climate; they nursed them when the inevitable sickness broke out; they gave them warm clothing and taught them how to spend money to the best advantage in purchasing suitable clothes and proper food; they took women and children into their homes, and helped them in ways that only women understand how to help each other.

Maintaining the Negro Morale

Rumors, many and various, of the disaffection of the Negro, of his lack of patriotism, of the influence upon him of so-called German propaganda, of the need of stimulating his patriotic fervor, swept through the country in the spring and summer of 1918. Just how much of this so-called propaganda was German, and how much American, and how much of it rumors which had their rise in hysterical fear, it is not given us to know. Why there was a loss of patriotic interest in certain localities was not hard to discover. Here and there studied indifference on the part of certain organizations toward the well-meant efforts of the colored women in attempting to help in war relief; labor conditions; the old, old stories of prejudice and growing bitterness in the labor situation; rumors of increased lynching activities-from all these a lukewarmness towards the conduct of the war had grown up in various cities. And it was here again that the women met a difficult problem and helped to solve it.

Again we look to the army of women teachers, and their subtle and pervasive influence over the youth of the race, and through children over their parents. It would be difficult to measure the service of these women in this particular direction.

Here and there, however, there was a more spectacular appeal made to the patriotic emotions of the race through pageants, demonstrations, or mass meetings. In some cases, the schools through school pageants and plays appealed directly to the patriotic emotions; plays written by Negro authors were staged, commencement exercises became rallying grounds of calls to the warmth of the race in its love for the nation.

Colored Women in War Industries

War has a way of forcing expedients. From 1914 until November, 1918, the economic balance of the nation was sadly upset, first by the stopping of the tide of immigration from Europe, second by the exodus of the Negro to the North, third by the

drastic sweep of the draft law. The first opened the door of opportunity to the Negro laborer, the second depleted the fields of the South, the third plunged the colored woman pell-mell into the industrial world-an entirely new place for her.

"For generations colored women have been working in the fields of the South. They have been the domestic servants of both the South and the North, accepting the positions of personal service open to them. Hard work and unpleasant work has been their lot, but they have been almost entirely excluded from our shops and factories. Tradition and race prejudice have played the largest part in their exclusion. The tardy development of the South and the failure of the colored woman to demand industrial opportunities have added further values. Clearly, also, two hundred years of slavery and fifty years of industrial boycott in both the North and the South, following the Civil War, have done little to encourage or to develop industrial aptitudes. For these reasons, the colored women have not entered the ranks of the industrial army in the past."

But war expediency, for a time at least, partially opened the door of industry to them. It was an experiment and like all experiments, it fell against problems, and those problems were met by the earnest consideration of several agencies. We have already spoken of the splendid work of this department of the Young Women's Christian Association, under the direction of Miss Mary E. Jackson of Providence, Rhode Island. In June, 1918, a joint committee was formed in New York to study the employment of colored women in that city and its environs. Serving on that committee were representatives from practically all the philanthropic organizations in the city, and the result of its labors through two investigators, Mrs. Gertrude McDougald (colored) and Miss Jesse Clarke (white), were given publicity in an interesting pamphlet, from which the above paragraph was quoted. It is a significant fact that the colored woman in industry in a short time had reached the point where she merited trained investigation.

"Come out of the kitchen, Mary," was the slogan of the colored woman in war time. She doffed her cap and apron and donned her overalls. Some States, such as Maryland and Florida, specialized in courses in motor mechanics and automobile driving.

The munition factories took the girls in gladly. Grim statistics prove that their scale of wages was definitely lower than a man's doing the same work, and sad to say a considerable fraction below that of white girls in the same service, although Delaware reports some very high-priced, skilled ammunition testers, averaging seven to twelve dollars a day. The colored girls blossomed out as switchboard operators, stock takers, wrappers, elevator operators, subway porters, ticket choppers, track-walkers, trained signallers, yard-walkers. They went into every possible kind of factory devoted to the production of war materials, from the most dangerous posts in munition plants to the delicate sewing in aeroplane factories. Colored girls and colored women drove motor trucks, unloaded freight cars, dug ditches, handled hardware around shipways and hardware houses, packed boxes. They struggled with the discomforts of ice and fertilizing plants. They learned the delicate intricacies of all kinds of machines, and the colored woman running the elevator or speeding a railroad on its way by signals was a common sight.

Just what the effect of this marvelous influx of colored women into the industrial world would have upon the race was a problem viewed with considerable interest. Pessimists predicted a sociological and psychological upheaval in the ranks of the women of the race. A strange thing about it was that there was no perceptible racial disintegration and the colored women bore their changed status and higher economic independence with much more equanimity than white women on a corresponding scale of living. The reason for this may perhaps be found in the fact that the colored woman had a heritage of 300 years of work back of her. Her children were used to being left to shift for themselves; her home was used to being cared for after sundown. The careful supervision of the War Work Council and the Council of Defense over the health and hours of the woman in industry averted the cataclysm of lowered vitality and eventual unfitness for maternity.

The possible economic effect of this entrance into the unknown fields of industry on the part of the colored woman will be that when pre-war conditions return and she is displaced by men and is forced to make her way back into domestic service, the latter will be placed on a strictly business basis and the vocation of

is forced to make her way back into domestic service, the latter will be placed on a strictly business basis and the vocation of housekeeping and home-making will be raised to the dignity of a profession.

We have touched lightly the Negro woman in the world war. Lightly perforce, because of her innate modesty and reticent carelessness in proclaiming her own good deeds. She emerges from the war more serious-minded, more responsible, with a higher opinion of her own economic importance; with a distinct and definite aim and ambition to devote her life to the furthering of the cause for which her men died on Flanders fields. She has served the Red Cross at home and begged to serve it abroad; she has probed to the depths the real meaning of the word Christianity; she has formed a second line of defense at home; she has learned the real value of community service, and what it means to give of her time, means, and smiles to the weary soldiers passing through her town; she has organized special circles of war relief on her own initiative, and given all that she could afford, from the homely apple and sandwich and cigarette to an ambulance for service

overseas.

She has given regally, munificently of her little to help fill the national war chest, and when there was no more in her slender purse she has given her time and persuasiveness to induce others to follow her example. She has endowed and maintained Hostess Houses and helped support the wives and children of the men in service. When disaffection threatened, she fostered patriotism and overcame propaganda with simple splendid loyalty. She gave up ease and clear skies for the dangers and hardships of deathdealing labor. She shut her eyes to past wrongs and present discomforts and future uncertainties. She stood large-hearted, strong-handed, clear-minded, splendidly capable, and did, not her bit, but her best, and the world is better for her work and her worth.

Alice Dumber-Nelson

CHAPTER XXVIII

SOCIAL WELFARE AGENCIES

Important Welfare Work of the Young Men's Christian Association and Other Organized Bodies-Negro Secretaries of the Y. M. C. A.-The Problem of Illiteracy in the Camps-The Social Secretaries-Results of Education-The Y. W. C. A. Hostess Houses-The Knights of Columbus-Caring for Returned Soldiers.

Prior to the outbreak of the war it was a well-established fact that the Young Men's Christian Association, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Red Cross, and other organized bodies primarily concerned with the welfare of people in general, had figured so largely in the life of the young men prior to their call to arms that something should be done to enable these agencies to throw around them the same influences under which they came when at home. One of the first efforts, therefore, to provide for the social betterment of the men under arms was to connect these movements officially with the Government, that they might function efficiently in caring for the soldiers at the front. It was observed that the social welfare organizations could adapt themselves as successfully to the needs of men in times of war as in times of peace. At the beginning of the war the War Work Council declared that the same thing done for white men would be done for colored men when in the various cantonments, and while it has been difficult to carry out this letter of the law, for many reasons too tedious to be mentioned, Dr. J. E. Moorland, the Senior Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association in charge of colored men's work, believes that the Negro has come more nearly to receiving a square deal in this instance than in anything else in the history of the country.

When the unusual appeal was made to the American people, adequate funds were raised to finance the work of the welfare organizations. Nearer to the end of hostilities, however, when a