The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 133

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

133

Other Dangers.

The housing conditions as they obtain among
Negroes in town and country with their resultant
Much
of the impurity met with may undoubtedly be
traced to home conditions resulting from improper
housing. Negro neighborhoods in cities are only
too often the localities chosen by unprincipled men
to show questionable moving-pictures and vulgar
vaudeville. Unconscientious pool-room proprietors
make their resorts the breeding-places for gam-
blers.
temptation for the pleasure-loving Negro youth,
and there only too often he learns to play with
painted vice and designing seducers. The Negro’s
great love for music and singing, when properly
directed, a wonderful power for religious and
moral culiure, is used by the powers of evil to lead
astray the trusting colored young man and woman.

lack of privacy are a serious moral danger.

Public dance-halls, run for gain, are a strong

Mount Zion Church and School, New Orleans.

Industrial Conditions.

A far greater proportion of the Negroes of our
country are gainfully employed than is the case
with the whites. While 71 per cent. of the colored
population was working in 1910, only 51 per cent.
of the total white population consisted of wage-
earners. More than half of these Negroes are en-
gaged in farming.
operated by Negroes, and 241,000 farms were
owned by members of the race. They owned
500,000 homes and conducted 45,000 business en-
terprises.

Prior to the Civil War there were many Negro
mechanics in the South, and in Southern towns
and cities certain trades are still largely in the
hands of colored men. But in the North this is
not the case to the same extent, In Northern
Cities it is only during late years that the Negro
laborers are gradually passing from the unskilled

In 1910, 900,000 farms were :

to the half-skilled and skilled occupations. The

work of factory workers and textile workers com-
pares fairly well with that of other workers as to
quantity and quality.

wen me

An Alabama Chapel and School.

Educational Conditions.

Provisions for Negro education are not what
they should be. In the South, where by far the
greater part of schools for the Negroes are found,
they get only about half of their share of the educa-
tional funds. Large numbers of children of school
age are not in school. The buildings are inadequate
in number, the equipment is often shabby, and in
many cases the teachers are incompetent. And
conditions would be much worse, if it were not for
the fact that the churches and private organiza-
tions are providing more than one half of the total
of all expenditures for Negro education. There
are probably not more than seventy public high
schools for Negroes in the towns and cities of the

Church of Colored Lutheran Congregation,
Freesoil, Mich.

sixteen Southern States, and only about forty-five
of them offer a four-year course. The others range
from three-year courses downward. We are in-
formed that only a very few of the 108. county