opportunity to proceed further and settle in surrounding
cities and towns. This tendency appears to have been to reach those
fields offering the highest wages and most permanent prospects. With
Chicago as a center there are within a radius of from one hundred
to one hundred and fifty miles a number of smaller industrial
centers--suburbs of Chicago in which enterprises have sprung
up because of the nearness to the unexcelled shipping and other
facilities which Chicago furnished. A great many of the migrants who
came to Chicago found employment in these satellite places.[112]

One of these towns was Rockford, a city of about 55,000 people before
Camp Grant began to add to its population. It is estimated that there
were about 1,500 negroes in Rockford, 1,000 of whom came in during
1916 and 1917. The Rockford Malleable Iron Company, which never hired
more than five or six negroes until two years ago, has nearly one
hundred in its employ. A timekeeper, five inspectors, a machinist, a
porter, three foremen and twenty of the molders are negroes. The
Free Sewing Machine Company, Emerson and Birmingham, the Trahern Pump
Company and the two knitting factories began also to employ negroes.
The standard wage prevailed, and, while the unskilled work was largely
given to the negroes, there were instances when opportunity was given
for them to follow pursuits requiring skill.

Housing showed every evidence of congestion. The city was unprepared
for the unprecedented increase in population necessitated by the
demands of its factories for men to produce munitions of war. The
workingmen, however, were soon better provided for than in some other
cities. The Rockford Malleable Iron Company conducted two houses
for the accommodation of its employes and rented several smaller
ones.[113] This company had recently purchased a large acreage and
was considering the advisability of building houses for its employes,
including the negro migrants. The Emerson and Birmingham Company and
the Sewing Machine Company had similar plans under advisement.

The Rockford Malleable Iron Company was the first to use negroes. In
the fall of 1916 the first negro employes were brought in from Canton,
Illinois, through a Mr. Robinson then employed by the company as
a molder. There were nine molders in the group. At brief intervals
Tuskegee sent up four, then five, then eight and then six men, most
of whom had had training in machinery and molding. The total numb