NEGROES OF PHILADELPHIA                    33

their great point is docility; and so it goes. Miss Isabel Eaton
has very excellently summarized this medley of opinions about
Negro domestic servants in her study of domestic service pub-
lished by the University of Pennsylvania in "The Philadelphia
Negro." Her study seems to emphasize the fact that domes-
tic service is still a "belated industry" for blacks as well as
whites. Still, whatever may be the trouble, Lombard street
employment agents say they cannot possibly supply the demand
for Negro servants.
    It is in the skilled trades that the Negroes are at the
greatest disadvantage. And it is in this relation that the sys-
tem of education in Philadelphia has shown the least practical
results so far as the mass of Negroes is concerned. Negroes
have been largely shut out of mechanical trades, partly be-
cause of indifference and occasional active hostility of labor
unions, partly because it has been difficult to overcome the
traditional notion that a "Negro's place" is in domestic ser-
vice, but chiefly because there has been very little and prac-
tically no opportunity for Negroes to learn trades. Those
Negroes who know skilled trades and follow them are prin-
cipally men from the South, who learned their trades there.
The poorest of them fall into domestic service; the best have
found places at their trades.  For the Negro boy who is born
in this city it is difficult to acquire a trade.  And here, I say,
the system has been weakest.
    It has been possible for the Negro boys to complete their
courses in the public schools, go to the normal school, the uni-
versity, the various professional schools and fit themselves as
   3




			

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

Negroes of Philadelphia

R.

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