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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 6. Pre-War Conditions of the Negro Wage Earner in Selected Industries and Occupations - 8. Building Workers - 9. Railroad Workers
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Appendix 6. Conditions of Negro Wage Earner 1105
hdil been rather systematically kept out of the larger construction projects where they
could have learned newer techniques. Until the end of 1940 Negroes received 13 per
cent of the total payroll on the U.S.H.A. projects, but only 5 per cent of the payroll
for skilled work.® Even so, it helped Negro workers in the South to maintain unions
which otherwise would have disappeared and even to revive some unions which had
disappeared during the previous depressions.
9. Railroad Workers
In 1930 there were 163,000 Negro workers employed by steam railroads, constituting
slightly more than 10 per cent of the total labor force in the industry. About 98,000 of
these Negroes were designated as laborers*, 37,000 were porters, waiters, and cooks*, less
than 11,000 were firemen, brakemcn, switchmen, and flagmen; and most of the rest
belonged to minor categories of unskilled workers. Less than 200 were conductors or
locomotive engineers.**
Railway service expanded during the First World War but declined afterward, owing
to competition with motor traffic. The end result, by 1930, was that the total number
of employees was about the same as in 1910. The number of Negro workers had
increased by 25 per cent, but this was due to their inroads in the North. The number
of laborers, for instance, increased from about 8,000 to 24,000 in the North and West,
but declined from 78,000 to 73,000 in the South.® Most other categories, such as
locomotive firemen and brakemen, had fewer Negro workers in 1930 than in 1910.
In the South, particularly, the decline in the proportion of Negroes employed in such
occupations was very noticeable. The development during the ’thirties meant that the
Negro’s opportunities for advancement became still more insignificant than before; also,
the groups in which Negroes were concentrated were severely hit by the depression and
by competition with motor traffic. The total number of maintenance-of-way employees
in the South declined by more than 50 per cent from 1928 to 1938,^ and since
Negroes constituted about three-fourths of this labor force in the South, it must have
meant a tremendous loss in Negro employment. The census data show that in the South
Negroes constituted only 21 per cent of the railroad workers in 1940, as compared with
25 per cent in 1930.® This decrease is, of course, in addition to the decrease in actual
numbers of Negro railroad workers.
Most of the railroad brotherhoods are among the leaders in Negro exclusionism. The
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Order of Railway Conductors have been
almost completely successful in keeping the Negro out. The Brotherhood of Locomotive
Firemen and Enginemen is equally exclusionistic. Until the beginning of this century,
however, the fireman’s job was generally considered too dirty for a white man in the
• Robert C. Weaver, “Racial Employment Trends in National Defense,” Phylon (Fourtl;
Quarter, 1941), p. 347. See also Norgren and Associates, o/>. ci/.. Part 3, pp. 331-335*
**U. S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States: 1920-1932, pp. 353-3541
Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930^ Pofulation^ Vol. 4, State Table 11.
• U. S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States: 1920-/932, pp. 303-309;
Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910^ Statistics^ Vol. 4, pp. 434-534. These figures
do not include female workers^ who numbered only about 1,000 in 1930.
**
Interstate Commerce Commission, Annual Statistical Report for 1928 and 1938. Quoted
by Norgren and Associates, op, cit,, Part i. p. 129*
• See Chapter 1 3, Table 3.
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