THE CALL OF THE SELF-SUFFICIENT NORTH
A surviving custom of servitude has consigned the mass of negroes
to the lower pursuits of labor. Even at this it would be possible to
live, for there would be work. In the North, however, such employment
has been monopolized by foreign immigrants clearing Ellis Island at
the rate of more than a million a year. The usurpation here brought
no clash, for the number of negroes in the North scarcely equalled a
year's immigration. From the ranks of unskilled labor, accordingly,
they were effectively debarred, being used occasionally, and to their
own detriment, as strike breakers and forced to receive smaller wages
and to make more enemies. From the field of skilled labor they have
been similarly debarred by the labor unions.
The labor unions have felt that they had a good case against the negro
workman. The complaints most commonly made are that he could be too
easily used as a strike breaker and that he lacked interest in
the trade union movement. As a matter of fact, both are true. An
explanation of this attitude at the same time brings out another
barrier opposed by the North to the free access of negroes to trades.
Considerable wavering has characterized the attitude of the trade
unions toward negro labor. The complexity of their organization
makes it difficult to place any responsibility directly for their
shortcomings. The fact remains, however, that despite the declaration
of the constitution of the federated body that no distinction shall
be made on account of sex, color or creed, negroes have been
systematically debarred from membership in a great number of labor
bodies. Even where there has been no express prohibition in the
constitution of local organizations the _disposition_ to exclude
them has been just as effective. Refused membership, they have easily
become strike breakers. The indifference on the part of negroes to the
labor movement, however, may well be attributed also to ignorance of
its benefits. In a number of cases separate organizations have been
granted them.
With the foreign immigration silently crowding him back into the
South, the labor unions, the prejudices of his white fellow workman
and the paucity of his number making him ineffective as a competitor,
driving him from the door of the factory and workshop, the negro
workman, whatever his qualifications, was prior to 1914 forced to
enter the field of domestic service in the North and farming in the
South. The conditions of livelihood in both sections kept him rigidly
restricted to this limited economic sphere. In 1910 the total number
of negroes ten years of age and over gainfully occupied in the United
States was 5,192,535 or 71 per cent of the total number of negroes ten
years of age and over. Of this number 2,848,258 or 55.2 per cent were
farmers and 1,122,182 or 21.4 per cent were domestic servants. Out
of nearly five hundred occupations listed in the census of 1910
three-fourths of the negro working population were limited to two. In
the manufacturing and mechanical pursuits throughout the entire United
States there were employed scarcely a half million or 12.1 per cent of
the working population.
Statistics of labor conditions in certain northern cities support this
conclusion. In New York City in 1910, of the negroes ten years of
age and over gainfully occupied there were 33,110 males and 26,352
females. Of the males there were engaged in domestic and personal
service 16,724 or 47.6 per cent of the total number of males. Of the
26,352 females there were in domestic service 24,647 or 93.5 per cent
of the total number. In the occupations which require any degree of
skill and utilise the training of acquired trades, the percentage
was exceedingly low. For example, in the manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits where there were the benefits of labor organizations and
higher pay, there were but 4,504 negro males, or 13.6 per cent of the
total number gainfully employed. The per cent of colored women in this
line was considerably less. Taken together with the 1,993 dressmakers
working outside of factories it was but 8.3 per cent of the total
number of females. This line of work, however, as all who are familiar
with the manner in which it is done will recognize, is but another
form of domestic service. Exclusive of this number the per cent drops
to a figure a trifle over one per cent.
Chicago, as another typical northern city, shows practically the same
limitations on negro labor. In 1910 there were gainfully employed in
this city 27,317 negroes. Of this total 61.8 per cent were engaged
in domestic service. The negro women, of course, contributed a larger
share to this proportion, theirs being 83.8 per cent of the females
ten years of age and over gainfully employed. In the manufacturing and
mechanical pursuits there were engaged 3,466 males and 1,038 females,
or 18.7 and 1.1 per cent respectively.[55]
Detroit, viewed in the light of its tremendous increase, shows some
of the widest differences. In 1910 there were 3,310 negroes of working
age profitably employed. Of this number there were but 410 males
and 74 females engaged in the manufacturing and mechanical pursuits.
Forty-six of the total female working population were engaged in
domestic service. Limited to a few occupations, the negroes naturally
encountered there intense competition with the usual result of low
wages and numerous other abuses. Whenever they entered new fields,
as for instance those designated by the census as trade and
transportation, they were generally compelled to accept wages below
the standard to obtain such employment.
There appears to have been a slow but steady progress throughout the
North toward the accession of negroes to new lines of occupation. This
change was forced, unquestionably, by the necessity for seeking new
fields even at an economic loss. From the lines of work in which
negroes for a long time have held unquestioned prestige, the
competition of other nationalities has removed them. It is difficult
now to find a barber shop operated by a negro in the business district
of any northern city. The most dangerous competitor of the negro in
northern industry has been the immigrant, who, unconscious of his
subtle inhibition on the negro's industrial development, crowded him
out of employment in the North and fairly well succeeded in holding
him in the South. After fifty years of European immigration the
foreign born increased from two million to over thirteen million and
only five per cent of them have settled in the South. Indeed, the
yearly increase in foreign immigration equalled the entire negro
population of the North.
The competition in the North has, therefore, been in consequence
bitter and unrelenting. Swedes and Germans have replaced negroes in
some cities as janitors. Austrians, Frenchmen and Germans have
ousted them from the hotels, and Greeks have almost monopolized the
bootblacking business. The decline in the domestic service quota of
the working negro population, when there has been a decline, seems to
have been forced. The figures of the United States census strengthen
the belief that the World War has accomplished one of two things: It
has either hastened the process of opening up larger fields or it
has prevented a serious economic situation which doubtless would
have followed the complete supplanting of negroes by foreigners in
practically all lines.
Before the war the immigration of foreigners from Europe was
proceeding at the enormous rate of over a million a year. This influx
was so completely checked by the war that the margin of arrivals
over departures for the first three years following the beginning
of hostilities was the smallest in fifty years. The following is a
statement taken from reports of the Bureau of Foreign Immigration.
IMMIGRATION SINCE 1913
Year Number
1913 1,197,892
1914 1,218,480
1915 326,700
1916 298,826
1917 295,403
The decrease of over 900,000 immigrants, on whom the industries of the
North depended, caused a grave situation. It must be remembered also
that of the 295,403 arrivals in 1917, there were included 32,346
English, 24,405 French and 13,350 Scotch who furnish but a small quota
of the laboring classes. There were also 16,438 Mexicans who came
over the border, and who, for the most part, live and work in the
Southwest. The type of immigration which kept prime the labor market
of the North and Northwest came in through Ellis Island. Of these, Mr.
Frederick C. Howe, Commissioner of Immigration, said that "only enough
have come to balance those who have left." He adds further that "As
a result, there has been a great shortage of labor in many of our
industrial sections that may last as long as the war."
With the establishment of new industries to meet the needs of the war,
the erection of munitions plants for the manufacture of war materials
and the enlargement of already existing industries to meet the
abnormally large demand for materials here and in Europe, there came
a shifting in the existing labor supply in the North. There was a rush
to the higher paid positions in the munitions plants. This, together
with the advancement of the white men to higher positions nearly
depleted the ranks of common labor. The companies employing foreign
labor for railroad construction work and in the steel mills of
Pennsylvania, the tobacco fields of Connecticut, the packing houses,
foundries and automobile plants of the Northwest, found it imperative
to seek for labor in home fields. The Department of Labor, in the
effort to relieve this shortage, through its employment service,
at first assisted the migration northward. It later withdrew its
assistance when its attention was called to the growing magnitude of
the movement and its possible effect on the South.
Deserted by the Department of Labor, certain northern employers
undertook to translate their desires into action in 1915, when the
anxieties of the New England tobacco planters were felt in the New
York labor market. These planters at first rushed to New York and
promiscuously gathered up 200 girls of the worst type, who straightway
proceeded to demoralize Hartford. The blunder was speedily detected
and the employers came back to New York, seeking some agency which
might assist them in the solution of their problem. Importuned for
help, the National League on Urban Conditions among Negroes supplied
these planters with respectable southern blacks who met this unusual
demand for labor in Connecticut. Later, moreover, it appeared that on
the threshold of an unusually promising year the Poles, Lithuanians
and Czechs, formerly employed in the fields, were dwindling in number
and there was not at hand the usual supply from which their workers
were recruited. A large number of these foreigners had been called
back to their fatherland to engage in the World War.
In January of 1916, therefore, the tobacco growers of Connecticut met
in conference to give this question serious consideration. Mr. Floyd,
the Manager of the Continental Tobacco Corporation, offered a solution
for this difficult problem through the further importation of negro
labor. The response to this suggestion was not immediate, because New
England had never had large experience with negro labor. An intense
interest in the experiment, however, was aroused through a number of
men with connections in the South. It was decided that the National
League on Urban Conditions among Negroes, with headquarters in New
York City, should further assist in securing laborers. Because of the
seasonal character of the work, an effort was made to get students
from the southern schools by advancing transportation. The _New York
News_, a negro weekly, says of this conference:
Thus was born, right in the heart of Yankee Land, the first
significant move to supplant foreign labor with native labor,
a step which has resulted in one of the biggest upheavals in
the North incident to the European war, which has already been
a boon to the colored American, improving his economic status
and putting thousands of dollars into his pockets.[56]
The employers of the North felt justified in bringing about a more
equitable distribution of the available labor supply in America.
Discussing the labor situation before a conference in New York, Mr.
E.J. Traily, Jr., of the Erie Railroad said:
The Erie Railroad has employed a large number of the negro
migrants and we are still in need of more because of the
abnormal state of labor conditions in this part of the
country. It is altogether unfair that the southern States
should enforce laws prohibiting the moving of labor from their
borders, when there are railroads all over this country that
would pay good wages to these laborers. I know of one railroad
company last year, which never had a colored man in the
service, that was offering large wages and scouring every
place for colored help. At the same time the South had and
still has a surplus of colored labor and would not permit it
to be moved. These conditions actually exist, and I know it.
I am interested in this thing not alone from the personal side
of it, but due to the fact of my association with the Erie
Railroad. I believe that the best thing that this body can
do, in my judgment, is to pass resolutions demanding that the
United States Emigration Bureau carry out the act passed by
Congress empowering the Labor Department to place unoccupied
men of other parts of the country where labor is needed.[57]
Early in the summer of 1916, the Pennsylvania and Erie Railroads
promiscuously picked up trainloads of negroes from Jacksonville, St.
Augustine and Pensacola, Florida. They were at first grouped in camps.
The promise of a long free ride to the North met with instant favor,
and wild excitement ensued as the news circulated. Carloads of negroes
began to pour into Pennsylvania. When they had once touched northern
soil and discovered that still higher wages were being offered by
other concerns, many deserted the companies responsible for their
presence in the North. Some drifted to the steel works of the same
State; others left for points nearby. Letters written home brought
news of still more enticing fields, and succeeded in stimulating
the movement. Of the 12,000 negroes brought into Pennsylvania by the
Pennsylvania Railroad, less than 2,000 remained with the company.[58]
It will no doubt be interesting to know exactly where these
negroes settled in the North. For the purpose of understanding this
distribution the North may well be divided according to the two main
lines followed by the migrants in leaving the South. The South and
middle Atlantic States sent the majority of their migrants directly up
the Atlantic coast while the south central States fed the Northwest.
There is, of course, no hard line of separation for these two streams.
Laborers were sought in fields most accessible to the centers
of industry, but individual choice as displayed in the extent of
voluntary migration carried them everywhere.
The New England States, which were probably the first to attract
this labor, were Connecticut and Massachusetts. The tobacco fields
of Connecticut with Hartford as a center received the first negro
laborers as mentioned above. Before a year had passed there were over
3,000 southern negroes in the city of Hartford. Massachusetts had
its new war plants which served as an attraction. Holyoke received
considerable advertisement through the National League on Urban
Conditions among Negroes, and as a result secured a number directly
from the South. Boston, which has always stood as a symbol of hope for
those who sought relief from southern conditions, has not, however,
at any time afforded any great variety of occupations for the peasant
class of negroes. The receptions staged by the negro leaders of that
city were stimulated apparently more by the sentimental causes of
the movement than any other consideration. Although there existed in
Boston the type of industries which required great numbers of men,
barriers prevented negroes in large numbers from entering them and as
a result there was no great influx of migrants from the South.
The places mentioned above are, of course, only those which received
large numbers. Scattered all over this section of the country were
thousands of individuals who, seeking more profitable employment,
broke loose from the crowd congregating at favorite points. New York
State with New York City as its center has received a considerable
number. New York City, however, has been principally a rerouting
point. In fact, many of those who subsequently went to New England
first went to New York City. The State of New York recruited its labor
here. There came to New York probably no less than 75,000 negroes,
a large portion of whom stopped in New York City, although Albany,
Poughkeepsie, Buffalo and smaller cities received their share.
New Jersey, because of the great number of its industrial plants, was
rapidly filled. Newark alone augmented its colored population within
a little over a year by one hundred per cent. The attractions in this
State were the munitions plants, brick yards and wire factories. The
principal cities here that might be mentioned are Newark, Trenton
and Jersey City, although the migration to the last two cities hardly
compares in volume to that of Newark. Delaware, bordering New Jersey,
received a few.[59] Washington, the Capital City and the gateway to
the North, already containing the largest negro population of any city
in the country was in the path of the migration and had its increase
of population accelerated by the war. A considerable number of
southern negroes found work there, principally in domestic service.
Pennsylvania, the first northern State to begin _wholesale_
importation of labor from the South, is the seat of the country's
largest steel plants and is the terminal of three of the country's
greatest railroad systems. Pittsburgh received perhaps the largest
number; Philadelphia and Harrisburg followed in order. The numerous
little industrial centers dotting the State fed from the supply
furnished by the railroads.[60]
The migration to the Northwest was more extensive. Ohio, the State
of vital historical association for negroes, was generously visited.
Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron and Youngstown were popular
centers. The coal mines, factories and iron works were most in need
of men, and obtained them without any great difficulty. Indiana, still
probably remembered as the delicate spot in the inquiry following
a similar migration thirty-nine years ago, with its very highly
developed industries caught the flood proceeding up the Mississippi
valley. Indianapolis was a popular point although not a satisfactory
one for the migrants, who pretty generally left it for better fields.
Gary and Indiana Harbor, more properly satellite cities of Chicago,
developed an almost entirely new negro population.
Missouri, a border State, has one city with a considerably augmented
negro population. The size of the new population of St. Louis can be
accounted for by the fact that geographically it is the first city of
the North. East St. Louis, recently made notorious by the reception
which it accorded its newcomers, is surrounded by a number of
satellite towns, all of which made bids for labor from the South and
received it. Not a few negro laborers went to Kansas City from which
many were rerouted to other points. Nebraska received a large number
of migrants as a direct result of self-advertisement. Omaha was the
city which invited them and received the bulk of immigration to that
State.
Illinois, the one State known throughout the South because of Chicago,
received probably the heaviest quota of any. Located as it is in
the center of industry for the Middle West and known to negroes as
a "fair" State, it received through Chicago as many at least as the
entire State of Pennsylvania. Chicago is the center of a cluster of
industrial towns. It has served as a point of distribution through
its numerous employment agencies for the territory northwest and
northeast. Michigan has one large city, Detroit, which has recently
increased its population one hundred per cent because of its number
of highly developed industries which have supplied employment for its
rapidly increasing population.[61]
The eastern cities which made efforts through various means to augment
their labor supply were Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Newark, New York
City and Hartford. It is manifestly impossible to get reliable figures
on the volume of increase in the negro population of any of these
cities. All that is available is in the form of estimates which can
not be too confidently relied upon. Estimates based on the average
number of arrivals from the South per day, the increase in the school
population and the opinions of social agencies which have engaged
themselves in adjusting the newcomers to their new homes appear to
agree in the main.
[Footnote 55: These facts appear in the _United States Census
Reports_.]
[Footnote 56: _The New York News_.]
[Footnote 57: _New York Age_, January 30, 1917; _Christian Recorder_,
Philadelphia, February 2, 1917.]
[Footnote 58: Ibid.]
[Footnote 59: Fortune, _Report on Negro Migration to the East_.]
[Footnote 60: Ibid.]
[Footnote 61: These estimates are based upon the reports of
investigators sent to make a study of the condition of the migrants.]