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268 THE CRISIS The percentage of Negroes in the older age groups is smaller than among the whites, due partly to a higher death rate, but also probably to a higher birth rate among the colored people. The high infant mortality among colored people is shown by a smaller proportion under five. The percentage as to marriage for Negroes 15 years of age and over is as follows: Single-Male, 35.4; female, 26.6. Married-Male, 57.2; female, 57.2. Married, widowed or divorced-Male, 64.0; female, 73.1. Widowed or divorced-Male, 6.9; female, 15.9. Colored people marry at a somewhat earlier age than the whites, but have also usually a larger percentage of the widowed. The 12,000 colored Masons in Georgia have been licensed by the State to do a fraternal insurance business. They support the orphan home and industrial school and have in their insurance fund $68,346. Houston, Tex., has a $15,000 colored library nearly ready for tenancy. There are rooms for children, reference, lectures and trustee meetings. The architect was W. S. Pittman, of Washington, D. C. It has 20,000 volumes. The second colored branch library of Louisville, Ky., will have a building to cost $17,000, a gift of Mr. Carnegie. The $5,000 already raised is for the site. The National League on Urban Conditions has undertaken to handle "the big-brother movement" in the case of colored boys in New York City. It has already had fifty-one cases. The baseball team of Wilberforce University will make a Southern trip this spring, playing white colleges in Ohio and colored schools in Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia. An Athletic carnival was held among the colored students of Washington at Convention Hall. Among the schools represented were Howard, Lincoln and Hampton, besides many Northern high schools. ECONOMICS. THE Mutual Housing Company, of Springfield, Mass, has been organized to supply good tenements for colored people and to encourage investments in real estate. They own property to the value of $12,200, and have recently declared a dividend of 5 per cent. The Colored Stenographers' Association has been organized in New York City for securing employment and mutual benefit. The North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, a colored industrial insurance company, had a gross income of $313,576 for 1912, and increase of $50,000 over the previous year. The Knoxville Banking and Trust Company, a white institution, recently went into the hands of a receiver and hundreds of colored people lost their money. Negroes are thinking of opening a bank of their own. All the officials have been arrested and held in heavy bond. Lawson Irvin, a Negro contractor, swore out the main warrant. The Scullin-Gallagher Steel Foundry, of St. Louis, Mo., one of the largest steel plants in the world, employs several thousand colored men in its shops. Negroes are to be found working in all but three of its departments. The wages paid Negroes run from $1.75 to $6 per day. Not a few Negroes have learned the trade in this foundry and are now foremen of their departments. The method of land tenancy in South Carolina is thus described by the Columbia State: "A lawyer in Greenville or Columbia bus 150 acres twenty miles from his office at $6 and acre, or $900. He leases it to a Negro for 1,500 pounds of lint cotton a year, worth, at 10 cents a pound, $150. The Negro buys a mule, mortgaging it to the seller, and mortgages his crop to a merchant. The merchant takes long chances and demands bit profits for advances. Sometimes both land owner and merchant lose everything, but in 'good ears' their returns are excellent. The land owner has a fine investment if he collects his rent once in two years, $63, after the payment of taxes, being 7 per cent. on his investment." In Toronto, Canada, G. W. Carter, a colored man has had the shoe-shining concession in the Union Depot for seventeen years, and manufactures shoe blacking which is widely sold. J. F. Gregory has a store and imports and sells ladies' and children's hats and dresses. Mrs. Decoursey, a colored woman, has been employed in the Woolworth store for four years as timekeeper. Balaytown, Ark., is settled by Negroes. It has three stores, a canning factory and a sawmill, ALONG THE COLOR LINE 269 and expects a brickyard soon. Good farming land around about can be bought for $15 an acre. The Union Industrial School is to be located there. The Frederick Douglass Center, of Chicago, has been trying to widen industrial opportunity for colored people by appealing to business men. Many business men have responded. Julius Rosenwald, who led the movement for the establishment of colored Y. M. C. A. organization wrote: "I keenly feel the injustice against the colored man, and have for some time past been making efforts to convince some of the head men of Sears, Roebuck & Co. of our duty in that direction." Irwin S. Rosenfels, advertising manager for Sears, Roebuck & Co. of our duty in that direction." "It will interest you to know that I recently have secured a favorable expression regarding the admission of colored apprentices from shop chairmen of three different labor unions employed in our printing plant." Farmers' Bulletin No. 516 of the United States Department of Agriculture tells of the remarkable intensive farming of Samuel McCall, a colored man of Alabama: "Determining upon concentrating his efforts upon a small area of land, he selected two acres near his cabin and has been devoting time and energy to that small tract for the past twenty-one years. His first effort was to improve the organic content of the soil. Practically everything produced by the soil, except the lint cotton and a portion of the seed, was returned to it. All the manure produced by his horse and two cows was used, but no commercial fertilizer except a little cottonseed meal under oats. Gradually the soil was made deeper by plowing unit in a few years it was open and porous to a depth of ten or twelve inches. "By 1898 the land was producing seven bales of cotton to the two acres which had first made about two-thirds of a bale each. This ex-slave took up seed selection earl and produced a high yielding strain, known locally by his name, as Sam McCall cotton. He has practiced crop rotation during the past few years to advantage. He plants one crop while another is maturing, thus keeping the land always occupied, getting a crop each of oats, corn and cotton from the same ground in one year. The goal of his ambition is to raise nine 500-pound bales of cotton on one acre' he has already succeeded in raising a 506-pound bale on a measured eighth of an acre. In one year he has produced, from one acre, three bales of cotton, fifty bushels of oats, and fifty bushels of corn, according to this account." In Empire, Wyo., there are eight colored families. They have a public school and a Presbyterian Church. Four of these families have deeds to near 900 acres of land; all families, save one, have homesteads of 320 acres each. In the town of Gering, Western Nebraska, a prospective white juror, hailing from Southern Texas, was objected to because he acknowledged that in a case of colored men against white men he could not give an unbiased judgment. The case was that of Speese Brothers (colored) versus Nicholls (white), claiming $6,000 damages for cattle alleged to have been unlawfully taken by Nicholls. Judgment was rendered for the plaintiff. In St. Louis, Mo., white stablemen have struck because of colored competitors, and in Dallas, Tex., white chauffeurs tried to drive out the colored men until the owners armed their employees. EDUCATION. GOVERNOR BLEASE, of South Carolina, has vetoed a compulsory school-attendance bill. The Phelps-Stokes trustees have appropriated $10,000 for an endowment of a visitation fund at the white Peabody School in Tennessee. The purpose of the fund is to keep the officers, teachers and students of the school in close touch with the actual work of Negro educational institutions. The New Orleans courts have decided that the bill to remove the Southern University, a colored institution, from the city is unconstitutional. The Virginia Negro State Teachers' Association has been meeting in Norfolk. There were 400 delegates in attendance. The General Educational Board is offering to provide a salary of $3,000 a year for a State supervisor of Negro rural schools in certain Southern States. There have been several Negro applicants, but white men have been appointed in Florida and in Arkansas.
