Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/49

Rh the number of colored persons ready to pay higher rentals, the lower the realty values slump.

To quote a paragraph from the housing survey of the school of civics and philanthropy:

"It is a matter of common knowledge that house after house, flat after flat, whether under white or black agents, comes to the negro at an increased rental. The only available argument, it would seem, which will ever dispel the public impressions is for instances to become just as numerous of charge downward as they now are of charge upward. A negro woman, recent purchaser of a modern six flat building on the south side, informed the investigator that she had been importuned by numerous white agents and by two negro dealers, one of whom she named, to allow them to rent her flat for her at a substantial increase above the rent she is now receiving, acting as her own agent."

The report says further: "Counter-charges are made against the negro tenant by dealers of both races." It considers these charges in extensive detail, and then declares:

"It is established that, despite the low rents, which are immaterial in the light of circumstances, the general housing condition of negroes in the area lying between State street and the railroad tracks, stretching for several blocks north and south of 27th street, is reprehensible, a menace to health and constitutes kindling wood sufiicient to keep Chicago in constant danger of disastrous conflagration.

"Whatever may be the contributing causes, demand and supply, overbidding for coveted places on the part of tenants, inconspicuousness of the negro as an economic factor, guaranteed rentals or what not, the negro in