The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-01-25
NEW YoRK's RICH NEGROES.
Some of Them Employ White serv-
ants at Their Homes.
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sun.
There was printed the other day a
news item about the disturbance made
in a Brooklyn street whose jewellers
have some ideas about their social
standing by the appearance of large
automobile in which were the MEM
bers of a family that had bought one
of the best residences in the neighbor-
hood. The disturbance was caused by
the discovery that the family were ne
groes. Among folks who lacked the
acute personal interest in the discov-
cry, felt by the jewellers in the invaded
street, a discussion was at once start
ed as to the number of negroes in the
city who can afford to buy houses
ranging in value from $4,000 to $780,
900 and live on the scale common
among white people who sepnd from
$10,0 900 to $4,000 a year.
Inquiry establishes the fact that
there are at least 200 such families and
probably 300. Their homes are fur
nished with excellent taste. Their SER
wants are for the most part white.
Obviously it is a delicate task to find
white people who will undertake mem
ial service in a colored family, but the
experience of the weather. negroes of
New York is that there are always
some Scandinavians who have no OBJ
JeCllOH 10 SuCn pldC6S anu are pei =
fectly contented in them. There are
not few Germans in such places.
Here and there is an English butler,
but careful inquiry reveals no Irish
in reputable employment in the colored
colony-the transplanted IriShman or
Irish woman is too quick to catch the
sentiment of the new environment,
with it's strong prejudices.
On Sixth avenue, near Twenty-eighth
street, is a saloon which was conducted
for twenty years nearly by two COL
ored men, Edward and John Nail. Ed
ward Nail is dead. John Nail dis
claims any pretensions to prominence
in colored society in New York. He
says frankly that even if his employ
ment as a saloonkeeper did not raise
a. bar against him, his business makes
such demands upon his time that he
could not possibly find leisure for the
lighter persuits of life.
Nail, however, has a very wide ac-
quaintance among colored men of
wealth and of high social position in
their own circle. His is about the
only saloon in New York into which
such men go.
Negroes of the class under discus
sion feel themselves very much too
good for the street, the saloons, res
taurants and clubs which are segre-
gated under the elevated railroad III
West Fifty-third street, where the
sports, the theatrical men and women
and the "bohemians" of the race spend
their time and money. They appre-
ciate keenly that they are unwelcome
guests in any reputable white mans
saloon or billiard room.
Nails is conducted with the quiet
ness and the manners of a high-class
Broadway bar and billiard rooom. 1t
has no black-and-tan features. The
light-complexioned white man who
enters the place feels himself very i'll
at ease at once, even though Their is
no one but the negro bartender in the
place-he knows not only that he has
got into a place where he does not
want to be, but that he has got into
a place where he isn't wanted
81 saw that story about the man
with the automobile" said John HAIL
to a Sun man the other day, land, do
you know, hardly believed it. 1 know
the man who bought that house and /
know who his friends are and how he
lives and what his ambitions and ideas
of life ARE.
"Flashy tricks such as appearing at
his new home for the first time in an
automobile with all his family aboard
are not like him at all. If he did own