The Negro is making gains in the unions. At the 1910 annual meeting of the National Council of the American Federation of Labor a resolution was unanimously passed inviting Negroes and all other races into the labor Federation. The officers of the Federation were instructed to take measures to see that Negro workmen as well as workmen of other races were brought into the union. This action was reaffirmed at the Atlantic City meeting (see above page 13.)

The report, made to the English Parliament in 1911 by a commission sent by the English Board of Trade to the United States to investigate the cost of living in American towns, gives important information concerning the occupations of Negroes in American cities. The report says: "The Negro population of New York, in spite of the industrial barriers that exist there, contains within itself most of the elements, professional, trading and industrial that go to make up the life of other and more normal situated communities." In Atlanta it was found that about three-fourths of the bricklayers are colored, but the majority of the carpenters are white. Separate unions exist for each race. Nominally the rate of wages for white and colored labor in the trades is the same. Most employers, however, it was found maintained that the average efficiency of the colored workmen is less than that of the white, and that the predominant wages of the two classes of workmen therefore differ slightly in favor of the white. In Baltimore it was found that the Negroes, owing to their history and numbers, occupy a very important position in the working class element of the population. They generally find employment of an unskilled order as laborers in all kinds of industrial establishments. An overwhelming majority in the building trades are Negroes.

The Birmingham, Alabama, district has perhaps a larger number of Negro workmen than any other district in the United States. "The building and mining industries are the two in which the white and colored races come into the most direct competition with one

another, yet it cannot be said that in either of these industries a
situation exists which occasions any very serious friction." In Cleve-
land Negroes were found in the steel and wire works, as plasterers,
hod carriers, teamsters and janitors.

In Memphis, "All the unskilled work and the lowest paid work in
skilled trades is done by Negroes. The Negroes are, however,
making their way into the skilled trades and in some woodworking
establishments both whites and blacks were to be seen working
side by side at skilled occupations." The industries of New Orleans
are of a kind which employ mainly unskilled or semi-skilled labor,
with the result that both white men and Negroes are found doing
the same kind of work and earning the same rates of pay. In the
Pittsburgh district a large number of work people in the building
and iron and steel trades are Negroes, some being found in highly
skilled occupations.

Nine out of sixty of the most important unions bar Negroes from membership. These unions are: "The International Brotherhood of Maintenence of Way Employees," Switchmen's Union," "Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen," "Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen," Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers," "Order of Railway Conductors of America," "Order of Railway Telegraphers," "American Wire Weavers' Protective Association," and the "International Brotherhood Boilermakers, Iron Ship-builders and Helpers of America." Fifty-one national labor organizations, several of which are the strongest in the country, report that there is nothing in their constitutions prohibiting the admittance of Negroes.

INVENTIONS

Born free, NoReceived some

Benjamin Banneker.-Noted Negro Astronomer. vember 9, 1731, in Baltimore County, Maryland. education in a pay school. Early showed an inclination for mechanics. About 1754, with imperfect tools, constructed a clock which told the time and struck the hour. This was the first clock constructed in America.

About 1754, he became acquainted with Mr. George Ellicot, who gave him access to his library, and furnished him astronomical instruments so that he might pursue farther the studies that he had already begun in astronomy. He owned and cultivated a little farm. This permitted him to give most of his time to scientific studies. Through correspondence he became acquainted with scientific men in all parts of the world. He assisted in laying out the District of Columbia. In 1791 he got out an almanac for the year 1792, and sent the manuscript to Thomas Jefferson. He was so impressed with it that he sent it to the Secretary of the Academy of Science at Paris. Banneker published almanacs in Philadelphia for 1792-3-4 and 5. His calculations concerning the rising and setting of the sun and moon, and the courses of the bodies of the

planetary system were so exact that they were praised by Fox,
Pitt, Wilberforce and other eminent men. One of his almanacs was
exhibited in the British House of Commons as an example of the
capabilities of the Negro.

James Forten, of Philadelphia, who died in 1842, is credited with the invention on apparatus for managing sails. Robert Benjamin Lewis, born in Gardiner, Maine, 1802, invented a machine for picking Oakum. This machine, in all its essential particulars, is said to still be used by the ship-building interests of Maine.

The first Negro to receive a patent on an invention was Henry Blair, of Maryland, who, in 1834 and 1836, was granted patents on a corn harvester. He is supposed to have been a free Negro. A number of inventions were made by slaves. It has been claimed, but not verified, that a slave either invented the cotton gin or gave to Eli Whitney, who obtained a patent for it, valuable suggestions to aid in the completion of that invention.

Some time after the Dred Scott Decision, 1857, The Patent General of the United States concurred, that a slave could not take out a patent on an invention. It is said that a slave of Jefferson Davis, in 1862, invented a propeller for vessels that was afterwards used in the Confederate Navy. A Negro slave in Kentucky is said to have invented a hemp-brake, a machine used for separating the hemp fiber from the stalk.

Sometime after the Dred Scott Decision, 1857, The Patent Office refused a Negro of Boston a patent on an invention on the ground that according to this decision he was not a citizen of the United States and therefore a patent could not be issued to him. December 16, 1861, Senator Charles Summer, on behalf of this Negro inventor, offered the following resolution in the Senate:

"Resolved, That the Committee on Patents and the Patent Office be directed to consider if any further legislation is necessary in order to secure to persons of African descent, in our country, the right to take out patents for useful inventions, under the Constitution of the United States."

The Committee made no report on the resolution. It was a case for interpretation rather than legislation. The matter was settled in 1862 by an opinion of the Attorney-General, relating to passports, that a free man of color born in the United States is a citizen.

The Patent Office, which does not record the race of the patentees, has, by investigation, "verified 800" patents which have

been granted to Negroes. It is estimated that as many more, which are unverified, have been granted.

The records of the Patent Office show that Negroes have applied their inventive talent to a wide range of subjects; in agricultural implements, in wood and metal-working machines, in land conveyances on road and track, in sea-going vessels, in chemical compounds, in electricity through all its wide range of uses, in aeronautics, in new designs of house furniture and bric-a-brac, in mechanical toys and amusement devices.

William B. Purvis, of Philadelphia, has inventions covering a variety of subjects, but directed mainly along a single line of experiment and improvement. He began in 1912, the invention of machines for making paper bags, and his improvements in this line of machinery are covered by a dozen patents. Some half dozen other patents granted Mr. Purvis, include three patents on electric railways, one on a fountain pen, another on a magnetic carbalancing device, and still another for a cutter for roll holders.

Joseph Hunter Dickinson, of New Jersey, specializes in the line of musical instruments, particularly playing the piano. He began more than fifteen years ago to invent devices for automatically playing the piano. He is at present in the employ of a large piano factory. His various inventions in piano-player mechanism are adopted in the construction of some of the finest player pianos on the market. He has more than a dozen patents to his credit already, and is still devoting his energies to that line of invention.

Frank J. Ferrell, of New York, has obtained about a dozen patents for his inventions, the larger portion of them being for improvement in valves for steam engines.

Benjamin F. Jackson of Massachusetts, is the inventor of a dozen different improvements in heating and lighting devices, including a controller for a trolly wheel.

Charles V. Richey, of Washington, D. C., has obtained about a dozen patents on his inventions, the last of which was a most ingenious device for registering the calls on a telephone and detecting the unauthorized use of that instrument.

George W. Murray, of South Carolina, former member of Congress, from that State, has received eight patents for his inventions in agricultural implements, including mostly such different attachments as readily adapt a single implement to a variety of uses.

Henry Creamer, of New York, has made seven different inventions in steam traps, covered by as many patents, and Andrew J. Beard, of Alabama, has about the same number to his credit for inventions in car-coupling devices. William Douglass, of Arkansas, was granted about half dozen patents for various inventions for harvesting machines.

James Doyle, of Pittsburgh, has obtained several patents for his inventions, one of them being for an automatic serving system. This latter device is a scheme for dispensing with the use of waiters in dining rooms, restaurants and at railroad lunch counters. It was recently exhibited with the Pennsylvania Exposition Society's exhibit at Pittsburg, where it attracted widespread attention from the press and the public.

In the Civil Service, at Washington, D. C., there are several colored men who have made inventions of more or less importance which were suggested by the mechanical problems arising in their daily occupations.

Shelby J. Davidson, of Kentucky, a clerk in the office of the Auditor for the Post Office Dept., operated a machine for tabulating and totalizing the quarterly accounts which were regularly submitted by the postmasters of the country. Mr. Davidson's attention was first directed to the loss in time through the necessity for periodically stopping to manually dispose of the paper coming from the machine. He invented a rewind device which served as an attachment for automatically taking up the paper as it issued from the machines, and adapted it for use again on the reverse side, thus effecting a very considerable economy of time and material. His main invention, however, was a novel attachment for adding machines which was designed to automatically include the government fee, as well as the amount sent, when totalizing the money orders in the reports submitted by postmasters. This was a distinct improvement in the efficiency and value of the machine he was operating, and the government granted him patents on both inventions. Robert Pelham of Detroit, is employed in the Census Office Bureau, where his duties include the compilation of groups of statistics on sheets from data sent into the office from the thousands of manufacturers of the country.

He devised a machine used as an adjunct in tabulating the statistics from the manufacturer's schedules in a way that displaced a dozen men in a given quantity of work, doing the work economically, speedily and with faultless precision. Mr. Pelham has been granted a patent for his invention, and the improved efficiency of his devices induced the United States Government to lease them from him, paying him a royalty for their use, in addition to his salary for operating