Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/43

Rh seven-eighths Caucasian, she has been refused admission to other buildings when she wished for various reasons to change the location of her establishment.

Here and there, slowly and by degrees, the line of color discrimination breaks. A large chain of dairy lunchrooms in Chicago employs colored bus girls, cooks and dishwashers and depends almost entirely on colored help to do the rougher work.

More notable yet is the fact that a downtown business college informs employment bureaus that it is able to place any and all colored graduates of the college in positions as stenographers and typists. In a few loop stores colored salesgirls are employed. In one shoe store beginning this policy, a white girl filed complaint. The manager investlgated and found there was no objection except from this one white girl, who was thereupon dismissed.

A mattress factory opened wage earning opportunities to colored women in the last year. Two taxicab companies now hire women as cleaners. The foregoing list of occupations just about completes the recital of progress in this regard in Chicago in the last year.

Colored women were occupied during the war in various cities in making soldiers' uniforms, horses' gas masks, belts, puttees, leggings, razor blade cases, gloves, veils, embroideries, raincoats, books, cigars, cigarettes, dyed furs, millinery, candy, artificial feathers, buttons, toys, marabou and women's garments.

The comment of a trained industrial observer on the colored woman as a machine operator is as follows:

"Few as yet are skilled as machine or hand operators. Because of their newness to industrial work, the majority have been put on processes requiring no training and