Half a Man Part 4

Quite another group of laborers are the longsh.o.r.emen who, far from lounging indolently in a hallway, are straining every muscle as they heave some great crate into a ship's hold. The work of the New York dockers has been admirably described by Mr. Ernest Poole, who says of the thirty thousand longsh.o.r.emen on the wharves of New York--Italians, Germans, Negroes, and Swedes, "Far from being the drunkards and b.u.ms that some people think them, they are like the men of the lumber camps come to town--huge of limb and tough of muscle, hard-swearing, quick-fisted, big of heart." Their tasks are heavy and irregular. When the ship comes in, the average stretch of work for a gang is from twelve to twenty hours, and sometimes men go to a second gang and labor thirty-five hours without sleep. Their pay for this dangerous, exhausting toil averages eleven dollars a week. "There are thousands of Negroes on the docks of New York," Mr. Poole writes me, "and they must be able to work long hours at a stretch or they would not have their jobs." At dusk, Brooklynites see these black, huge-muscled men, many of them West Indians, walking up the hill at Montague Street. In New York they live among the Irish in "h.e.l.l's Kitchen" and on San Juan Hill. They are usually steady supporters of families.

New York demands strong, unskilled laborers. To some she pays a large wage, and Negroes have gone in numbers into the excavations under the rivers, though a lingering death may prove the end of their two and a half or perhaps six or seven dollar a day job. Many colored men worked in the subway during its construction. One sees them often employed at rock-drilling or clearing land for new buildings. About a third of the asphalt workers, making their two dollars and a half a day, are colored.

Some educated, refined Negroes choose the laborer's work rather than pleasanter but poorly paid occupations. A highly trained colored man, a shipping clerk, making seven dollars a week, left his employer to take a job of concreting in the subway at $1.80 a day. His decision was in favor of dirty, severe labor, but a living wage.

When the next census is published, those of us who are carefully watching the economic condition of the Negro expect to find a movement from domestic service into the positions of laborers, including the porters in stores, who belong in our second census division.

Kelly Miller[4] describes the ma.s.sive buildings and sky-seeking structures of our northern city, and finds no status for the Negro above the cellar floor. One can see the colored youth gazing wistfully through the office window at the clerk, whose business reaches across the ocean to bewilderingly wonderful continents, knowing as he does that the employment he may find in that office will be emptying the white man's waste paper basket.

TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION

Key to Column Headers-- A: Total number of males in each occupation.

B: Number of Negroes in each occupation.

C: Number of Negroes to each 1000 workers in occupation.

============================================================= | A | B | C --------------------------------------+---------+------+----- Agents--commercial travellers | 27,456 | 67 | 2 Bankers, brokers, and officials of | | | banks and companies | 11,472 | 7 | 0 Bookkeepers--accountants | 22,613 | 33 | 1 Clerks, copyists (including shipping | | | clerks, letter and mail carriers) | 80,564 | 423 | 5 Merchants (wholesale and retail) | 72,684 | 162 | 2 Salesmen | 45,740 | 94 | 2 Typewriters | 3,225 | 36 | 11 Boatmen and sailors | 8,188 | 145 | 18 Foremen and overseers | 3,111 | 18 | 6 Draymen, hackmen, teamsters | 51,063 | 1439 | 28 Hostlers | 5,891 | 633 | 107 Livery stable keepers | 967 | 9 | 9 Steam railway employees | 11,831 | 70 | 6 Street railway employees | 7,375 | 11 | 1 Telegraph and telephone operators | 2,430 | 6 | 2 Hucksters and peddlers | 12,635 | 69 | 5 Messengers, errand and office boys | 13,451 | 335 | 25 Porters and helpers (in stores, etc.) | 11,322 | 2143 | 188 Undertakers | 1,572 | 15 | 9 | | | Total, including some occupations | | | not specified | 405,675 | 5798 | 14 =============================================================

This, however, does not apply to government positions, and a large number of the 423 colored clerks in 1900 were probably in United States and munic.i.p.al service. The latter we shall consider later as we study the Negro and the munic.i.p.ality. Of the former, in 1909 there were about 176 in the New York post-offices.[5] Ambitious boys work industriously at civil service examinations, and a British West Indian will even become an American citizen for the chance of a congenial occupation. The clerkship, that to a white man is only a stepping-stone, to a Negro is a highly coveted position.

I have made two divisions of this census list; the first includes those occupations requiring intellectual skill and carrying with them some social position, the second, those demanding only manual work. It is in the second that the colored man finds a place, and as a porter he numbers 2143, and reaches almost as high a percentage as the waiter and servant. Porters' positions are paid from five to fifteen dollars a week, the man receiving the latter wage performing also the duties of shipping clerk. There is some opportunity for advance, always within the bas.e.m.e.nt, and there are regular hours and a fairly steady job.

The heading of draymen, hackmen, and teamsters, with 28 colored in every thousand, shows that the Negro has not lost his place as a driver. The chauffeur does not appear in the census, but the Negro is steadily increasing in numbers in this occupation, and conducts three garages of his own.

The last census division to be considered in this chapter is that of Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits.

MANUFACTURING AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS

Key to Column Headers-- A: Total number of males in each occupation.

B: Number of Negroes in each occupation.

C: Number of Negroes to each 1000 workers in occupation.

============================================================= | A | B | C --------------------------------------+---------+-------+---- Engineers, firemen (not locomotive) | 16,579 | 227 | 14 Masons (brick and stone) | 12,913 | 94 | 7 Painters, glaziers, and varnishers | 27,135 | 177 | 6 Plasterers | 4,019 | 51 | 12 Blacksmiths | 7,289 | 29 | 4 Butchers | 12,643 | 31 | 2 Carpenters and joiners | 29,904 | 94 | 3 Iron and steel workers | 10,372 | 40 | 4 Paper hangers | 962 | 18 | 19 Photographers | 1,590 | 22 | 14 Plumbers, gas and steam fitters | 16,614 | 31 | 2 Printers, lithographers, and pressmen | 21,521 | 53 | 2 Tailors | 56,094 | 69 | 1 Tobacco and cigar factory operators | 11,689 | 189 | 16 Fishermen and oystermen | 1,439 | 65 | 45 Miners and quarrymen | 326 | 21 | 64 Machinists | 17,241 | 47 | 3 | | | Total, including some occupations | | | not specified |419,594 | 1774 | 4 =============================================================

Bakers, boot and shoe makers, gold and silver workers, bra.s.s workers, tin plate and tin ware makers, box makers, cabinet makers, marble and stone cutters, book-binders, clock and watch makers, confectioners, engravers, gla.s.s workers, hat and cap makers, and others--not more than nineteen in any one occupation, nor a higher per cent than four in a thousand.

When Mr. Stone wrote of the Southern States as the only place in which the Negro could "earn his bread in the sweat of his face," side by side with the white man, he must especially have been thinking of workers in the skilled trades. Unskilled laborers in New York are drenched in a common grimy fellowship. But in this last division the Negro is conspicuous by his absence. Only four in every thousand where there should be eighteen! In Atlanta, under this division, the race reaches almost its due proportion, 279 in a thousand instead of 351. The largest number in any trade in New York is 189 men among the Cuban tobacco workers. Seventy-five per cent of all the masons in Atlanta are colored men, while in New York the colored are less than one per cent. Looking down the list we see that the figures are small and the percentage insignificant. The highly skilled and best paid trades are seemingly as far removed from the Negro as the positions of floor-walkers or cashiers of banks.

Omitting for the present the professional cla.s.s, we have reviewed the Negro as a worker, and neither in wages nor choice of occupation has he risen far to success. In domestic service he has gone a little down the ladder, serving in less desirable positions than in former years. Why has this happened? What good reasons are there for these conditions?

The first and most obvious reason is race prejudice. No display of talent, however prodigious, will open certain occupations to the colored race. As a salesman he could teach courteous manners to some of our white salesmen in New York, but he is never given a chance. There are a few Negroes, digging in the tunnels or sweeping down the subway stairs, who are capable of filling the clerkships that are counted the perquisites of the whites; but clerkships are only accessible as they are a.s.sociated with munic.i.p.al or federal service. Of course there are exceptions, and though they do not affect the rule, they show the existence of a few employers who ignore the color line, and a few Negroes of inexhaustible perseverance.

Mr. Stone argues that the Negro in the South profits by the strict drawing of the color line, since the white man, always considered the superior, is not lowered in the eyes of the community by working with the black man. The Southern white may lay bricks on the same wall with the Southern black, secure in his superior social position. But this seems fanciful as an explanation of labor conditions. The black doctor, for instance, in those localities where the color line is most rigid, may not ask the white doctor to consult with him; or if he does, his prompt removal from the community is requested. Colored postal clerks are in disfavor in the South, though not colored postmen. North or South, _the Negro gets an opportunity to work where he is imperatively needed_. Const.i.tuting one-third of the working population, he can make a place for himself in the laboring world of Atlanta as he cannot in New York. Pick up the 20,000 New York Negroes and drop them in Liberia, and in two or three weeks Ellis Island could empty out sufficient men to fill their places; but remove a third of the male workers from Atlanta, and the city for years would suffer from the calamity. If they are the only available source of labor, colored men can work by the side of white men; but where the white man strongly dominates the labor situation, he tries to push his black brother into the jobs for which he does not care to compete.

We have seen, however, that in some occupations in New York the Negroes appear in such proportion as should be sufficient to secure them excellent positions; the most conspicuous instance being that of the 200 colored waiters out of every thousand. Why, then, do we not see Negroes serving in the best hotels the city affords?

It has been an ideal of American democracy, a part of its strenuous individualism, that each member of the community should have full liberty in the pursuit of wealth. The ambitious, capable boy who walks bare-footed into the city, and at the end of twenty years has outdistanced his country school-mates, becoming a multi-millionaire while they are still farm drudges, is the example of American opportunity. But this ability to separate one's self from the rest of one's fellows and attain individual greatness is rarely possible to a segregated race. In domestic service individual colored men have shown ambition and high capability, but they have never been able to get away from their fellows like the country boy--to leave the farm drudges and take a place among the most proficient of their profession. They must always work in a race group. And this Negro group is like the small college that tries to win at football against a compet.i.tor with four times the number of students and a better coach. The two hundred colored waiters, competing against the eight hundred white ones, lose in the game and are given a second place, which the best must accept with the worst. When, then, we criticize a capable colored man for failing to keep a superior position we must remember that he is tied to his group and has little chance of advancement on his individual merit.

The census division of mechanical pursuits shows only a few colored men working at trades, and the paucity of the numbers is often attributed by the Negro to a third obstacle in the way of his progress, the trade-union.

To the colored man who has overcome race prejudice sufficiently to be taken into a shop with white workmen, the walking delegate who appears and asks for his union card seems little short of diabolical; and all the advantages that collective bargaining has secured, the higher wage and shorter working-day, are forgotten by him. I have heard the most distinguished of Negro educators, listening to such an incident as this, declare that he should like to see every labor union in America destroyed. But unionism has come to stay, and the colored man who is asked for his card had better at once get to work and endeavor to secure it. Many have done this already, and organized labor in New York, its leaders tell us, receives an increasing number of colored workmen. Miss Helen Tucker, in a careful study of Negro craftsmen in the West Sixties,[6] found among 121 men who had worked at their trades in the city, 32, or 26 per cent in organized labor. The majority of these had joined in New York. Eight men, out of the 121, had applied for entrance to unions and not been admitted. This does not seem a discouraging number, though we do not know whether the other 81 could have been organized or not. Many, probably, were not sufficiently competent workmen. In 1910, according to the best information that I could secure, there were 1358 colored men in the New York unions. Eighty of these were in the building trades, 165 were cigar makers, 400 were teamsters, 350 asphalt workers, and 240 rock-drillers and tool sharpeners.[7]

Entrance to some of the local organizations is more easily secured than to others, for the trade-union, while part of a federation, is autonomous, or nearly so. In some of the highly skilled trades, to which few colored men have the necessary ability to demand access, the Negro is likely to be refused, while the less intelligent and well-paid forms of labor press a union card upon him. Again, strong organizations in the South, as the bricklayers, send men North with union membership, who easily transfer to New York locals. Miss Tucker finds the carpenters', masons', and plasterers' organizations easy for the Negro to enter. There is in New York a colored local, the only colored local in the city, among a few of the carpenters, with regular representation in the Central Federated Union. The American Federation of Labor in 1881 declared that "the working people must unite irrespective of creed, color, s.e.x, nationality, or politics." This cry is for self-protection, and where the Negroes have numbers and ability in a trade, their organization becomes important to the white. It may be fairly said of labor organization in New York that it finds and is at times unable to destroy race prejudice, but that it does not create it.[8]

A fourth obstacle, and a very important one, is the lack of opportunity for the colored boy. The only trade that he can easily learn is that of stationary engineer, an occupation at which the Negroes do very well.

Colored boys in small numbers are attending evening trade schools, but their chance of securing positions on graduation will be small. The Negro youth who is not talented enough to enter a profession, and who cannot get into the city or government service, has slight opportunity.

Nothing is so discouraging in the outlook in New York as the crowding out of colored boys from congenial remunerative work.

The last obstacle in the way of the Negro's advancement into higher occupations is his inefficiency. Race prejudice denies him the opportunity to prove his ability in many occupations, and the same spirit forces him to work in a race group; but the colored men themselves are often unfitted for any labor other than that they undertake.

The picture that is sometimes drawn of many thousands of highly skilled Southern colored men forced in New York to give up their trades and to turn to menial labor is not a correct one. Richard R. Wright, Jr., who has made a careful study of the Negro in Philadelphia,[9] finds that the majority of colored men who come to that city are from the cla.s.s of unskilled city laborers and country hands; the minority are the more skilful artisans and farmers and domestic servants, with a number also of the vagrant and criminal cla.s.ses.

In New York the untrained Negroes not only form a very large cla.s.s, but coming in contact, as they do, with foreigners who for generations have been forced to severe, unremitting toil, they suffer by comparison. The South in the days of slavery demanded chiefly routine work in the fields from its Negroes.[10] The work was under the direction either of the master, the overseer, or a foreman; and there has been no general advance in training for the colored men of the South since that time.

Contrast the intensive cultivation of Italy or Switzerland with the farms of Georgia or Alabama, or the hotels of France with those of Virginia, and you will see the disadvantages from which the Negro suffers. America is young and crude, but opportunity has brought to her great cities workmen from all over the world. In New York these men are driven at a pace that at the outset distracts the colored man who prefers his leisurely way. Moreover, the foreign workmen have learned persistence; they are punctual and appear regularly each morning at their tasks. "The Italians are better laborers than any other people we have, are they not?" I asked a man familiar with many races and nationalities. "No," was his answer, "they do not work better than others, but when the whistle blows, they are always there." Mr. Stone, whose book I have already quoted a number of times, shows the irresponsible, fanciful wanderings of his Mississippi tenants, whom he endeavored, unsuccessfully, to establish in a permanent tenantry. The colored men in New York are far in advance of these farm hands, who are described as moving about simply because they desire a change, but they are also far from the steady, unswerving att.i.tude of their foreign compet.i.tors. Inadequately educated, too often they come to New York with little equipment for tasks they must undertake successfully or starve--unless, puerile, they live by the labor of some industrious woman.

I have tried to depict the New York colored wage earners as they labor in the city today. They are not a remarkable group, and were they white men, distinguished by some mark of nationality, they would pa.s.s without comment. But the Negro is on trial, and witnesses are continually called to tell of his failures and successes. We have seen that both in the att.i.tude of the world about him, and in his own untutored self, there are many obstacles to prevent his advance; and his natural sensitiveness adds to these difficulties. He minds the coa.r.s.e but often good-natured joke of his fellow laborer, and he remembers with a lasting pain the mortification of an employer's curt refusal of work. Had he the obtuseness of some Americans he would prosper better. As we have seen, many positions are completely closed to him, leading him to idleness and consequent crime. Just as not every able-bodied white man, who is out of work and impoverished, will go to the charities wood-yard and saw wood, so not every colored man will accept the menial labor which may be the only work open to him. Instead, he may gamble or drift into a vagabond life. A well-known Philadelphia judge has said that "The moral and intellectual advance of a race is governed by the degree of its industrial freedom. When that freedom is restricted there is unbounded tendency to drive the race discriminated against into the ranks of the criminal." Discrimination in New York has led many Negroes into these ranks. But as we look back at the occupations of our colored men we see a large number who secure regular hours, and if a poor, yet a fairly steady pay. For the ma.s.s of the Negroes coming into the city these positions are an advance over their former work. Employment in a great mercantile establishment, though it be in the bas.e.m.e.nt, carries dignity with it, and educating demands of punctuality, sobriety, and swiftness.

Richard R. Wright, Jr., whose right to speak with authority we have already noted, believes that the "North has taught the Negro the value of money; of economy; it has taught more sustained effort in work, punctuality, and regularity." It has also, I believe, in its more regular hours of work, aided in the upbuilding of the home.

I remember once waiting in the harbor of Genoa while our ship was taking on a cargo. The captain walked the deck impatiently, and, as the Italians went in leisurely fashion about their task, declared, "If I had those men in New York I could get twice the amount of work out of them."

That is what New York does; it works men hard and fast; sometimes it mars them; but it pays a better wage than Genoa, and there is an excitement and dash about it that attracts laborers from all parts of the earth. The black men come, insignificant in numbers, ready to do their part. They work and play and marry and bring up children, and as we watch them moving to and from their tasks the North seems to have brought to the majority of them something of liberty and happiness.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Alfred Holt Stone, "Studies in the American Race Problem," p. 164.

[2] New York _Age_, August 24, 1905.

[3] Occupations in 1907 of 716 colored men (secured from records of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation and personal visits) compared with census figures of occupations in 1900.

============================================================== | 716 Men | Census -------------------------------------------+---------+-------- Agricultural pursuits | -- | 1.2 | | Professional service, 27 men | 3.8 | 3.6 | | Domestic and personal service, 363 men | 50.6 | 58.1 5 barbers, 5 caterers, 24 cooks, | | 30 general utility men, 41 hotel men, | | 76 waiters and butlers, 8 valets, | | 35 janitors and s.e.xtons, 29 longsh.o.r.emen, | | 5 laborers in tunnels, 7 asphalt | | workers, 57 elevator men, 41 laborers. | | | | Trade and transportation, 279 men | 39.0 | 28.4 10 chauffeurs, 35 drivers, 13 expressmen, | | 8 hostlers, 12 messengers, 14 munic.i.p.al | | employees, 127 porters in stores, | | 15 porters on trains, 24 clerks, | | 21 merchants. | | | | Manufacturing and mechanical | | pursuits, 47 men | 6.6 | 8.7 +---------+------- | 100.0 | 100.0 =============================================================

[4] Kelly Miller's "Race Adjustment," p. 129.

[5] It is difficult to get accurate figures as no official record is kept of color.

[6] _Southern Workman_, October, 1907, to March, 1908.

[7] In 1906, and again in 1910, I secured a counting of the New York colored men in organized labor. The lists run as follows:

1906 1910

Asphalt workers 320 350 Teamsters 300 400 Rock-drillers and tool sharpeners 250 240 Cigar makers 121 165 Bricklayers 90 21 Waiters 90 not obtainable Carpenters 60 40 Plasterers 45 19 Double drum hoisters 30 37 Safety and portable engineers 26 35 Eccentric firemen 15 0 Letter carriers 10 30 Pressmen 10 not obtainable Printers 6 8 Butchers 3 3 Lathers 3 7 Painters 3 not obtainable Coopers 1 2 Sheet metal workers 1 1 Rockmen 1 not obtainable ---- ---- Total 1385 1358

The large number of bricklayers in 1906 is questioned by the man, himself a bricklayer, who made the second counting. However, the number greatly decreased in 1908 when the stagnation in business compelled many men to seek work in other cities.

[8] The comment of the Negro bricklayer who secured my figures is important. "A Negro," he says, "has to be extra fit in his trade to retain his membership, as the eyes of all the other workers are watching every opportunity to disqualify him, thereby compelling a superefficiency. Yet at all times he is the last to come and the first to go on the job, necessitating his seeking other work for a living, and keeping up his card being but a matter of sentiment. While all the skilled trades seem willing to accept the Negro with his travelling card, yet there are some which utterly refuse him; for instance, the house smiths and bridge men who will not recognize him at all. While membership in the union is necessary to work, yet the hardest part of the battle is to secure employment. In some instances intercession has been made by various organizations interested in his industrial progress for employment at the offices of various companies, and favorable answers are given, but hostile foremen with discretionary power carry out their instructions in such a manner as to render his employment of such short duration that he is very little benefited. Of course, there are some contractors who are very friendly to a few men, and whenever any work is done by them, they are certain of employment. Unfortunately, these are too few."

[9] R. R. Wright, Jr.'s "Migration of Negroes to the North," Annals of the American Academy, May, 1906.