Booth8 and Jane Addams,9 writers concerned with similar issues but who were not academic sociologists. In fact, the work of these authors probably served as models for DuBois. DuBois uses the same methods as do Booth and Addams: maps, census data, descriptive statistics, and in-depth interviews.
Here is it necessary to note the great influence of Charles Booth, which spread far beyond London to New York, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. In turn, the works of the Westside Studies and the Pittsburgh Survey, sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation in 1914, resemble those of Addams and Booth as well as those of DuBois. In this perspective, DuBois may be viewed as a link in an empirical chain engaged in the central social scientific, if not ideological, work of the Settlement Movement. Seen in this light, DuBois's work takes on seminal status not only for the study of the urban poor but also for the study of race in urban America. Indeed, it is in this sense that The Philadelphia Negro was truly the first work of its kind. It was the first to seriously address and profoundly illuminate what was then known as “the Negro problem.”
DuBois's argument was that the problems of black Phila-delphians stemmed largely from their past condition of servitude as they tried to negotiate an effective place in a highly competitive industrial urban setting in which the legacy of white supremacy was strong and their competitors were favored because of their white skin. Moreover, the European immigrants tended to be more able because of their experience of freedom, viewed as a powerful advantage over the recently freed slaves. Given this edge, they also benefited from positive prejudices of white employers who sought them out to the exclusion of blacks. To white employers white skin color was the sign of a good worker, while black skin color was indicative of a poor worker. In so many work settings, once the white workers were there in force, they collaborated against black labor, often making the settings off-limits to black workers. They sometimes threatened to quit if such people were hired. Hence the blacks were set up to be “the last hired and the first fired.” Their negative reputations preceded them in so many instances, thus setting in motion “the self-fulfilling prophecy.”
DuBois saw, too, that black entrepreneurship was similarly undermined in a white supremacist context. Through his research of the history of black business in Philadelphia, he discovered that at times middle-class blacks were doing fairly well. There were black doctors, lawyers, businessmen, caterers. In fact, in the mid-nineteenth century blacks dominated the catering business. Many of the barbers were black too, cutting white people's hair. But he saw that, whenever the blacks would begin to achieve middle-class status, a fresh wave of immigration from Europe would arrive and undermine the black middle class as it was emerging. This is what eventually happened to the black catering business: its members lost their dominant position to caterers with white skin color, who had an advantage because whites preferred dealing with whites.10 This scenario had devastating effects on the Negro Philadelphian. His family, his community, his church, and his very identity suffered. What was socially disorganized remained so, or became worse.
In these circumstances, DuBois distinguished four grades that comprised the class structure of the Negro community. Grade I was made up of the talented and well-to-do. Grade II was made up of the “laborers” who worked hard and were decent and law-abiding people. Grade III was made up of the working poor, people who were barely making ends meet. And Grade IV was made up of the “submerged tenth” of the Philadelphia Negro population. As DuBois notes, this stratification system was extremely volatile and precarious, primarily because of the interaction of racism and economics at the time. As noted above, DuBois's bias against the exuberant form of religion practiced by most blacks of the Seventh Ward served to discount the black church in his eyes as an integral institution of the black community.11
The influx of European immigrants was highly destabilizing to this community. The immigrant labor pool was not only used to depress wages of ordinary workers, it was very often exploited to the exclusion of blacks. The black community would feel the effect of every successive wave of European immigration. Prejudiced white employers would drop their black workers in favor of white immigrants or simply would not hire blacks. So a great many blacks who possessed skills and work experience were left unemployed or underemployed, sometimes dramatically so. A case in point was a college-educated engineer who worked as a waiter. And there were many other cases, such as a woman trained as a secretary but then denied employment. Even those who were in favor of educating or training blacks, it seemed, did not want to hire them.
Blacks appeared to find their “niche” in the occupations that were most consistent with their previous condition of servitude. Hence the servant jobs in the homes of the wealthy served as a relatively secure situation for many. DuBois roundly criticized this situation for many of the reasons mentioned, but also for the way it supported white prejudices toward blacks. But even this niche became endangered by white, generally Irish, immigration.12
This general situation contributed to a profound demoralization of the black community, a fact that expressed itself in the social life of the black community. With poverty of spirit as well as poverty of purse, the black community became increasingly disorganized. Family life suffered. To make ends meet, many families would take on single male boarders, who were often new arrivals from the South, and these men would serve as a destabilizing influence on the family and the household. Alcohol abuse, gambling, crime, and violence were persistent problems for the community. As these problems became worse, they presented whites with an ever greater rationale for their prejudices; a vicious cycle had been created.
After uncovering the way economic factors conspired with racism to keep the Philadelphia Negro down, DuBois looked for the role of the “benevolent despot,” who would presumably exert a positive influence. Instead, he found that the so-called benevolent despot, who so often appears to be a disinterested referee, often plays a very active role, looking out for his own interests and tolerating much of the prejudice toward blacks:
If now a benevolent despot had seen the development, he would immediately have sought to remedy the real weakness of the Negro's position, i.e., his lack of training; and he would have swept away any discrimination that compelled men to support as criminals those who might support themselves as workmen.
He would have made special effort to train Negro boys for industrial life and given them a chance to compete on equal terms with the best white workmen; arguing that in the long run this would be best for all concerned, since by raising the skill and standard of living of the Negroes he would make them effective workmen and competitors who would maintain a decent level of wages. He would have sternly suppressed organized or covert opposition to Negro workmen.
There was, however, no benevolent despot, no philanthropist, no far-seeing captain of industry to prevent the Negro from losing even the skill he had learned or to inspire him by opportunities to learn more.13
The truly benevolent despot was nowhere to be found.
Instead, DuBois encountered the self-interested capitalist and noted certain contradictions in his racial behavior. Such people would contribute to charities for the blacks but would not hire them in their businesses. It appeared that perhaps the white workers themselves had a significant hand in keeping black men out of the workplace. As indicated above, their threats to quit were often taken very seriously, so even if the capitalist wanted to do right by the black man, he was constrained by the thought of losing his workers. This might account for some of the ambivalence observed by DuBois. And to be sure, this was not the only scenario DuBois presented. In certain industries capitalists actively pitted black workers against the Europeans who were threatening to strike for higher wages by hiring the blacks as strikebreakers.14 In this regard, given their low living standard, black workers served as a direct threat to the living standards of white workers. This resulted in tremendous tension and greatly exacerbated race relations. One can only wonder how such antagonisms diffused through Philadelphia at the time, having an impact far beyond the initial contested work setting.15
At the same time, it is provocative
