I.

INTRODUCTION.

This paper is an attempt to give the most accurate facts obtainable bearing upon the question of colored domestic service in Philadelphia. It endeavors to show the relation of the colored domestic to the general domestic service problem on the one hand, and to the great mass of the Negro people on the other. The purpose, scope and methods of the work are the same as those already explained at length by Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois in the introduction to this volume, constituting the general report of the investigation conducted by the University of Pennsylvania.

The section treating Domestic Service is no unimportant division of the general subject. On the contrary, it is probably of more consequence than any other single aspect of the problem, since the number of domestic servants among colored wage-earners is shown by the last census to be greater in thirty-two out of forty-eight States than the number engaged in any other occupation ; while in many cases it is greater than the number engaged in all other employments taken together. Indeed this predominance of domestic service over all other occupations followed by the Negroes, is recorded of every State in the Union, excepting the Southern States, where agriculture stands first and domestic service second. It will doubtless be surprising to many to hear that the census record shows that each of the Northern and Western States, with the single exception of Delaware, has more colored people in domestic service than in any other occupation, while in nearly seven in every ten of these States colored domestic service more than outnumbers the aggregate of all other occupations of colored people. The record for the State of Pennsylvania as given by the last census shows the following facts concerning occupations of Negroes throughout the State:

It appears from this that very nearly 60 per cent of the colored workingmen of Pennsylvania are engaged in domestic service ; while over 91 per cent of the colored workingwomen of the State are in service. A graphic presentation of these facts makes clear the large proportion of the Negro population of Pennsylvania employed in domestic service:

PROPORTION OF COLORED DOMESTIC SERVANTS IN PENNSYLVANIA AS COMPARED WITH WHOLE WORKING COLORED POPULATION—ELEVENTH CENSUS.

In the city of Philadelphia nearly the same preponderance of domestic service in relation to other occupations of the colored people is found.

In this investigation a separate schedule for domestic service was used.¹ Like the other schedules, it was prepared under the direction of Dr. S. M. Lindsay, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, and was carefully revised by the national Department of Labor at Washington, as well as by prominent statisticians in New York and elsewhere. The facts here given were collected during a nine months, residence at the Philadelphia College Settlement, which is located in the heart of one of the most densely populated Negro quarters of the city.

This schedule was used throughout the residence streets of the Seventh Ward, and elsewhere in the ward limits wherever colored domestics were employed. ² This ward includes among its inhabitants all grades of wealth and comfort, from the houses with a coachman and coachman's assistant, a butler and butler's assistant, and a retinue of female domestics as well, to those houses where only one woman is employed, who does “general housework,” sometimes including not only cooking and laundry work, but also the furnace work, removal of ashes, “cleaning the front,” and other outside work usually delegated to a man. And thus, since nearly all degrees of wealth are represented in the district investigated—that is to say, from the present point of view, all grades of service-employing families—it is probable that all grades of colored domestic service have been encountered in this survey.

In this house-to-house canvass, every domestic scheduled, with a very few exceptions, was personally interviewed. Occasionally the butler or waiter would answer for the cook, if both chanced to have served long in the same family, or sometimes the lady of the house would herself supply the answers, but in every case the information given was such as to warrant belief in its reliability. To the domestic servants personally interviewed in this way have been added the far greater number scheduled by Dr. DuBois in his canvass of the homes of the colored people within the ward limits. Altogether 677 men have been recorded and 1612 women, making a total of 2289 domestics, male and female, either working or living in the Seventh Ward.

1 See Appendix A.

2 For map showing the ward boundaries see page 59.