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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 - 4. Turpentine Farms
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Appendix 6. Conditions of Negro Wage Earner 1089
^he boom in white areas. Under such circumstances, there is nothing surprising in the
fact that almost half the Negro workers are in the North.
The most important group among other service occupations from the viewpoint of
Negro employment were the janitors and sextons. No less than 78,000 Negro workers
were enumerated under this heading in 1930. It appears that there had been a big
increase in this work since 1910, and slightly more so for Negroes than for whites.
Among elevator tenders, on the other hand, there was a decreasing proportion of
Negroes. Among charwomen and cleaners the Negro maintained his relative position
pretty well; and among bootblacks he improved it.
Such is the story we can read in the census reports. It is not encouraging. By and
large, the displacement of work from homes to service and manufacturing industries
brings a definite loss to the Negro. The main reason for this seems to be that it makes
the work more pleasant, and thus more attractive to the white worker. When there is
an expansion, the Negro usually fails to get his full share of it, except in particularly
lowly occupations. Sometimes there is an actual decline in the number of Negro
workers. Had more complete data from the 1940 Census been available at this writing,
we should probably have been able to document these conclusions even more convinc-
ingly. For, because of the unemployment among white workers during the ’thirties,
these trends, if anything, must have become more pronounced.
4. Turpentine Farms
Turpentine farms and distilleries are not a large industry, but they have the highest
proportion of Negroes in the whole nonservice group. Of the total labor force of 43,000
in 1930, no less than 75 per cent was Negro. It is almost entirely a Southern industry,
mainly located in Georgia and Florida. At present it is experiencing a pronounced war
boom. Otherwise it has been almost stationary for several decades. Turpentine, which
is used mainly for making paint, has been increasingly substituted for by petroleum
products. There is, however, a growing demand for rosin, formerly considered only
as a by-product of turpentine manufacture, so that it has become more valuable than the
turpentine itself.® Certain technical innovations have made the existence of the ordinary
turpentine farms rather difficult. Norgren points out that:
There has been developed in recent years a new method of producing turpentine,
known as the wood distillation process. This process consists in removing and pulping
the stumps of pine trees in “logged-over” areas, and distilling the pulp in large centrally-
located stills. Since modern labor-saving devices are used throughout, the number of
man-hours required to produce a given quantity of product by this method is only a small
fraction of what it is in the average gum-turpentine establishment; and it is consequently
not surprising to learn that wood turpentine has become a serious competitor of the
gum-distilled
product.***
There are obvious reasons why the turpentine industry employs predominantly Negro
workers. It is located in rather isolated rural areas. The work is strenuous. The main
part of it is “chipping,” which means cutting of V-shaped gashes through the bark
with a heavy knife. A normal day’s work may mean cutting some i,000 to 1,500 trees
in this way during 8 to 1 2 hours. Other chores are performed by children. Wages are
* Norgren and Associates, of, cit,, Part i, p. 106.
^ Ibid,, Part 1, p. 108.
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