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Chapter 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture 285
to expansion in certain typical ^^Negro job” industries, such as saw and
planing mills, coal mining, and maintenance-of-way work on railroads.®
From 1910 to 1930, on the other hand, the number of Negro males
engaged in nonagricultural pursuits in the South increased by less than
one-third and, in absolute numbers, by less than 300,000. This slowing up
of the increase of the Negro nonagricultural labor force in the South
occurred in spite of the general expansion of Industry—which was about as
large as during the previous two decades—and in spite of the fact that the
TABLE I
Number of All Male Workers and of Negro Male Workers in
Nonagricultural Pursuits, by Section; 1 890-1930*
Negro Workers as
Number of All Male Number of Negro Male Percentage of
Section Workers (in thousands) Workers (in thousands) All Workers
1890 1910 1930 1890 1910 1930 1890 1910 1930
United States 11,053 19,508 28,516 824 *,396 2,170 7.5 7.2 7.6
The North
and West 9.018 15,595 22,179 190** 350 831 2.1 2.2 3.8
The South 2,025 3,913 6,337 634 1,046 1,339 31.3 26.7 21.
1
Sources: Eleventh Census of the United States: i8qo. Population, Vol. 2, Tables 78, 79, 8a and xx6; Thirteenth
Census of the United States: iQio, Population, Vol. 4, Tables 2, s, 6 and 7; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical
Abstract of the United States: 1038, Tables 51, 52 and 53; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United
States: 1020-1932, pp. 303-309.
Turpentine farm workers have been consistently included among workers in nonagricultural pursuits, in
accordance with the procedure adopted in the 1930 Census. In the 1890 Census, however, they were not
separated in a special group, but were included in the category "other amcultural pursuits" (Table 79). For
Southern states, this group contained mainly turpentine workers, but for the Northern states certain other
occupations predominated. Therefore, the workers included under this heading were considered as nonagricul-
turaf for the Southern states, and as a^cultural for other areas.
^ This figure includes a few nonwhite workers other than Negro.
previous growth in the Negro farm population had been superseded by a
decline. Also during the ’thirties, as we shall show presently, the Negro
lost in relative position. This was the more serious because industrial expan-
sion in the South was now much slower, because there were great losses in
agricultural employment, and because there were no new openings in the
North.
It was of major importance that Negroes were partially excluded as
ordinary production workers in the textile industry since it developed into
the South’s leading industry. The unimportant textile manufacturing which
had existed in the South before the Civil War had been based largely on
Negro labor, partly slave labor. But the new textile industry broke with this
tradition. It arose as a civic welfare movement to create work for poor
white people. The Negroes were not needed, as the labor supply of poor
whites from the agricultural areas and from the mountains was plentiful.
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