The Southern Workman (July 1904) Vol. XXXIII, No. 7. pp. 377-380.
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The Evils of the Intelligence Office System
Frances A. Kellor
One of the best known arguments used by statisticians and others to prove that the Negro is naturally deficient and incapable of progress, is that in Northern cities where he has advantages and conditions incident to a higher civilization, he is more criminal and immoral than in the towns and country districts of the South. In a previous article we have shown the error of quoting statistics which are not accompanied by explanations, and in an investigation just completed many facts have come to light which prove that this position was well taken. We believe that the following statement of the results of an investigation of intelligence offices in Northern cities is just one more proof of the futility of ascribing any result definitely and exclusively to heredity without determining the corresponding environmental factors.
This investigation was begun two years ago when the writer was a Fellow of the College Settlements Association. Conditions and methods in seven hundred and thirty-two offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia were studied; of these offices fully one hundred were run by Negroes, chiefly for Negro girls, though white girls were found in some of them. The facts were gained through personal visits in the character both of employers and employees, and we were treated just as any other patrons, for we mingled with those waiting and so learned the practices of the offices. Our facts for the moral side were verified by special supplementary visits of male assistants.
The writer believes that there is a large percentage of Negro girls who are criminal. Whether this percentage is larger or smaller than that among immigrants who are subject to much the same conditions, is unknown, but certainly the system of importing help from the South is responsible for some of it. The persons in charge of the offices told us without hesitation that the bulk of Negro servants came directly to them from Southern communities. They support white agents whose business it is to interest these girls, who live in small towns and rural districts, by large promises of work and wages. Then the agents ship them North. When they cannot pay their own transportation, or collect it among their friends, the intelligence office advances it and pays the agent a commission. When the girl pays for her transportation in advance, the sum is made to cover the commission, so that in either case the girls pay the commission, for the sums advanced to them are always paid back either to the office or agent. When these girls arrive they are met by a runner or other representative of the office, who takes them from the dock or station to the office, where they are lodged until places are given them. From the time they place themselves in the white agent's hands until positions are found for them, they are virtually slaves, for their ignorant, penniless condition makes them helpless. It may be believed by some that these offices are giving such girls a chance in a new environment, but the writer has every evidence to show that many of those brought North in this way cannot but end in crime. Indeed, upon authority so good as that of the superintendent of the Bedford Reformatory for Women, comes the statement that "almost without exception, every Negro girl I get has been brought. North by some intelligence office".
The character of the persons who run these offices, and the conditions which they present predispose to immorality. Nearly all of them are tenements, in apartments of from two to four rooms; many are without any office equipment, the business being carried on in the kitchens, bedrooms, and parlors, and no records kept of where girls are sent. The mingling of the employees and family is very close and indiscriminate. Men and women are lodged under such crowded conditions that the maintenance of morality does not seem possible. Old and young, drunk and sober, clean and dirty, vicious characters and girls just arrived from the South, are crowded in together.
The employment agency has many methods of defrauding. The most common is the taking of the fee and making no attempt to secure a position. Where the office pays the transportation, it collects the wages for the first few months to pay for it. Where they lodge girls they are in no hurry to get them places until their money is gone. Fees for employees vary from one to five dollars, depending on what the office can get out of them. Fifty cents a day is the average rate for board, though in some places it is higher if all three meals are furnished. There are two methods more common in dealing with Negroes than with other classes of servants. Gifts are accepted in preference to fees, or in addition to them. In this way the offices secure many small valuables, prevent the girls from getting positions until it is too late, and then refuse to return the gifts, saying that they are due them for their efforts. Again, they induce a girl to pay a fee, saying "an employer is coming at a certain time tomorrow". Relying on the Negro's tendency to be late, they say to her when she comes, even though she is on time: "The lady came early" or "waited for you as long as she could", and they refuse to return the fee, even when no appointments have been made. Negro girls are encouraged in vagrancy and shiftlessness by the office placing them and then deliberately encouraging them to leave, or even receiving them, always charging a second fee.
But these evils are small compared with the methods of placing girls. We do not exaggerate when we say that three-fifths of the offices deliberately send girls as inmates to questionable houses, that one-fifth send them as inmates or servants, and that the other fifth are so careless and indifferent that they do not know whether they go there or not. Now in all fairness we ask: What chance has a "green", penniless, friendless girl, brought North to such an office? Unaccustomed to the city and its conditions, her real crime is ignorance, though the statistics at the Bedford Reformatory cannot possibly explain causes. And we insist that the very methods to which the offices resort prove that these girls are "deluded" and "bullied" and do not always go wrong through desire or choice.
Some offices cannot induce these girls to go as inmates to disreputable houses, so they send them in as servants, urging upon them the advantages of "easy work and good money". They know that when they send a girl into such a place in this way they put her directly in temptation's way, and start her on the path to intemperance and immorality. Many times girls are sent to such places without a knowledge of their character, and are held prisoners. While the girls wait in the office, they have constantly held before them pictures of the luxury, ease, and beauty which such places afford and they see the whole situation in a false light. This again is deliberate on the part of the office. When a girl is penniless, indebted for board, and despondent, these offices purposely withhold honest positions, and "nag" her daily to take places in saloons, concert halls, the Raines Law hotel, and other questionable places. We insist that under such conditions a girl is not given a fair chance, and that no such office is safe though protected by the city and purporting to furnish honest places.
In addition to this, for an extra gift, offices give streetwalkers and other dangerous people the freedom of the office. They take the girls out to lunch and to walk and finally disappear with them. Dressed as they are in finery and glowing colors, these persons appeal very strongly to the girls. In all offices there are two classes—the Southern rural Negroes and the city Negroes. The latter have come to prefer employment in disreputable houses, because they pay better, give better food, are not very particular about the work, and allow more freedom. It is a situation full of danger when these meet in idleness day after day the ignorant, green girl just landed from the South who is willing to go anywhere and take any kind of wages which the agent recommends. We need scarcely add that some of these offices are in reality questionable places, where drinking, gambling, and dancing are common. Those in charge frankly said to the writer that they had weekly contracts to furnish disreputable houses, and took charge of all the girls who for any reason were no longer wanted. The fees range from five to twenty-five dollars, usually paid by the employer. Where offices do not import girls, they co-operate with boarding houses to whose managers they pay fifty cents or one dollar for each one they send. Even in the best offices, the carelessness is so great that not in one office where we asked for maids for a men's clubhouse, did they ask any questions or show any interest in the destination. We could have taken the girls with us, even out of the city, and no one could have traced them. Such carelessness is criminal negligence.
This problem is not one for Negroes alone. White girls are found in these offices and white employers seek help there. The white girls are not always immoral either. One who had never "worked out" before, was taken to the employment bureau by the Negro cook with whom she worked. She was offered a position in a sporting-house where she "would have nothing to do but make money and have a good time". When she refused, she was told to "go and see how the other white ladies fared, and if she did not change her mind no harm would come to her and no fee be charged, and she could go to another office and get a white slave's place". She was told that the "colored people were sorry for her". Negro servants who frequent these offices often go to good white offices, and any employer may get one who has lived in these filthy, disease-laden, vermin-infested offices.
We know no better undertaking than for some intelligent Negro to start an office, affiliate all the best offices, and wage a relentless war upon the ones which import and sell ignorant Southern Negroes. Shipping points in the South must be watched and the traffic suppressed. To successfully compete with these offices, there must be a thorough knowledge of the situation and methods, and a directing of this supply into proper channels, for there is a place for every Negro servant in a good home, and none need slave or go to questionable places, though the offices so represent it. New York City has a Home which also conducts an employment agency, and many are thus rescued. But inactive competition is not enough. The girls must be reached before the office takes them to its lodging house, for a few days there teaches them so much immorality, dishonesty, impertinence, intemperance, and shiftlessness that they can never be quite reclaimed. The methods of these offices must be understood and checkmated at every point by honest employment agencies as active, untiring, and alert as themselves. No law, no regulations can do this without such co-operation.