The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1902-12-09

oAly 1885 whites and IT ef2 ro,roo.
ana only five Of the parishes had ub;+o
maJorlties. This is simply stating statis
1Cdlly mat the negroes are being crowd
eu out OF work on the sugar plantations
= "Hite labor, such as Acadians Gre
- Ansio-Saxon Americans and Ital-
aus twenty years ago negroes con-
to:u1eo 80 per cent. of the sugar planta-
tatlon labor; today barely half Tho
planters who have tried Italian labor
say the Sicilian peasant who has never
seen sugar cane before proves . hotter
iaoorer than the Louisiana negro. who
mas been cultivating cane for half .
dozen generations.
IN the other crop of this section-rica
-Ine negro is absolutely unknown. and
uoeS not produce 1 per cent. of il. There
- plenty OF cheap negro labor offered.
put the farmers prefer white labor.
even II they have to pay higher. The
utter failure of the negro in the rice dis
trlct is we'll shown in the rice Darish
or Calcasieu. This is the most prosnor-
Gus parish in Louisiana. the richest and
most progressive, in which the largest
fortunes have been made by farming
yet the 1856 negroes reported by the cen
sus W only $3,405, or a little over half
d dollar apiece.
SUSIl IL liz negro III the nGiQ OF 3gTl-
culture, where be appears to the greatest
advantage. In manufactures no one
claims anything for him; in the mechani-
cal trades he is losing ground steadily.
In spite of the optimism that you and
others feel, the industrial horizon of the
negro Is growing steadily narrower. and
IS now actually more limited than in
the days Of slavery. To those who look
only at the surface it seems different,
1or they see new industrial schools es-
tablished for negroes, and the old ones
enlarged and better endowed. The New
Orleans school board has abolished the
higher grades in the negro public schools
and Will use the money for industrial
education of the negro youth, which is
proclaimed the panacea for all negro
Ills.
But when we study the trades, a very
different condition of affairs is found.
The negro's field of labor is each day
more circumscri5ed Slavery, as is we'll
known, is not conducive to manufactures,
and it was inimical to mechanical ~ork
by the whites. "Mechanic' became a
word of reproach to a White man N the
South OF old; in addition TO which he
found himself placed at q great disad-
vantage in competing with negro and
perhaps with slave labor. AS a conse-
quence. nearly all the mechanical work
in the Southwest in ante-bellum days
Was done by negroes. The gas company
imported white mechanics from Philadel-
phia, but discharged them and replaced
them with negro slaves, finding hat the
raising of pickaninnfes paid 20 per cent.
Oh the investment in addition to getting
the work done cheaper. Most of the me-.
chanical work, however, was lone by
tho frno mon nn6 nr,o IF c01nr ThnU
were the mechanics, the carpenters,
tlacksmiths, painters, ~tailors, dress
makers, ETC., and originally the police
men and firemen Of New Orleans. Their
descendants have been crowded more and
more out of the trades, until now their
main source of income is shop work for
the clothing factories. They have retro
graded immensely during the last 40
years in health, education, labor and So
cial standing, and have drifted back al
most to the condition of the plantation
darkey. Those who believe that the negro
is advancing nave but to wander through
the rear of the Second district of New
Orleans, where probably $4,000 mulattoes
and Quadroons, Creole negroes descen-
dants Of the free people of color of ante
buIlum days, live today. He will see at
once a retrogression to the African type,
LOT THESE ItS1OtS, V SodoCU ca IL
tercourse with the whites. and marrying
among the purer blacks, are growing
darker. Some of them were wealthy in
J. old days, nearly all had Independent
means. Scarcely ony of them have any
thing worth mentioning today.
During this period, as compared with
even the days of slavery, the negroes
have lost ground industrially. They
have ceased to be carpenters, painters,
engineers, ~tailors, cigaT-makers, shoe
makers, except a few who work mainly
among their own people. Their labor
has become more and more the toughest
manual work. and even in the fields they
occupy they are each year more circum-
! scribed. In only one trade have they
maintained their former standing-a
bricklaver's. Those who are not brlck-
LAYERS and outside OF domestic service
pro transfers and leaders, longshore-
men who unload and load vessels, or sec
tion hands on the railroads.. The closing
of city contract work to negroes and the
division of the ship-loading business be-
tween the races has had the effect OF
crowding a number of negro men out OF
New Orleans. AS a consequence lnere
are more than three negro women 10
each man, tho former supporting theln-
selves by washing and domestic LABOR.
The census figures will probably sho"
fewer negro men at work in New OF
leans than 10 years ago, although the
cClored population of the city has III
creased.
The statistics read at negro meetings
of the property accumulated by heSlot0
in the South arc utterly misleading. Inc
negroes own less property IN Loulsl2h}t
than they did in slavery time; the sllsht
incroaso reported by the auditor is due
r,bolly 10 improvements in value from
Greater general prosperity, and it docs
not keep pace with the general growth cL
the community, or the percentage OF III
crease among the negroes themselVeo-
The proportion of taxpayers among the
negroes is growing smaller, and SO IS
the per capita wealth; and If the asses