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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 - 11. Textile Workers
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Appendix 6. Conditions of Negro Wage Earner nil
Southern textile mills and clothing factories declined from 7 per cent in 1920 to 4
per cent in 1 940. The absolute number of employed Negro workers in the South was
26,000 in 1940.*
Before the Civil War the textile industry in the South was unimportant. It was
largely manned by Negroes, and often owned by planters who used their own slaves.
It was not until about a decade after the Civil War that the real growth began. This
growth, however, was not a matter of an expansion of the old plants. Instead, there
were new plants built, mainly in the upper Piedmont area, where there is a big supply
of white labor. Yet around many of the new textile mills there was a large potential
Negro labor force as well. Norgren, on the basis of the 1880 Census, finds that Negroes
constituted about one-third of the population in the upland counties of Georgia,
Alabama and the two Carolinas. Yet no appreciable share of the jobs \vas given to the
Negro.’^
The explanation of this phenomenon seems to be that the origin of the cotton indus-
try in the South was not a matter of individualistic enterprise alone. Regular “cotton
mill campaigns” were organized by “citizens* committees** which often raised funds for
the purpose. The entrepreneurs depended on the moral and financial backing of their
white fellow citizens and had to consider their viewpoints, which were colored by the
anti-Negro sentiments bred during the Reconstruction period.*^ The very fact that the
industry was a new one and not a descendant of the pre-war textile plants was enough
to leave the Negro out. Only in rare instances has the Negro had a chance in any
Southern industry where he had not become entrenched before or just after the Civil
War, when the moneyed whites had a direct financial interest in him.
As soon as this exclusionist pattern was established, the white working population
acquired a vested interest in it which was difficult to remove. That the majority of the
white workers are women, while the majority of the Negro workers are men, may have
contributed to the resistance. There is an even greater reluctance against allowing Negroes
of either sex to work with white women than there is against letting Negro men work
with white men. Some employers have tried to employ more Negroes, but have met
with such vigorous protests that they have had to abandon the idea.*^ The Negro, thus,
has been unable to share in the benefits of the spectacular rise of the Southern textile
industry. Although it has hurt the working population in the New England and Middle
Atlantic states, it has not helped the Southern Negro to any appreciable extent.
An energetic unionization campaign in the South was inaugurated in 1937 by the
Textile Workers* Union. Like other C.l.O. unions, it admits Negroes on a basis of
equality, and membership in this union often protects the Negro from losing the few jobs
that he now has in the Southern textile mills. It is not likely, however, that the union
will ever do anything positive in order to help the Negro get a share in the ordinary
production jobs. Even if unionism in Southern textile mills is based on a working class
* Chapter 13, Table 3.
**
Norgren and Associates, of, cit,, Part 3, pp. 254-261. Norgren’s description of the
historical development of the Southern textile industry is largely based on Broadus Mitchell,
TAe Rise of Cotton Mills in tJte South (1921)} and Broadus Mitchell and George S-
Mitchell, The Industrial Revolution in the South (1930).
* Ibid.y Part 3, pp. 262-265.
^ lbid,f Part 3, p. 269, and Greene and Woodson, of, cit,, pp. 146-148.
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