To make a summary of the wages and efficiency: In comparison with the cost of living, Negro men receive very inadequate wages in domestic and personal service except three or four occupations that afford "tips." The small number of skilled artisans who are equal to or above the average white workman and can get into the unions, receive the union wages. Women for the most part are in the poorly paid employments of domestic and personal service. The small wages of the men and the number of women engaged in gainful occupations (See Chapter IV) show that the women must help earn the daily bread for the family. Their low income power forces these families to the necessity of completing the rent by means of lodgers, deprives children of mothers' care, keeps the standard of living at a minimum, and thus makes the family unable to protect itself from both physical and moral disease. Although popular opinion may be to the contrary, testimonials signed by former employers show that the large majority of Negroes in domestic and personal service are capable, temperate, and honest, and remain with one employer a reasonable time, considering the shifting condition of city life, the mobility of such wage-earners and the weak tenure of domestic and personal service in a modern city. FOOTNOTES: [63] Bureau of Labor Statistics of New York, _Annual Report_, 1909, pp. 444-595. Figures for Negro members of unions are from Ovington, _op. cit._, pp. 97-99. Miss Ovington's table seems to show that in 16 occupations the number of Negro members of unions increased from about 1,271 in 1906 to about 1,358 in 1910. [64] On this point the writer has talked with a number of Negroes who were serving or had served in domestic and personal service. Some of them have gone so far as to enter small business enterprises for themselves. They often remarked: "I want to be my own boss." [65] From several reliable sources has come testimony concerning employers who formerly had Negro servants, and gave them up for reasons similar to that of one lady who said: "It is going out of fashion to have Colored help any longer." _Cf._ also, Ovington, _op. cit._, pp. 75-86. PART II THE NEGRO IN BUSINESS IN NEW YORK CITY CHAPTER I THE CHARACTER OF NEGRO BUSINESS ENTERPRISES 1. THE BUSINESS PROMISE