Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Footnotes - Chapter 13
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
1256 An American Dilemma
with the 1940 figures on employed workers. To be sure, a census of unemployment was
taken In 1 930 which indicated a much lower unemployment than in 1940, particularly
for Negroes (Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Unemfloymenty Vol, II,
pp. 232 ff.), but this study probably involves an under-enumeration, especially for
Negroes, (There was little indication of unemployment rates being significantly higher
for Negroes than for whites.) It Is not likely, however, that a comparison based on
accurate data for employed workers would have shown any smaller decrease in the
proportion of Negroes in the urban labor force than do the figures in Table 2, since
this would have presupposed that the race differential in unemployment had become
smaller. Rather it was the other way around; in spite of the lack of reliable statistical
data, it seems most probable that, between 1930 and 1940, unemployment increased
more for Negroes than for whites.
This development is not restricted to the South. The discrepancy between the
increase in urban Negro population and the increase in the Negro labor force was even
greater in the North than in the South during this period. We shall discuss the causes
later.
In both regions the development is to some extent explained by the institution of
old age benefits and large-scale relief and by the increase in the numbers of Negro
youths who attended schools: these factors caused a certain tendency for Negroes to
withdraw from the labor market. (See Chapter 13, Section 9.) However, these with-
drawals from the labor market were certainly due, in part, also to the lack of employ-
ment opportunities for Negroes which have tended to cause elderly people, particularly,
to abstain from seeking jobs and from considering themselves as workers.
See source reference to Table 3. Data available at this writing do not enable us to
indicate the exact size of the change in total employment, since the 1940 figures refer
to employed workers 14 years of age and over, and those for 1930 to both employed
and unemployed workers 10 years of age and over. These circumstances have been
considered in the text comment, which refers only to some of the most apparent
changes.
The Negroes in New York not only had to bear the pressure of general sentiment
against free Negroes, but were called on to stand up under an economic pressure stronger
than that endured by any other of the free groups. For generations the New York
Negroes had had an almost uncontested field in many of the gainful occupations. They
were domestic servants, laborers, boot-blacks, chimney-sweeps, whitewashers, barbers,
hotel waiters, cooks, sailors, stevedores, seamstresses, ladies’ hairdressers, janitors, caterers,
coachmen. (At that time a black coachman was almost as sure a guarantee of aristocracy
for a Northern white family as a black mammy for a family of the South.) In a limited
way they were engaged in the skilled trades. The United States Census of 1850 lists
New York Negroes in fourteen trades. In two occupations—^as janitors of business
buildings and as caterers—a number of individuals actually grew wealthy. (James
Weldon Johnson, B/aeh Manhattan [1930], pp. 43-44.)
Frederick Douglass, cited by B. Schrieke, Alien Americans (1936), p. 1 22.
There were many exceptions though. Ray Stannard Baker relates from the North:
“And yet, although I expected to find the Negro wholly ostracised by union labour,
I discovered that where the Negro becomes numerous or skillful enough, he, like the
lulian or the Russian Jew, begins to force his way into the unions. The very first
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
