ons instability, irregularity and general shiftlessness.
Some of these cases are inexcusable, and the only reason for their
connection with the industry is the fact that they were brought from
the South, where they were voluntarily idle, by agents of employers.
The importation merely shifted the scene of their deliberate loafing
and spasmodic contact with work.

Employers in all of the plants know that they have had difficulty
in holding their negro labor, but do not know why. Most of the
men willing to leave the city were unmarried men with few
responsibilities. These are the ones who found employment there and,
being dissatisfied, quit. The highest negro labor turnover was in
the leather factories. But for this there was a reason. The only
employment permitted negroes there was wet and very disagreeable beam
work, and at wages not in excess of those paid by neighboring plants
with a different grade of work. Inquiries among laboring men reveal
reasons plausible indeed to the laborers themselves, which in many
cases would have been found reasonable also by the employers.

It is generally known that all classes of labor of all nationalities
are in an unsettled state. Shifting to the higher paid industries
is common. In consequence the disagreeable and poorly paid ones have
suffered. The instability of negroes, especially in those industries
that have been so hard pressed as to find it necessary to go South for
men, is not so much a group characteristic as an expression of present
tendencies in labor generally.

Reasons of a more intimate nature advanced by the men for changing
jobs are numerous. Among these are dissatisfaction with the treatment
of petty white bosses, the necessity for ready money for the care of
their families, the distance of the plants from the district in which
the negro workmen live[126] and the unpleasant indoor work in certain
factories.

The social condition of negroes in Milwaukee is not alarming. There
are indicated, however, unmistakable maladjustments which require
immediate attention. But even these will not become alarming, if
checked now, when preventive measures can be made practicable,
attractive and easy.

The neighborhoods in which negroes live have long showed evidence of
physical and moral deterioration. The addition of 1,400 negroes
from the South, over 70 per cent of whom were brought to the city by
companies seeking labor, hastened the deterioration and gave rise to
problem