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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 - 3. Other Service Occupations
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Appendix 6. Conditions of Negro Wage Earner 1087
of the workers and their performance in a way which perpetuates the low status of the
occupation. Domestic service is not covered by any federal laws about social security,
minimum wages and maximum hours. The Employment Service sometimes sets unofficial
wage minima by refusing to refer registrants to employers who pay salaries below
a certain scale. Relief agencies often consider the value of a job offer before deciding
whether or not a client should be offered the alternative of either accepting it or being
taken off the relief rolls. Several of the Northern states have made some efforts to
improve the situation by introducing protective legislation, but this legislation is not
extensive and it has not been adequately enforced.® In the South there is still less
legal or administrative protection. Because so many middle income and low income
families in the South have domestic servants, the problem of improving the conditions
of work in this occupation without endangering the work opportunities is much more
difficult in the South than anywhere else.
Among the most constructive efforts are the attempts to give adequate vocational train-
ing to an increased number of white and colored girls. The Work Projects Administration
has been training thousands of girls every year. Local organizations, such as the
Y.W.C.A., have sponsored a number of training centers. Negro vocational institutions
have done their bit. So far these attempts are minimal compared with the size of the
market. Also, there is no guarantee that the best trained students will work as domestics
;
they may prefer such jobs as cooking in restaurants. Even at best, the chances to improve
the conditions of workers and the status of the occupation appear rather slim; it goes
without saying that only in those families which are able and willing to pay adequate
wages can domestic work become “professionalized” in this way. The number of such
families may increase, particularly because of the rising proportion of gainfully occupied
married women in the white population. This trend cannot fail to increase both the
need for reliable and competent domestic workers and the ability to pay high salaries to
such workers. Some of the underlying forces—such as the higher employment rates of
the housewives—^will precipitate the trend toward greater dependence on specialized
service industries such as commercial laundries, cleaning and dyeing shops, processed
food production, child nurseries, hotels and restaurants. And this change, as we shall
:ee, may tend to put the Negro in a still more disadvantageous position.
3. Other Service Occupations
The most significant example of how the Negro has lost out through the “industriali-
zation” of service work is the displacement of the Negro home laundress by commercial
laundries. This group of Negro service workers, the second largest among all groups, has
declined from 368,000 in 1910 to 271,000 in 1930.** Since in 1930 not much more
than one-tenth of these workers resided in the North and West, where there had been
about as many in 1910, it is evident that the northward migration failed to give the
Negro laundress any new job opportunities which could compensate for the displacement
in the South. The main reason for this is probably that commercial laundries are
particularly well developed in the large Northern centers; the competition of the
* Ibid^ pp. 225-232.
**
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States: jp2o~ip^2, p. 326. Thirteenth
Census of the United States: ip/o, Pofulationy Vol. 4, pp. 430-431. Some of the Negro
home laundresses may work as employees of private households. It is probable, however,
that the majority of them did the laundering in their own homes.
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