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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 - 12. Coal Miners
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Appendix 6. Conditions of Negro Wage Earner 1113
early ’twenties and ’thirties. In 1927, the Northern employers managed to get rid of
the union contract and were able to cut their wage costs so that they regained a large
part of their previous losses to the Southern fields. They have been able to maintain this
positicn. When the New Deal brought about new wage minima and gave new power to
the unions, the regional wage differential was kept small ^ and, in 1941, it was virtually
eliminated.
By and large, the Negroes failed to get their proportionate share of the employment
gains in the South. Therefore, the proportion of Negroes among the Southern coal mine
workers declined from 35 per cent in 1910 to 19 per cent in 1930, whereas the North-
ern coal fields accepted a somewhat increased proportion of Negro workers. During the
’thirties there was a continual loss in relative position for Negro miners in the South.
About 46,000 Negro workers (including unemployed persons) were registered as coal
miners in the 1930 Census, and they constituted 19 per cent of the total. In 1930
there were 35,000 employed Negro coal miners in the South, making up 16 per cent of
the total. There was only a small difference between the corresponding absolute num-
bers for white workers.**
The outlook for the Negro is doubtful. It is possible that the general long employment
trends will not go as steeply downward as they did during most of the period 1920-1940.
On the other hand, the South has lost the competitive advantage of a nonunion wage
scale. Since the increase in wages has been greater in the South than elsewhere, it is
likely that mechanization will be particularly pronounced in the South. Norgren and
Northrup have noticed a tendency to mechanize the loading operations in Southern coal
fields. It will probably hurt Negroes more than whites for several reasons: first, because
Negroes are concentrated both in the South and in the hand-loading jobs; second,
because whites are usually selected as operators of mechanical loaders. (One factor in
this selectivity is that mechanical loading is crew work while hand loading is a highly
individualized occupation.) The United Mine Workers Union, which otherwise pro-
tects Negroes, has been’reluctant to resist such favoritism.® The present war boom may
•Norgren and Associates, of, cit,y Part 4, pp. 406-417.
The wage level in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia declined from an average of
82 cents an hour in 1921-22 to 70 cents in 1924, whereas the Northern fields (Pennsyl-
vania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) almost maintained their level of 1921-1922 (89 cents)
up until about 1927, when union conditions were abolished in most of them. The average
wage, by 1933, hit a low of 37 cents in the Upper South, as against 46 cents in Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Then followed an increase under the New Deal. By
1936 the averages were 77 cents in the North and 74 cents in the Upper South. In 1941
a basic daily wage rate of $7 was adopted for both Northern and Southern Appalachian
area. The rate in Alabama, however, is lower ($5), partly because this state does not
compete with the others, but probably also because it has the highest proportion of Negro
workers in the coal mines. (See; F. E. Berquist and Associates, Economic Survey of the
Bituminous Coal Industry under Free Comfetition and Code Regulation [mimeographed],
National Recovery Administration, Work Materials No. 69 [1936], 2 vols. Also, Table 4
in Norgren, of, cit,y Part 4, p. 436, and Northrup, of, cit,y p. 290.)
^Fifteenth Census of the United States: tg$Oy Pofulationy Vol. 3, Part i, p. 23; Six^
teenth Census of the United States: 1940 Pofulation, Second Series, State Tables 18a and
1 8b.
•Norgren and Associates, of, cit,y Part 4, pp. 417-419, and letter from Paul H. Norgren,
August 16, 1942. -See also Northrup, of, cit,y pp. 296-301.
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