ducation and legal fairness. This bureau acted as
a welfare clearing house for all social agencies working for the
betterment of the colored people.

At the next session of the legislature, a bill was passed, February,
1918, establishing in the Department of Labor the Negro Welfare
Employment Bureau. According to a report of the work of the Negro
Welfare Bureau made public in April, 1918, considerable progress in
the work of improving both the migrating negroes to New Jersey from
the South as well as the members of the race generally who have been
in this State for some time has been made. With the possible exception
of Salem and Hudson counties, the sheriffs of the State report no
increase of criminality from the migration of negroes from the South.
At Pennsgrove in Salem county, where the Du Pont powder plants are
located, Sheriff William T. Eiffin reports that considering the
increase in population there has been an increase in crime in that
county, but that the situation is well in hand and diminishing to
normal.[145]

Hartford was one of the industrial centers to which large numbers of
the migrating negroes went. The housing problem became acute and
the chief efforts of those endeavoring to better the conditions of
migrants was along this line. Religious, civic and commercial bodies
gave attention to the amelioration of this problem.[146] The problem
of housing negroes who were coming in greater numbers each year to
Hartford was taken up briefly by speakers at the 128th annual meeting
of the Hartford Baptist Association at the Shiloh Baptist Church. It
was decided to bring the housing problem before the attention of
the Chamber of Commerce, which, it was said, some time before had
appointed a committee to investigate it. Negroes complained that they
were obliged to pay higher rent than white folks and that they were
obliged by landlords to live together in cramped quarters that were,
by reason of the crowding, insanitary. They said also that the living
of several families almost as one family leads to a breaking down of
the moral and religious ideals.[147] Conditions in Hartford resulting
from the bringing of more than 2,500 negroes from the South were
discussed at the fall meeting of the Confidential Exchange with a view
to preparing for these new arrivals.

At the June, 1917, meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, a committee
was appointed from that body to investigate housing conditions and
to cooperate with ot