Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

PART TWO

THE NEGRO IN THE NORTHERN STATES

SINCE THE CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER 2

ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE NORTHERN NEGROES

Opportunities in the Skilled and Unskilled Trades-In Domestic Service-Enlarging Field for Negro Labor in the Big Industries-Relation of the Negro to Union Labor-Negroes in the Mercantile Business and in the Professions

IN

N the Northern cities, for some decades after the Civil War, the Negroes found ready employment in domestic and personal service. Nearly all cooks, porters, waiters, and caterers in hotels and private homes were Negroes. I recall seeing in New York, in 1882, a great many Negro waiters in hotels and restaurants, and also many Negro coachmen, bootblacks, barbers, and janitors.

In all of these occupations the Negroes have lost ground, for three chief reasons: First, the Negro population has not been large enough to supply the increasing demand for labor, and the shortage has had to be made up from white immigrants; second, the rise in the standard of living of the whites has called for an increased efficiency in service and the Negro has not qualified himself; third, there have developed white trade-unions which excluded the Negroes from membership.

The Negroes first lost ground in the business of bootblacking. The Italians, as chimney-sweeps in France, had perfected the art of polishing shoes by mixing the soot of the chimney with fat or oil, and, having driven the native Frenchman out of the business in Paris, they came to America and ousted the Negro. Then it was the turn of the coachmen. Having reference to Boston, Archibald H. Grimké says, "The coloured coachman got a black eye when people began to travel abroad, and to discover in England, for instance, how much more an English coachman knows about horses and their care than a coloured one in Boston."

Then came white barbers, butlers, cooks, caterers, and waiters in hotels. A Boston Negro, who could not find employment as a butler, exclaimed, "These Boston people beat me. They will have mass-meetings, and raise money to help Mr. Washington educate the 'niggers' down South, but they will let a decent Northerner starve before 'Quoted by Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem, p. 167.

they will give him a chance to earn an honest living."2 Commenting on the loss of ground in New York, a Negro waiter remarks: "Think of our city's most famous caterers of forty or fifty years ago. They were the Downings, Mars, Watson, Vandyke, Ten Eyck, Day, Green, and others, all coloured. Their names were as familiar and as representative in high-class work as are Delmonico and Sherry to-day. Who have succeeded to the business that these coloured caterers had in those days? With one exception, Italians. Not one has left a child in an enlarged business of the same line. With all of us the business dies with the fathers. Is this showing a capacity to build?" Referring to Philadelphia, DuBois comments upon the general decline of industrial opportunity for the Negro, due to competition and race prejudice.*

3

Writing in the New York Age, June 15, 1885, of the Negro in Chicago, Mrs. Fannie B. Williams declares:

"It is quite safe to say that in the last fifteen years, the coloured people have lost about every occupation that was regarded as peculiarly their own. Among the occupations that seem to be permanently lost are barbering, bootblacking, janitors in office buildings, elevator service, and calcimining. White men wanted these places and were strong enough to displace the unorganized, thoughtless and easy-going occupants of them. When the hordes of Greeks, Italians, Swedes, and other foreign folks began to pour into Chicago, the demand for the Negro's places began. One occupation after another that the coloured people thought was theirs forever, by a sort of divine right, fell into the hands of these foreign invaders. This loss was not so much due to prejudice against color, as to the ability of these foreigners to increase the importance of the places sought and captured. The Swedes have captured the janitor business by organizing and training the men for this work in such a way as to increase the efficiency and reliability of the service. White men have made more of the barber business than did the coloured men, and by organization have driven every Negro barber from the business district. The 'shoe polisher' has supplanted the Negro bootblack, and does business in finely appointed parlours, with mahogany finish and electric lights. Thus a menial occupation has become a well organized and genteel business with capital and system behind it."

The colored people have been supplanted also in some of their other traditional callings. Many Negroes who had come up from the South 'Washington, The Future of the Negro, p. 161.

'Quoted by Stone, op. cit., p. 155.

'The Philadelphia Negro, pp. 120, 145.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »