NEGROES OF PHILADELPHIA                25

merly; and, with the exception of the Seventh ward, there is
not much segregation on a large scale.  The seventh ward had
in 1900 10,462 Negroes. Other wards having large Negro
population are the 22d, with about 4,000 Negroes; the 8th,
2,600; 15th, 2,600; 27th, 3,500; 26th, 3,00; 3oth, 6,000; 4th,
3,000; 20th, 3,000; 24th, 2,300; 36th, 2,300. In 1900 the
16th ward had only 1O2 Negroes; the 17th, 125; the 18th,
only 18.
     The cause of the spread of the Negro population is the
increased social surplus that the race has accumulated, which
has permitted the better element to get out from under the
tyranny of the renting agent. It is well known to every one
conversant with Negro life that it was a few years ago, and is
to-day, extremely difficult for a Negro to rent a house outside
of the "black belt," where the rents were exceedingly high.
Being shut in chiefly within the narrow streets and alleys, the
Negroes are largely at the mercy of the unscrupulous renting
agent, and sometimes they have been forced to pay as high
as $30 per month rent for a five-room house.  That this is
not entirely in the past, hundreds of instances are now in evi-
denice. Of course, these poor Negroes cannot pay the high
rent, so they sublet the house, or take only one room as an
"apartment," and permit the agent to rent the other "apart-
ments" to other poor negroes. And to-day in some parts of
the Seventh and Eighth wards a dirty, dilapidated, unsanitary,
undrained, unplastered house of four rooms on first and second
floors, two cellar rooms and one attic room is known to bring
$28 and sometimes $32 per month, though it is not fit for re-




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 24, Num. 1

Negroes of Philadelphia

R.

Volume:  24
Issue Number:  01
Page Number:  20
Date:  07/1907