heavier concentration in the basic industries; more than that,
there are gradations of work from unskilled to skilled. In
certain plants skilled workers increased from 3.5 per cent of
the Negro working population in 1910 to 13.5 per cent in 1920
in Chicago. In the slaughtering houses there are actually more
semi-skilled Negro workers than laborers. The number of
iron molders increased from 31 in 1910 to 520 in 1920 and
this latter number represents 10 per cent of all the iron
molders.
In the working age groups of New York there are more women than men. For every hundred Negro men there are 110 Negro women. This is abnormal and would be a distinct anomaly in an industrial center. The surplus women are doubtless the residue from the general wash and ebb of migrants who found a demand for their services. The city actually attracts more women than men. But surplus women bring on other problems, as the social agencies will testify. “Where women preponderate in large numbers there is proportionate increase in immorality because women are cheap." The situation does not permit normal relations. What is most likely to happen, and does happen, is that women soon find it an added personal attraction to contribute to the support of a man. Demoralization may follow this—and does. More- over, the proportion of Negro women at work in Manhattan (60.6) is twice that of any corresponding group, and one of the highest proportions registered anywhere.
The nature of the work of at least 40 per cent of the men suggests a relationship, even if indirectly, with the tensely active night life by which Harlem is known. The dull, unarduous routine of a porter's job or that of an elevator tender, does not provide gh stimulation to consume the normal supply of nervous energy. It is unthinkable that the restlessness which drove migrants to New York from dull small towns would allow them to be content with the same dullness in the new environment, when a supply of garish excitements is so richly available.
With all the "front of pretending to live, the aspect of complacent wantlessness, it is clear that the Negroes are in
