The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study... together with a Special Report on Domestic Service by Isabel Eaton, A.M.

Philadelphia: Published for the University, 1899. Hardcover. Very Good. First edition. Quarto. 520, (viii) ads pp. Diagrams, two folding charts. Bound in later full black buckram titled in gilt on the spine. Some light rubbing at the corners, a few light spots confined to the last couple of leaves of ads, and a repaired split else near fine. A considerably better copy than usual, the book was originally issued in both wrappers and cloth, this was likely a wrappered issue, re-bound when the text block inevitably began to fail, as they almost always did. Du Bois's monumental study of the social conditions in which the Negroes of the Seventh Ward of Philadelphia lived, and one of the first scientific sociological studies ever conducted. Du Bois's method, a house-by-house canvass of the Ward, had a lasting impact on him, and revealed to him the true state of urban dwelling African-Americans. The effect of the study impressed Horace Bumstead, the President of Atlanta University, enough to offer Du Bois an appointment in Sociology and directorship of the newly formed conferences that resulted in the *Atlanta University Studies of the Negro Problem*, and which eventually resulted in his ascension to national prominence. Copies of the first edition of *The Philadelphia Negro,* in any condition, are very scarce. *Blockson 101* #48.