After an ambitious boy has been refused employment again and again in the larger mercantile and industrial establishments and comes to the conclusion that there is no use in trying to get a decent job, he is in a very dangerous state of mind. Idle and discouraged, his neighborhood environment vicious, such a boy quickly shows the first symptoms of delinquency. Even the superintendent of the Illinois Industrial School for Boys at St. Charles complains that it is not worth while to teach trades to colored boys in his institution because it is so very difficult for a skilled colored man to secure employment. The colored people themselves believe that the employers object to treating the colored man with the respect which a skilled mechanic would command. As a result of this attitude, the colored laborer is being driven to lower kinds of occupation which are gradually being discarded by the white men. Certainly the investigators found that the great corporations, for one reason or another, refused to employ negroes. Department stores, express companies and the public utility companies employ very few colored people. Out of the 3,795 men employed in Chicago by the eight leading express companies, only twenty-one were colored men. Fifteen of these were porters. The investigators found no colored men employed as boot-and-shoe-makers, glove-makers, bindery workers, garment workers in factories, cigar box makers, elevated railroad employees, neckwear workers, suspender-makers or printers. No colored women are employed in dress-making, cap-making, lingerie and corset-making. The two reasons given for this non-employment by the employers are: first, the refusal of the white employees to work with colored people; second, the “colored help” is slower and not so efficient as the white. Some employers solve the latter difficulty by paying the colored help less. In the laundries, for instance, where colored people do the same work as white people, the latter average a dollar a week more. The effect of these restrictions upon negroes is, first, that they are crowded into undesirable and underpaid occupations. As an example, about 12 per cent. of the colored men in Chicago work in saloons and poolrooms. Second, there is greater competition in a limited field with consequent tendency to lower the already low wages. Third, the colored women are forced to go to work to help earn the family living. This occurs so universally as to affect the entire family and social life of the negro colony.