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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 4. Southern Trends during the ’Thirties - 5. In the North
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Chapter 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture 291
facturing expanded, but Negroes did not get their full share in the employ-
ment gains. The same was true about hotels, lodging places, restaurants,
and of laundering, cleaning, and dyeing establishments, where the pro-
portion of Negro workers declined to about one-third. The contraction of
railroad employment during the ’thirties made Negroes lose heavily,
probably even more than did the white workers. In the iron and steel group
they also declined, absolutely as well as in relation to the whites. There is
no indication of any gain for the Negroes in coal mining, construction, saw-
mills or other woodworking industries. It seems that they did share, how-
ever, in the expansion in paper, pulp, printing, publishing, and allied
industries, but the total number of Negro workers in these groups was not
higher than 15,000 in 1940. Domestic service, which is the most important
of all ^‘Negro job” industries, seems to have had but a limited expansion
during the ’thirties, and it is doubtful whether the Negro gained anything
at all, although he still holds a practical monopoly in the South.
5. In the North
At the close of the Civil War the Negro wage earner in the North had a
quite different position than in the South.® The mere fact that there were
few Negroes in the North implied that no occupations could take on the
character of ‘‘Negro jobs.” There had not been slavery in the Northern
states for some two generations. The Negroes, therefore, had not been
protected in their jobs by the vested interests of a white master class. The
competition from white workers had always been intense.^^ In most indus-
trial and commercial centers of the North where there were any appreciable
number of Negroes, the three decades prior to the Civil War saw recur-
rent race riots, growing out of this competition for jobs. In the few
localities in the North where Negroes actually had come to monopolize
certain types of work, their exclusion had thus started much earlier. In
1853 Frederick Douglass complained:
Every hour sees the black man [in the North] elbowed out of employment by
some newly arrived immigrant whose hunger and whose color are thought to give
lumber and lumber products, the total for the groups ‘’logging,” "sawmills and planing mills," and "furniture
store fixtures, and miscellaneous wooden goods" was compared with the 1930 total for "forestry," "saw and
^anin£^ mills," and "other woodworking and furniture industries." This procedure was recommended by
Dr. P^p M. Hauser, Acting Chief Statistician for Population, Bureau of the Census (letter of May 8, 1942).
Ortain other minor rearrangements are self-explanatory, since the descriptions in the stub consist of the cate-
gory titles which comprise the given industry groui» in the 1940 Census classification, and from this the
comparable 1930 categories may be determined by inspection.
Although the table probably gives a fairly correct general impression—^at least if one considers the further
<malifications presented in footnote (b)—the comparison is not quite exact in every detail. The increase in
the proportion of Negroes in banks, insurance, and real estate companies, for instance, may depend, at least in
part, on changes in the classification.
Gainful workers in 1930 included unemployed workers. Since Negroes are usually unemployed to a
greater extent than whites, the proportion of Negro workers may not necessarily have changed if the figure
m column 3 is slightly below that in column 4. A difference of several percentage points, however, ptobabVy
indicates a real change.
• Comparable data not available.
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