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APPENDIX 6
PRE-WAR CONDITIONS OF THE NEGRO WAGE
EARNER IN SELECTED INDUSTRIES AND
OCCUPATIONS’
I. General Characteristics of Negro Jobs
Many of the generalizations made in Chapter 1 3 will be corroborated in this Appendix
by data on conditions in particular lines of work. The selection of industries and occu-
pations that we shall use may be somewhat arbitrary. The reason is that we do not
intend to give anything like an exhaustive description; our purpose is rather to empha-
size the fact that general industrial trends, race prejudice, and other factors have worked
out somewhat differently for different industries and occupations. For that reason, we
need include only examples on how the Negro has fared in different types of cases.**
On the one hand, there are the so-called “Negro jobs,’* i.e., those industries in which,
as far as the South is concerned, most of the workers are Negro. On the other hand, there
are those industries which, even in the South, have only a minority of Negro workers.
Finally, there are industries which are exclusively or almost exclusively for whites.®
* The subsequent “case studies” are based, mainly, on a previously cited series of unpub-
lished research memoranda on “Negro Labor and Its Problems,” prepared by and under the
direction of Paul H. Norgren. He was assisted by Lloyd H. Bailer (automobiles), James
Healy (lumber), Herbert R. Northrop (tobacco and longshore work) and Arnold M. Rose
(service industries exclusive of domestic service and slaughtering and meat packing). Most
of the data on the Negro in domestic service have been drawn from a memorandum by
Gladys L. Palmer (“A Memorandum Report on Negroes in Domestic Service”) which was
worked out in conjunction with this series. For more recent information, we have depended
in part on an unpublished doctor’s thesis by Herbert R. Northrop, “Negro Labor and
Union Policies in the South” (Harvard University), in which certain parts of Dr. Norgren’s
materials have been supplemented and brought forward to the beginning of 1942.
(Editor’s Note: Since Dr. Myrdal’s book went to press. Dr. Northrop has rewritten his
thesis for publication by Harper & Brothers under the title. Organized Labor and the Negro,)
**
The length of each section, for the same reason, is not determined by the actual impor-
tance to the Negro of the various lines of work.
® Obviously there are no distinct borderlines between these various groups. There are no
Negro jobs in the sense that the Negro, at least in the South, has a complete job monopoly
in certain occupations. On the other hand, when Negroes do compete with white workers in
“non-Negro jobs,” there is usually some concentration of Negroes in certain specific occu-
pations. Even industries excluding Negroes may use Negroes exclusively for work carrying
a social stigma (charwomen, toilet attendants). The question of what occupations should
be considered as Negro jobs is to be answered somewhat differently depending upon what
kind of occupational or industrial classification is used for the analysis. An enumeration of
“Negro jobs,” for these reasons, must be arbitrary to some extent.
1079
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