breweries.

The negroes here, however, had numerous industrial opportunities.
The manner in which the trades suddenly opened up to them made it
difficult to ascertain the number of negroes so engaged. An intensive
study of a neighborhood showed a much wider variety of skilled negro
laborers and brought to light the cases of many not otherwise known.
One man in touch with the iron workers of the city ventured the
statement that there were perhaps 75 negroes engaged in skilled work
in the iron and steel industries of the city. In a large number of
other plants one or two negroes had succeeded in finding skilled
employment. Firms known to employ negroes in the capacity of skilled
workmen are the Plankington Packing Company, Wehr Steel and Machine
Shops, the National Malleable Iron Works, A.J. Lindeman-Hoverson
Company and the Milwaukee Coke and Gas Company. For the most part
skilled negroes are butchers and molders.[121]

In the case of negroes from the South with trades, however, there
arose a situation which is seldom fully appreciated. A man in the
South may be skilled in such an independent trade as shoemaking,
tailoring, carpentry and the like, but in a northern city with its
highly specialized industrial processes and divisions of labor, he
must learn over again what he thought he had mastered, or abandon his
trade entirely and seek employment in unskilled lines. The wages for
skilled work were for butchers, 55 to 64 cents an hour; for steel
molders, 35 to 47 cents an hour; for firemen, $27 per week; for
chauffeurs, $15 to $30 a week; for shoemakers, $20 a week; stationary
firemen, $24 a week. The mass of negroes, men and women, gainfully
employed in the city was made up of manual laborers. Vacancies for
negroes in industry were made at the bottom. The range of occupations
in unskilled work, however, was fairly wide. They were packing house
employes, muckers, tannery laborers, street construction workers, dock
hands and foundry laborers. Their wages were for foundry laborers,
32-1/2 cents to 35 cents an hour; for muckers, $28 a week; for tannery
laborers, $24 a week; dock hands, 60 cents an hour; and for packing
house laborers, 43 cents an hour (male), and 30-1/2 cents an hour
(female). There were also porters in stores and janitors whose weekly
wages averaged between $15 and $18 per week.

Several firms made strenuous efforts to induce laborers to come from
the South. The Pfister-Vogel Company employed a negro t