The City Church and Its Social Mission; A Series of Studies in the Social Extension of the City Church (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 Excerpt: ...for one of the most benighted and most blighting of all developments of our modern industrial life. 1 See report of National Conference of Charities and Correction , 1811. It is unthinkable that tenement house and home workers should come under the operation of labor organizations. Their isolation from one another, their difference of language and social customs and their lack of training in fighting battles of justice and right, preclude the possibility of organized demands. Our Southern cities are rapidly developing a serious menace because of the living conditions of their wageearning colored women and girls. The tendency of dwellers in the country to seek residence in the cities is affecting the colored population quite as distinctly as the white. Colored girls are leaving their country homes to seek employment and better wages in the cities. To them the city is the hope and the promise of all that is valuable in life; but in the centers of population they find no homes open to them for lodging except those that are provided by landlords and real estate brokers. As a consequence, colored girls congregate in unprotected "homes," or else they swell the number of boarders and lodgers to be found everywhere among the colored population. These are the girls who go into the homes of white people as cooks, nurses, housemaids, or as office girls for physicians and lawyers. Their labor is in demand, but their home life is neglected, forgotten and uncared for; and the girls themselves are exposed to all forms of vice, disease, and degeneracy. The only hope for the well-being of these classes is in the improved social conscience and activity of colored churches, in the work of societies for improving the condition of the colored poor, and in the developm...