The
records of the courts show numerous small offenses charged to the
account of negroes, but these usually result from temptations
and snares set by institutions of vice which are winked at by the
community.

These negroes, on the whole, are thrifty and will eventually attach
themselves permanently to the community through the acquisition
of desirable property and elevation to positions of trust in the
industries where they are employed. Evidences of the lazy and
shiftless and the immoral are not frequent, because of a sort of
spirit of thrift pervading the whole group. Many of the families have
savings accounts in banks, and practically all of the married men
separated from their families in the South send a large portion of
their earnings from time to time. Money order receipts and stubs of
checks examined show that these remittances to distant families range
from between $5 to $10 a week. Others have seen fit to divert
their income to objects more enterprising. They are educating their
children, purchasing homes and establishing businesses to minister to
the needs of their own peculiar group.

In view of the desirability of most migrants in this city, several
persons have seen fit to make a comparison of the negro and foreign
labor, with a view to determining whether or not the employment
of negroes in the North will be permanent, as they may easily be
displaced by the foreigners immigrating into this country in the
future. The consensus of opinion is that the blacks are profitable
laborers, but that their efficiency must be decidedly increased to
compete with that of the white workers. Some of the faults observed
are that they are as yet unadapted to the "heavy and pace-set labor
in the steel mills." Accustomed to the comparatively easy going
plantation and farm work of the South, it will take some time for
these migrants to find themselves. "They can not even be persuaded to
wait until pay day, and they like to get money in advance, following
the habit that they acquired from the southern credit system. It is
often secured on very flimsy pretexts and spent immediately in the
saloons and similar places." Yet the very persons who make this
estimate of the negro laborer say that the negroes born in the North
or who have been in the North some time are as efficient as the
whites, and that because of their knowledge of the language and the
ways of this country, they are often much better than the foreign
laborers w