The Colorado statesman., 1919-02-01

were entirely segregated from the
white girls. In the majority of cases,
however, white and colored girls were
found working amicably together.
Next to Detroit in the advance of
colored women in industry during the
war comes Newark, New Jersey
While colored women in New York
did not get as far up the Industrial
scale of colored women in Detroit
they made more progress than those
of any other city. We find here
group of $50 loading shells at the mu
milton factory of the American Can
Company, working on night shift
Colored women are also employed at
cigar making, fur dyeing, awning
making, handkerchief making, as help
celluloido novelties, as helpers on ap-
rons and towels, at pasting and lin
ing trunks, packing suitcase handles,
garment making, busheling and thread
cutting on soldiers garments, as help
ers in laundries, at top and doll, but
ton and feather making; fur cutting,
candy making, picking fowls and past
ing lssels in packing houses. AS an
example of the hard work that is Of
fered colored women in some places,
the coIored women track workers en-
ployed in Newark by the Pennsyl-
vania Railway and the Public Service
Railway Companies may be cited.
Aside from the injustice of it all,
there are several practical reasons
why industry should not continue the
policy of neglecting colored women.
In the first place, the present indus
trial depression may be but momen-
tsry. 1t is not improbable that bust
ness will boom soon. There is no
guarantee that immigration from Eu
rope will be renewed in anything like
its pre-war magnitude for many years
Therefore, that industry which re-
leases colored women now may want
them back before long. Does indus
try desire to trains them all over
again? Here was a group of people
that had had practically no factory
experience, and just when they were
beginning to become accustomed to
the routine of shop work, they were
discharged 1t will mean consid-
cradle loss to production if they must
be retrained.
To force all the women of one race
into unskilled work is as unscientific
as it is unjust Wherever they have
been given the opportunity, colored
women have shown that large pro
portion can master the intricacies of
the most complex machine. What a
waste to productive power to use such
individuals as scrubwomen!
There has been a lot of theorizing
regarding colored working women,
but the testimony of their worth has
far outweighed the unfavorable crit |
icisms. More loyal, more cheerful
and more intelligent than foreign |
girls" are some of the reports.
A lew employers nave sldleu lhdt
they discharged their colored women
employees because they believed them
to be inefficient From careful in
vestigation the writer has become con-
vinced that in many cases where col |
ored women have been reported as un-
dependable unreliable, the unfavora-
BILE criticism was rendered by preju-
diced forewomen or foremen. In De
troit 1t was discovered that where
women of their own race had been ap-
pointed as forewomen they had pro
duced much better results and the
turnover of labor had been less. Dis
cussing this point, the employment
manager of one of Chicago's biggest
packing houses where many colored
women are employed, said: Il have
to let many colored women go on ac-
count of a certain forelady. She says
they are lazy and saucy. l know that
they are better workers than the