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Footnotes 1257
Negro carpenter I chanced to meet in the North (from whom I had expected a com-
plaint of discrimination) said to me:
“ ‘Pm all right. I’m a member of the union and get union wages.’
“And I found after inquiry that there are a few Negroes in most of the unions of
skilled workers, carpenters, masons, iron-workers, even in the exclusive typographical
union and in the railroad organizations a few here and there, mostly mulattoes. They
have got in just as the Italians get in, not because they are wanted, or because they are
liked, but because by being prepared, skilled, energetic, the unions have had to take
them in as a matter of self-protection. In the South the Negro is more readily accepted
as a carpenter, blacksmith, or brick-layer than in the North not because he is more highly
regarded but because (unlike the North) the South has almost no other labour supply.”
{following the Color Line [1908], p. 1 3 5.)
The New South (1890), pp. 249-250.
Problems of the Present South (1909; first edition, 1904), pp. 186-187.
thesis that the South provided industrial opportunities for Negroes had a vital role in
its defense for abridging their rights as citizens:
“The South has sometimes abridged the Negro’s right to vote, but the South has not
yet abridged his right, in any direction of human interest or of honest effort, to earn
his bread. To the Negro, just now, the opportunity, by honest labor, to earn his bread
is very much more Important than the opportunity to cast his vote. The one opportunity
is secondary, the other is primary; the one is incidental,—the greater number of enlight-
ened peoples have lived happily for centuries without it,—the other is elemental,
structural, indispensable; it lies at the very basis of life and Integrity—^whether indi-
vidual or social.” {lbid,y pp. 187-188.)
From Slavery (1901; first edition, 1900), pp. 219-220.
Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910, Pofulation, Vol. IV, Table 7.
Thirteenth Census of the United States: igio, Pofulation, Vol. IV, Table 7; and
Fifteenth Census of the United States: igsoy Pofulationy Vol. IV, State Table il.
The data for the nation as a whole indicate that, between 1910 and 1930, there
was a 46 per cent increase of male workers (all races) in nonagricultural pursuits. For
unskilled workers the rate of expansion was only 20 per cent. (U.S. Bureau of the
Census, Alba M. Edwards, Social-Economic Grouping of the Gainful Workers of the
United States in ipso [1938], p. 7.) Yet it was due, mainly, to this limited expansion
in laboring jobs that the Negro was able to make any inroads into industry. Sterner
points out:
“There were 1,171,000 more male unskilled workers in 1930 than in 1910; 40 per
cent of these [additional] workers were Negroes. Of the 2,121,000 additional semi-
skilled workers, 8 per cent were Negroes. The total increase in number of skilled,
clerical, managerial, and professional male workers amounted to 5,739,000 persons, of
whom only 2 per cent were Negroes.” (Richard Sterner and Associates, The Negroes
Sharey prepared for this study [1943], p. 27.)
Nevertheless, there had been some improvement in the Negroes’ occupational status;
the proportion of all Negro workers who were in semi-skilled occupations had increased,
at the same time as the proportion of those in unskilled occupations had declined some-
what. Yet in relation to the white workers, the position of the Negro had become
worse. {Idem,)
Edwards, of, cit,y pp. 47 and 59.
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