible to tell him where such a terminology could be found because it does not exist. Evidently it will delay medical thinking in certain directions that our own thinking is still so inchoate. A terminology for the whole of social case work cannot be worked out by any one group of practitioners, any more than a medical terminology could be devised by the neurologists alone or by the surgeons alone. But is it not time that we got together and registered our differences, at least, as a preliminary to wearing them down to smaller proportions and building in their stead a common body of knowledge expressed in a language which is our common property?

I know that some leaders feel that this would be quite futile, that social case work as a separate discipline is soon to disappear, to be absorbed into medicine on the one hand and education’ on the other. Both of these are welcome to absorb all that they can contain, but there is going to remain a large field quite neglected unless we cultivate it. As democracy advances there can be neither freedom nor equality without that adaptation to native differences, without that intensive study and intensive use of social relationships for which social case work stands.

Source: National Conference on Social Welfare Proceedings On-Line

The web site for this resource is:  http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

The proceedings of annual meetings of the NCSW, 1874-1983, are available on the web thanks to a digitization project undertaken by the University of Michigan Library, with assistance from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota.  The web site for this resource is: http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

By: Forrester B. Washington, Director of the Detroit League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes

A Presentation at the 44th Meeting of the National Conference on Social Welfare,

Pittsburgh, PA, June 6-13, 1917 (pp.497-500)

The first prerequisite in the task of organizing a local community for the absorption of a large new population of negro citizens is the establishment of a vocational bureau. In the past, when labor agencies brought the majority of negroes who came North, the problem of employment was simple. They were assured of jobs before they arrived. But now the majority of immigrants come without such inducement. They come in larger numbers and at all times of the year, when the demand for labor is strong and when it is slack. This situation is fraught with danger because in a few days idling about the city in search of a job the immigrant may come into contact with conditions and people whose influence is demoralizing and may destroy his chance of ever becoming a useful citizen. The immigrant needs more bolstering up in the first week than at any future time. Until he gets his first pay at the end of two weeks, he finds it difficult to get anybody to trust him. He is apt to become a charity seeker and a dependent.

The vocational bureau of the Detroit League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes has not been content merely with locating vacant jobs, but has been successful during the last twelve months in placing a thousand negroes in employment other than unskilled labor. It has made itself known to immigrants by cards of direction placed in the hands of negro employees about railway stations. It has persuaded the proprietor of a local moving picture theater which is a great gathering place for colored newcomers, to run lantern slides nightly announcing that employment and other services can be secured free at the office of the league.

To solve the difficult problem of the first week’s board, the league has arranged with certain factories a system of checks issued to guarantee payment for bills incurred at restaurants and boarding houses.

The establishment of a bureau of investigations and information regarding housing comes next in importance. The character of the houses into which negro immigrants go has a direct effect on their health, their morals and their efficiency. The rents charged determine whether the higher wages received in the North are real or only apparent, whether the change in environment has been beneficial or detrimental. The tendency is to exploit the negro immigrant in this particular.

The Detroit Urban League has induced one of the largest foundries to build low-priced homes for its colored employees, near the plant. It also has somewhat relieved the housing problem by the purchase of leases from the proprietresses of a number of disorderly houses which were closed by the police. It also keeps a list of empty houses and has been surprised to find how many of them are not listed by commercial real estate agents. A list of furnished rooms also is kept and immigrants are kept away from those connected with disorderly houses.

With the shorter working hours, recreation is more important for the negro in the North than in the South. On the other hand, he is beset by many vicious attractions entirely new to him and there is not the restraining influence of his family, friends and those who know him. I am sorry to say, but it is true, that he gets the warmest welcome from the worst element of the negro community, the saloonkeeper, the poolroom proprietor, the owner of the gambling club and of the. disorderly house.

The only way to counteract these vicious influences is to provide the immigrant negro with wholesome recreation that will satisfy his natural instinct for active amusement and society of his own kind. The Detroit League some time ago inaugurated a ten-cent newcomers’ community dance held every Tuesday in a public school in the heart of the negro district. A committee of young colored men hand printed cards about the street where most of the immigrants collect and place them tn the hands of newcomers, inviting them to the community dance, where another committee welcomes them. The rougher the type the heartier the welcome. The League also develops athletic features for the immigrants especially basketball. The first colored basketball team, not a member of which was a native of Detroit last winter, played against strong white and colored teams and lost only one game.

A department for the suppression of crime is necessary in a program for the assimilation of the negro immigrant The assistance of the local police should be solicited from the outset It should be impressed upon them that they must not, as they are prone to do, let matters go from bad to worse in a colored community until conditions are so acute that drastic and unusual measures are necessary The appointment of colored detectives should be urged to filter from the community as soon as possible the inevitable floaters, crooks, bums and adventurers who are parts of every hegira. The league has persuaded the police commissioner to appoint a special officer selected by the league to work entirely with the newcomers It is his duty to mingle with crowds on the streets where the newcomers congregate and urge them not to make a nuisance of themselves by blockading the sidewalks, boisterous behavior and the like. He is also provided with cards directing newcomers to the office of the league when in need of employment. The league itself keeps a close watch on the negro underworld of Detroit and immediately apprises the police when dives are developed especially to prey on the immigrant.

Much strength can be added to the program and much energy saved by enlisting the aid of every possible organization in the city whose functions can in any way be construed as touching on negro migration. The Urban League found the Board of Commerce, the Board of Health, and the Recreation Commission of the city exceedingly willing to co-operate. An organization of colored college students known as the Young Negroes Progressive Association has been the finest possible agent in the development of all the different activities.

In the adjustment of the negro a definite place must be given to the development of industrial efficiency. The welfare of the negro in his new environment depends upon the opinion that the community has of him. The more trades and occupations negroes become familiar with the more efficient they will be as a race, and the greater an asset to the community. Therefore, the league has endeavored to get them into as many different kinds of employment as possible. It also uses every opportunity to develop individual efficiency by calling the attention of every negro employee to the fact that he must be punctual, zealous and ambitious in his work. These points are always emphasized when a negro is sent to a job.

In pursuance of this object the league, with the assistance of the progressive association is carrying on a movement which I think, is unique. Representatives of the two organizations visit the various factories where large numbers of negroes are employed and talk to them during the noon hour on the necessity of creating the best possible impression at the present time, so that they may be certain of retaining their jobs in the future.

Source: National Conference on Social Welfare Proceedings On-Line

The web site for this resource is:  http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/

The proceedings of annual meetings of the NCSW, 1874-1983, are available on the web thanks to a digitization project undertaken by the University of Michigan Library, with assistance from the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota.  The web site for this resource is: http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/ncosw/