II.

ENUMERATION OF NEGRO DOMESTIC SERVANTS.

Recent Reform in Domestic Service.—Reform in the administration of the household has been called a “belated reform,” one that has been so long a time in gaining the ear of intelligent people that it must somehow make up for lost time and gain a little on other reforms before it can hope to come abreast of the progress of the age. In view of the fact that college-bred women in greater numbers are assuming responsibility for the administration of the household, at the same time that reform of domestic service is being agitated, it is natural to think that the one thing partly accounts for the other. It is certainly true that the question is now for the first time being treated scientifically by some of the most intelligent women in the country. The Civic Club of Philadelphia has done honorable pioneer work in attempting to establish a standard of work and wages for domestic servants, and other similar clubs are following in their footsteps. Also, there is beginning to be a literature on the subject, best represented by Charles Booth's Study of Household Service in the eighth volume of his “Life and Labour of the People,” and by the admirable work entitled “Domestic Service” by Miss Lucy M. Salmon, Professor of History at Vassar College. In the latter work, which is easily the best authority on this much discussed but little understood subject, the doctrine of survival through adaptation is for the first time applied to the economics of the household. One result has been the conviction that much of the friction in the modern household arises from its lack of adaptation to the civilization of to-day, and will disappear when domestic service gets in line with the march of progress and ceases to try to meet modern needs by the employment of mediæval methods. The higher is dependent on the lower, and as our social reforms deal with the houses and food of the poor for the sake of higher things than mere physical well being, so all our reforms must begin at the bottom and work up. We may take courage that reforms in domestic service and in household economics will spread, since they have now ceased to be regarded as impossibilities, and the problems involved are being fairly faced. With the widening of woman's mental horizon has come a realizing sense of the truth regarding household work, that “in no other occupation is there so much waste of labor and capital, and in no other would a fraction of this waste be overlooked.”

This report endeavors to contribute to the problem the results of a study of facts concerning the domestic work of Negroes in Philadelphia.

Enumeration.—In presenting these facts, we shall begin with an enumeration of Negro domestics.

The first table shows the number of colored domestic servants³ in the Seventh Ward of Philadelphia by sex and age periods:

TABLE I.

(Domestic Service.)

NUMBER OF COLORED DOMESTIC SERVANTS IN WARD SEVEN BY SEX AND AGE PERIODS.

From this statement it will be seen that of the colored service in the ward about 30 per cent is furnished by men and 70 per cent by women. In the Seventh Ward of Philadelphia there were found to be 9675 colored persons, of whom 2289 are here seen to be domestic employes, or 23.7 per cent of the total colored population of the ward. It is a little over 30 per cent of all the colored wage-earners of the ward.⁴

This per cent in domestic service agrees very nearly with the following table taken from the eleventh census, showing the proportion of Negro wage-earners engaged in domestic service the country over to be 31.4 to the hundred.⁵

TABLE FROM ELEVENTH CENSUS OF THE UNITED STATES SHOWING PERCENTAGES OF DIFFERENT ELEMENTS OF THE POPULATION ENGAGED IN DIFFERENT OCCUPATIONS.

When public waiters and waitresses in hotels and restaurants, as well as janitors and caretakers, are included in the count of domestic servants, it brings the ratio up nearly to 41 per cent of the whole number of colored wage-earners in the ward.

After considering what per cent of the colored people are domestics, it is interesting to notice what part of domestic service is colored. So we turn from the ratios just given to consider what proportion of the total of domestic service in the United States is performed by colored people. When we think of American domestic service as a whole, we have a more or less clear conception of a great army of the colored race in the south, of the Irish and Germans in the north, of the Swedes in the middle west, and of the Chinese on the Pacific Coast. The census of 1890 gives the relative numbers of native white, foreign white and colored (including Chinese) domestic employes in the United States as follows:

ELEMENTS OF THE POPULATION ENGAGED IN DOMESTIC SERVICE.

(From the Eleventh Census of the United States.)

These figures attribute nearly 29 per cent of the domestic service of the country to the colored, who comprise only 12½ per cent of the population.

The colored perform about three times as much domestic service in proportion to their numbers as the whites do. From this it will be seen that, while the study of domestic service in any consideration of the condition of the colored people is important, the study of the Negro domestic is equally important in any careful consideration of the domestic service problem. It will be noticed that the per cents for the middle section of States show only 10.67 per cent of the domestic service performed by colored people. The large urban populations of the New York cities doubtless reduce this below what it would be if only Pennsylvania and New Jersey were considered, as city servants are mostly drawn from our foreign white population, but if the rate be accepted as true for the city of Philadelphia (though it is doubtless much too low for a city which has the largest colored population of any city in the United States, except New Orleans and Washington), if it be accepted for Philadelphia, where 4 per cent of the population is colored, we shall find that the Negro domestics “run ahead of their ticket” here also in this matter of household service.

The probable reason for this disproportion is not far to seek when we remember the unpopularity of domestic service which keeps whites out, and reflect that the colored prejudice, which is known to operate against the Negro in nearly all departments of labor excepting drudgery, actually works in his favor in the matter of domestic service, where the competence of Negro waiters and the superior skill of Negro cooks is generally admitted. Hence, Negro labor, following the line of least resistance, flows in enlarged streams into the channel of domestic service.

3 In this study of the condition of the colored people of Philadelphia, all persons scheduled as “domestic servants” are connected with private establishments, waiters in hotels, etc., being classified with public service.

4 The 2289 domestics which constitute 34 per cent of the 6611 Negroes in the Seventh Ward engaged in gainful occupations are those actually investigated in the special inquiry into domestic service. The number may not include all the domestics in the ward and does not include many classes of persons enumerated under “domestic and personal ser vice” in the table on page 108 of this volume.

5 Domestic service is classified in the census under “personal service,” and includes persons classified elsewhere in this investigation, such as hotel proprietors, but the number of Negroes thus included is small, and the error of comparison, therefore, small.