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CHAPTER 15
THE NEGRO IN THE PUBLIC ECONOMY
I. The Public Budget
In the preceding four chapters we have been studying the Negro as a
factor of production and as an income earner. We have seen how he tries
to sell his labor and other productive services in the economic market and
what difficulties he meets in competition for jobs with the whites. Further
study of the Negro’s economic status must now proceed to an analysis of
the income he actually earns and the consumption he procures for himself
and his family on the basis of his income.
Such a study becomes framed in the general terms of the family budget,
which we conceive of as an account over a period of time, usually a year,
of the individual household’s income and expenditure. But the analysis
would be incomplete if we forgot that everyone in our society is a partner
in the public budgets, ranging all the way from the budget of the local
municipalities to the budget of the federal government. To these public
budgets everyone contributes by paying various indirect and direct taxes.
And everyone partakes in the consumption of goods and services financed
by the public budgets. In modern society the economic status of any
individual is to a large and increasing extent determined by how much he
puts into the public budgets and How much he gets out of them.
In fact, one of the significant social trends, in America as elsewhere, is the
relative growth of the public budgets. The range of ‘^collective consump-
tion” has been steadily increasing. The public budgets are also coming
more and more to supplement private budgets, as, for instance, in relief
and “social security” payments. Governments have always provided public
services in kind, such as police protection 5
the use of highways, parks, and
playgrounds; and free public schools. These public services are continuously
improved. Whole items of consumption expenditures are transferred from
private budgets to public budgets and at the same time minimum standards
are secured, as when to the free schools are added school meals, free school
materials and health services for the children. At the same time a gradual
centralization and equalization of the public household is going on, so
that the higher budgets—the federal budget as compared to the state
budgets and the state budget as compared to the municipal budgets—take
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