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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture - 5. In the North - 6. A Closer View on Northern Trends
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Chapter 13. Seeking Jobs Outside Agriculture 293
the general picture is that, while the Negroes in the South have been
gradually losing out in most lines of work where they had been firmly
entrenched at the time of slavery and have been allowed to get a favorable
position in but a few of the new industries, Negroes in the North have
made some fairly significant gains in some occupations which are new or
where few if any Negroes were allowed to work before. Still Negroes are
completely, or almost completely, kept out of many manufacturing lines
in the North.
The employment gains of Northern Negroes are not a result of a regular
trend. It would be much nearer the truth to characterize them as a series
of unique happenings. Some of the Northern employers started hiring
Negroes on a large scale, as previously explained,*^ mainly because of the
temporary scarcity of labor, due to the booms during the First World War
and the ^twenties, and to the decline in immigration. The Negro, along
with the Southern white worker, actually was the “last immigrant” to
the North. At that time there was a much greater need for unskilled labor
than is the case nowadays. Then, too, white workers, in so far as they did
not come from the South, had little race prejudice. Later many of them
developed a deep race prejudice.
Thus, it was a combination of factors which explains the Negroes’ gains
in the North—but a combination that could not last. The same was true
about some of the secondary motives which induced employers to use
Negro labor. Many of them wanted to keep their labor force heterogene-
ous so as to prevent unionization. Some of them even used Negroes as strike-
breakers. This had happened several times before the First World War.
In many of these cases Negro workers were dismissed when the labor
conflict was ended. But, sometimes—^particularly between 1910 and 1930
they actually managed to gain a foothold in this way. The motives of these
employers, however, could be significant only as long as they believed that
there was a possibility of keeping the unions away from their plants. Now
they are gradually getting away from this belief and have no reasons to
engage Negro labor for this purpose.
6. A Closer View on Northern Trends
Between 1890 and 1910 the increase in number of male Negro workers
In the North was only about 160,000 (Table i). Apart from the service
occupations (domestics, laundresses, cooks, waiters, janitors, barbers, and
so on) there were In 1910 no particular occupations where Negroes were
concentrated. The largest proportion of Negroes in any of the nonservice
groups was in the category “general and not specified laborers,” many of
whom were construction workers 5
others may have been merely “jacks-of-
all-trades.” Other groups including a few thousand Negro workers were;
*Sec Chapter 8.
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