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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 5. In the North
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292 An American Dilemma
him a better title to the place; and so we believe it will continue to be until the
last prop is leveled beneath us—^white men are becoming house servants, cooks, and
stewards on vessels; at hotels, they are becoming porters . . . and barbers—a few
years ago a white barber would have been a curiosity. Now their poles stand on every
street . .
The constant stream of European immigrants to the North continuously
provided new supplies of cheap labor which competed with Negro labor for
even the lower jobs such as domestics and common laborers. The trade
unions were early stronger in the North than in the South and they were
concentrated in the crafts. Most of the time they effectively kept Negroes
out of skilled work.^® They could do it the more successfully as the North-
ern Negroes did not have the head start which the handicraft training under
slavery gave the Southern Negroes.
Having all these things in mind, it is easy to explain why it early became
a stereotyped opinion that, as far as the chance to earn a living was con-
cerned, the Negro was actually better off in the South than in the North.
This opinion, for natural reasons, became particularly cherished by Southern
whites. Henry W. Grady emphasized that the Negro “has ten avenues of
employment in this section [the South] where he has one in the North.”^^
And Edgar G. Murphy declared:
The race prejudice is . . . as intense at the North as it is anywhere in the world.
. . . The negro at the North can be a waiter in hotel and restaurant (in some); he
can be a butler or footman in club or household (in some); or the haircuttcr or
bootblack in the barber shop (in some); and 1 say ‘‘in some” because even the more
menial offices of industry arc being slowly but gradually denied to him.^*
Booker T. Washington regularly endorsed this view, and it had a
strategic importance in his whole philosophy, particularly in his educational
program:
. . . whatever other sins the South may be called upon to bear, when it comes to
business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance
in the commercial world . .
Much the same thing is often told the observer in the South today, when
it most certainly is an exaggeration. But even for earlier times the proposi-
tion sounds questionable. We do not have the comprehensive statistics which
would be necessary to ascertain how the two regions actually compared in
the opportunities they offered Negroes during various periods. Much
scattered information, however, gives an impression quite different from
the Southern stereotype. In a general way, the tremendous industrial
development in the North and the small number of Negroes compared to
the total labor demand were factors which worked to the Negroes^ advan-
tage. If we look over the whole period from the Civil War up to 1940,
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