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 - Appendices - 6. Pre-War Conditions of the Negro Wage Earner in Selected Industries and Occupations - 2. Domestic Service
<< 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.
Appendix 6. Conditions of Negro Wage Earner 1083
servants were Negro. The percentage of Negroes was still higher in the South;
in ten states it was 85 per cent or more, and there were four Southern states
where only one servant out of twenty was a white person.
The gain in employment of Negro servants in private families, which may have
amounted to more than 300,000 new jobs, was due to several factors. One was the
enlargement of the market for the Negro domestic servant brought about by the north-
ward migration of Negroes, and the simultaneous decline in the number of young
immigrant girls in the North. A second was a general expansion in the field. It has been
estimated that the total number of domestic workers in private families has increased
by about one-third from 1910 to 1930.*^ It seems that but a small part of this increase
was for white workers; most of the expansion was a Negro gain.**
It should be noted, however, that this general expansion was only half as great, pro-
portionally, as the increase in number of nonfarm families.® This circumstance should
be considered, for it may serve as a warning against any exaggerated hopes that the
Negroes, even if they fail to get a real place in other parts of the nonagricultural econ-
omy, can always be assured of having an increasing number of job opportunities as
servants to private families. True, we have reason to assume that the increase in the
number of nonfarm families will continue for a long time and that there will be a
smaller number of white girls willing to work as domestics. If the Negro population
becomes more dispersed over the entire North and West—^which probably will happen
gradually, but only in so far as some jobs can be found also for Negro men—this, too,
will increase the opportunities for Negro domestics. Yet, it should never be overlooked
that the proportion of families having full-time servants is probably shrinking, owing
to a number of factors: smaller number of children; higher wages for domestics;
mechanization of home work and increased use of processed foods; transfer of service
work from homes to specialized service establishments. These trends will limit the job
opportunities for Negro women particularly where they now have a near-monopoly on
this kind of work. As for the North and the West, we should not take it for granted
that the chances of Negro domestics will increase in exact proportion to the difficulties
of finding white workers. Many housewives outside the South have a prejudice against
using Negro women in their homes, partly because they believe them to be less depend-
able, partly because they shun the contact with an alien race. It is quite probable that
the opening up of a public discussion on venereal diseases during recent years has increased
the reluctance of many white women to have colored help. Those who do use Negro
domestics are increasingly insisting on “health cards.” The prevalence of such attitudes
has never been adequately studied, but we have reason to assume that such attitudes con -
* David Weintraub and Harry Magdoff, “The Service Industries in Relation to Employ-
ment Trends,” Econometrica (October, 1940), p. 304, These authors made these computa-
tions from data in Daniel Carson, assisted by Henriette Liebman, Labor Suffly and Employ-
menty Preliminary Statement of Estimates Prefared and Methods Usedy W.P.A. National
Research Project (November, 1939).
**
At this writing there are no data on household servants available from the 1 940 Census
which could be compared with those in the 1930 Census. It seems, however, that the propor-
tion of Negroes among the domestic workers in the South has been declining (see Chapter
13, Table 3).
* There were about 14,000,000 nonfarm families in 1910 and over 23,000,000 in 1930.
{Fifteenth Census of tJte United States: /pjo, Pofulationy Vol. 6; p. ii.)
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
