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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 3. A Closer View
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286 An American Dilemma
If those white workers were paid low wages and held in great dependence,
they could at least be offered the consolation of being protected from Negro
competition. Another factor strengthening the exclusion of Negroes from
the textile industry was the employment of white women.
The tobacco industry in Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, up to
the Civil War, had had but a small minority of white workers. After the
War, however, there were two important innovations which precipitated an
increase in the proportion of white labor. One was the taking up of a new
line of manufacturing: that of cigarettes. The other change was the intro-
duction of machinery. Both these changes gave an excuse for breaking the
traditional Negro labor monopoly. Much of the work became neat and
clean, requiring little physical strength, and was adapted to the employment
of white women. Negroes were retained, however, as stemmers and in other
laboring jobs. The ratio of Negro to white workers around the turn of the
century became stabilized at a two-to-one level in these three tobacco-pro-
ducing states. This ratio seems to have been kept almost constant until
about 1930, allowing Negroes to share in the general expansion.®
In the skilled building trades, the development had proceeded so far
by 1890 that white workers were in the majority although they were not
yet represented by any strong unions in the South. The development has
continued ever since and the appearance of trade unions in the South helped
to give the white building workers even greater power in keeping the
Negro out. They have been particularly successful in the new building trades
where Negroes had no traditional position. The fact that the proportion of
Negroes in these trades already by 1890 had been reduced to 25 per cent
or less in the Upper and Lower South made it comparatively easy for the
organized white workers to disregard the interests of the Negro workers.
In the trowel trades (bricklayers, masons, plasterers, and cement fin-
ishers), on the other hand, the situation is somewhat different. Negroes had
managed to retain a large proportion of the jobs when unionization began
in the South, and it is probable that it was this circumstance which forced
the organizations in these trades to take a more friendly attitude toward
Negroes. Discrimination may occur locally, but the national leadership
occasionally takes action against such practices. The proportion of Negroes
in these trades—roughly one-half in the Upper and Lower South—^has
remained relatively unchanged during the whole period between 1900 and
1930. The situation is similar in unskilled building work. Negroes and
^This and the subsequent discussion concerning occupational trends irom 1^90 to 19^0
is based on the following sources: Eleventh Census of the United States: tSgo, Population^
Vol. 2, Table xi6j Thirteenth Census of the Umted States: /9/0, Population^ Vol. 4,
Tables 2, 6 and 7} Fifteenth Census of the United States: S930, Population, Vol. Ill, Part i,
p. 23, and State Table xo, Parts 1 and 21 Vol. IV, State Table xi. See, also, various sources
cited in Appendix 6.
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