I wish to acknowledge especially the help of Dr. William L. Bulkley in making possible many of the interviews with wage-earners, of Dr. Roswell C. McCrea for criticism and encouragement in preparation of the monograph, and of Dr. E.E. Pratt, sometime fellow of the Bureau of Social Research; Miss Dora Sandowsky for her careful and painstaking tabulation of most of the figures. They should not be charged, however, with responsibility for any of the errors that may be detected by the trained eye. The study as now published is incomplete. Part I, the Negro as a Wage-earner and Part II, the Negro in Business, were to be supplemented by Part III, the Negro in the Professions. But the time absorbed in gathering the material for the first two parts prevented the securing of a sufficient amount of personally ascertained data for the third; it seemed best to concentrate on the first two for the sake of thoroughness. The summaries following the data on the several points and at the end of each chapter, and the conclusion at the end of the volume contain some repetitions which may be open to criticism, but they have been retained with the hope of making the monograph useful to those who wish to know the conclusions from the succession of figure upon figure and percentage upon percentage, without necessarily going through these details. At the same time, anyone who may wish to weigh the inferences in the light of the facts has the details before him. Conditions among Negroes in Philadelphia have been adequately studied in the work of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and Dr. R.R. Wright, Jr. It is to be hoped that some time soon the need of similar inquiries in other cities--East, West, North and South--may be realized and that provision may be made in this way for the guidance of the growing impulses of those who wish to better conditions in urban centers. I am aware that there are good reasons for criticism of these pages. But what has been done was done in the search for the truth, that the enthusiasm of reform may be linked with the reliability of knowledge in the efforts to better the future conditions of the city and the Negro. GEORGE EDMUND HAYNES. FISK UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENN., APRIL 1, 1912. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I PAGE PREFACE 7-8 THE NEGRO AS A WAGE EARNER CHAPTER I THE CITY AND THE NEGRO--THE PROBLEM 13 CHAPTER II THE NEGRO POPULATION OF NEW YORK CITY 45 CHAPTER III GENERAL CONDITION OF WAGE-EARNERS 1. Sex and Age of Negro Wage-Earners 54 2. Nativity of Negro Wage-Earners 57 3. Marital Condition of Wage-Earners 60 4. Families and Lodgers 61 CHAPTER IV OCCUPATIONS OF WAGE-EARNERS