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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 19. The War Boom—and Thereafter - 5. ... And Afterwards?
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426 An American Dilemma
The Negro will have to be considered in this post-war planning work.
As always, he will be unemployed much more often than the white worker.
As time goes on, it will become more and more apparent that either the
Negro will have to be cared for as a more or less permanent relief client or
positive measures must be taken for his integration into the regular
economy. The tradition of governmental noninterference on the labor
market has been broken during the New Deal, and still more during the
War. Trade unions, in so far as they have not themselves abolished
monopolistic practices, will increasingly be forced to do so. Employment
policies will become less individualistic—more based upon concern about
utilization of the total national labor force.
There will be factors, in addition to governmental pressure, which will
tend to strengthen the forces friendly to Negroes in the labor movement,
at least in the long run. Whenever the unions attempt to leave the Negro
out, there may, again, be some risk that employers will tend to use the
Negro worker against them. Probably even more important is the fact that
some of the most potent anti-Negro forces in the American community
are, at the same time, anti-labor. Labor will have to side with the Negro
for political reasons. Since labor relations, more and more, are becoming
public relations and thus will depend on political action, this will tend to
protect the Negro’s employment opportunities.
Much more generally, the Negroes’ economic fate after the War will
depend upon the general development of attitudes toward race in America.
There looms a ‘‘Negro aspect” over all post-war problems. There may be
radical changes ahead—both in the Negro’s actual status and in ideologies
affecting him. America has lost the protection of the oceans, and there
will be many more international implications to national policies. It may
well be that the transition, foreboded by the Great Depression and con-
tinued by the Second World War and the Peace to come, will change the
conditions of life in America to such an extent that the period after the
War will stand out as apart from the pre-war time, as does the long period
after the Revolutionary War from the colonial era. To this broader per-
spective we shall return in the last chapter of this book.
always somewhat uncertain whether those in political power at the time will select the
best plans or whether they will know how to coordinate various plans. It must be considered,
finally, that not even the best blueprints are of much use unless there are administrative
agencies which are competent to handle them. At present there is a certain tendency to
wreck many of the agencies which will be needed for post-war problems. The Civilian Con-
servation Corps and the Work Projects Administration have already been abolished. The
Farm Security Administration has experienced violent attacks, but, so far, it has been saved.
If this trend should go further than is warranted by the present decline in relief needs, so
that many of the rehabilitation and welfare agencies will not even be allowed to maintain
skeleton staffs, it would mean that a great amount of practical experience would be thrown
away.
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