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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 6. Pre-War Conditions of the Negro Wage Earner in Selected Industries and Occupations - 3. Other Service Occupations
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io88 An American Dilemma
Chinese laundryman and the home washing machine may have been an additional factor;
the pattern of Negro residential segregation in cities like New York and Chicago,
finally, may have made it more difficult for the Negro home laundress to solicit patrons.
The commercial laundries, on the other hand, have increased their Negro labor forces
from 15,000 in 1910 to 60,000 in 1930. Compared to this four-fold increase for
Negroes, the number of white workers only doubled. Yet even this gain was small com-
pared with the loss.
Dressmakers and seamstresses (not In factories) constitute a similar case. The number
of Negro workers in this group declined from 38,000 in 1910 to 20,000 in 1930.
It is extremely difficult to get an idea of the development in most of the other service
industries, since the census statistics are seldom quite comparable from one decade to
another, and few adequate studies have been made. In 1930, 228,000 Negro workers,
constituting 17 per cent of all workers in the industry, were employed in hotels,
restaurants, and boarding houses, the majority of them as porters, waiters, cooks and
other servants.^ All these occupations have experienced a rather rapid growth during the
last few decades, but the Negroes have had but a small share in these gains.® The conse-
quence, in the case of waiters and waitresses, is that the proportion of Negroes has
declined from 22 per cent in 1910 to 15 per cent in 1930. What little part the Negro
had in the general increase was mainly in the North, where, by 1930, there were more
Negro waiters than in the South. Negro waitresses made somewhat more progress than
the waiters but were nevertheless much fewer than their male counterparts by 1930.
In the white group, too, it was the women who made the largest gains. Thus, the loss
of the Negro male waiters was largely the gain of the white waitresses. During the
’thirties Negroes continued to lose in relative position. In the South, in 1930, 40 pei
cent of the workers in hotels, restaurants, and similar places were Negroes, but in 1940
only 32 per cent were Negroes.^ Negro bell-boys, too, have lost out, at least relatively.
Travelers in the South often have occasion to observe that, nowadays, the most modern
and busiest hotels and restaurants tend to have white bell-boys and white waitresses,
whereas the old-fashioned places tend to have Negro servants. In hotels and restaurants,
generally, it seems that workers behind the scenes—cooks, porters, and so forth-—are
often Negro, even when those who come into direct contact with the customers are
white.
The barbershop and hairdressing occupations have undergone a tremendous develop-
ment since 1910, particularly in the female branch, the beauty shop business. The total
number of workers in the whole group of occupations almost doubled between 1910 and
1930, but the Negro gain was only about 50 per cent. The Negro barber has lost most
of his white business in the South. His gains have been restricted to the segregated
Negro neighborhoods, where the beauty shops have experienced a faint counterpart to
* U.S. Bureau of the Census, ’Negroes in the United States: ig2o~igs2, 3105 Thirteenth
Census of the United States: xgtoy Pofulation^ Vol. 4, pp. 312 and 313. Most of these
Negro seamstresses usually work in their own homes. Some may work in homes of white
families where they are temporarily employed.
**
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States: r 92 0-295 2, p. 358.
^Thirteenth Census of the United States: igio, Population^ Vol. 4, pp. 430-433;
Fifteenth Census of the United States: igso. Population^ Vol. 5, pp. 412-587.
^ Sec Chapter 1 1. Table 3.
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