, so that the back rooms are just above the ground.
The entrance is in a muddy, disorderly yard and is through
a tunnel in the house. The rooms are hard to heat because of
cracks. A boy of eighteen was in bed breathing heavily, very
ill with pneumonia, delirious at times." Unused to city life,
crowded into dark rooms, their clothing and household utensils
unsuitable, the stoves they have brought being all too small
to heat even the tiny rooms they have procured (the instalment
houses are charging from $20 to $30 for these stoves),
shivering with the cold from which they do not know how
to protect themselves, it is small wonder that illness has
overtaken large numbers.[144]

Newark, New Jersey, was one of the places to which the migrants first
came in large numbers. William H. Maxwell, President of the Negro
Forward Movement, of that city, issued an appeal for the protection
from the unscrupulous of southern negroes migrating to Newark. He
declared that they were being made to work for lower wages than they
had been promised and that storekeepers and dealers were charging them
high prices for worthless goods. The Newark Presbytery took up
the matter of proper housing and clothing of the migrants who were
unaccustomed to the rigors of a northern climate.

On September 23, 1917, a State conference of negroes was held
in Newark to devise ways and means to cooperate with the State
authorities in looking after the welfare of migrants. Soon after
this conference, it was decided to establish a State bureau, "for
the welfare and employment of the colored citizens in the State and
particularly to look after the housing, employment and education of
the citizens migrating from the South." On October 12, Governor Edge
had a number of social workers among the negroes to meet him, "to
discuss the several perplexing and grave economic, industrial and
social problems arising from the steady influx of the negro migrants
from the South." The conference was held in the Assembly room at the
State House. Col. Lewis T. Bryant, Commissioner of Labor, presided.
After many reports and discussions of work accomplished in various
parts of the State, the body voted to accept the proposed Negro
Welfare Bureau, under the Department of Labor. A fund of $7,500 is
available for the coming year's maintenance and work. The scope
of this bureau's work was employment, housing, social welfare and
readjustment, e