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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 2. In the South - 3. A Closer View
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284 An American Dilemma
As a laborer, the Negro is not so satisfactory as formerly. The old-time Negro,
trained in slavery to work, has about passed away and his successor is far less
efficient and faithful to duty. Lately, large numbers of Negro laborers have shown a
tendency to leave the farms for work on railroads, in sawmills, and in the cities,
large numbers migrating to the cities of the North. They like to work in crowds
and this often results in making more work for the police.*^
In a relative sense there was an element of truth in those statements, at
least in so far as fewer and fewer young Negroes could keep up skills when
they were not allowed to compete under the better working conditions
and the improved techniques, and when they had diflSculty in getting train-
ing. This was what Booker T. Washington saw when he started out with
his endeavor to give Negroes vocational training for crafts and trades.*
All these things are, as we said, much in the foreground of public discus-
sion in the South. We must ask: How have the rising numbers of urban
Negroes earned their living when they have had all these factors working
against them.^ The explanation is the contrary force or trend, which we
mentioned earlier: that there has been a great expansion going on in non-
agricultural industries in the South during most of the time since the Civil
War. The urbanization of the South has meant, for one thing, that there is
a growing number of upper and middle class white families in the cities
who can employ domestic servants. This is especially important since it is
traditional in the South that every family which can afford it, even down to
the lower middle class, should have domestic help. The growing industries,
furthermore, created a considerable number of laboring jobs for Negroes,
even when they were excluded from the machines. And they did get into
some industries.
The employment losses to the Negroes, therefore, have often been
more relative than absolute. Even if the Negroes were pressed down in
relative status in the occupational hierarchy, and even if they did not get
their full share in the number of new jobs so that the proportion of Negroes
declined, the absolute number of Negroes for the most part increased,
except in stagnating crafts and industries. At least during parts of the
period up to the First World War the absolute gains in job opportunities for
Negroes in the South, in spite of the relative losses, were considerable. Since
then, however, even those absolute gains have declined drastically.
3. A Closer View
From 1890 to 1910, the total number of white male workers in non-
agricultural industries in the South more than doubled. The number of
Negro male workers in nonagricultural pursuits increased by two-thirds,
or by more than 400,000 (Table i).** The latter increase was due mainly
* Sec Chapter 41.
**
There are no occupational census data by race prior to 1890.
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