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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 6. A Closer View on Northern Trends
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294 An American Dilemma
farm laborers j
helpers in building and hand trades; road and street
laborers; draymen and teamsters; delivery men and helpers in stores;
dressmakers and seamstresses. There were some Negro longshoremen in
New York and Pennsylvania; coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and
Illinois; iron and steel workers in Pennsylvania. By and large, however,
the Negro had scarcely any place at all in ordinary manufacturing industries
in the North.“®
Between 1910 and 1930, on the other hand, the number of male Negro
workers in nonagricultural pursuits in the North increased by no less than
480,000 (Table i). This means that the Negro male labor force in the
North more than doubled. Even the absolute increase was much larger than
that in the South (about 295,000).
Most of the increase occurred in the nonmanufacturing groups: domestic
and nondomestic service workers, helpers and delivery men in stores,
draymen, teamsters, truck drivers, and so on. The building industry gave
the Negro many additional jobs despite the fact that many craft unions
were almost as hostile to the Negro in the North as they were in the South.
Indeed, by 1930 almost half of the Negro building workers were in the
North. Some gains were made in street and road construction work, as in
the maintenance-of-way departments of the railroads. The proportion of
Negro longshoremen increased in New York and Philadelphia. Garages,
greasing stations, and automobile laundries in the North gave more new
jobs to Negroes than did corresponding establishments in the South. The
number of Negro coal miners in Pennsylvania quadrupled, even causing
some displacement of white workers; still the Negroes did not constitute
even 3 per cent of the total labor force in Pennsylvania coal mines by 1930.
The bulk of the Negro mine workers remained in the South.^’
In addition, Negroes managed, almost for the first time, to get a real
place in certain purely manufacturing lines in the North. The gains were
particularly noteworthy in the iron, steel, machinery and vehicle industries.
In 1930, over 100,000, or about 60 per cent of all Negro workers in this
group, were in the North. The majority of them were working in blast
furnaces, steel rolling mills and automobile factories. Much less significant,
but nevertheless noteworthy, were the gains in clothing industries and
certain food industries, particularly slaughter and meat-packing houses.
But most other Northern manufacturing industries failed to hire Negro
workers in any appreciable numbers. The Negro wage earner in the North
has little or no chance in textile factories, sawmills, electrical machinery
and supply factories, shoe factories, bakeries, or furniture factories—^to
mention just a few examples of the numerous Northern manufacturing lines
where the Negro has been imable to get in. Only in exceptional cases did
Northern railroads use him for other than unskilled jobs. He was nor
hired by the utility companies. Thus, even in the North, the Negro
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