The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-12-07
NEGROES CRITICAL POSITION
IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD
He is Steadily RetrOgrading, Even in Agriculture.
Statistics of Wealth do Not Show His
Real Condition.
Real Condition.

only 1856 whites and 1929 negroes,
and only five of the parishes had white
ma jorities This is simply stating statis-
tically that the negroes are being crowd
ed out of work on the sugar plantations
by white labor, such as Acadians, Gre
Giles. Anglo-Sa Saxon Americans and Ital-
ians. Twenty years ago negroes con-
stituted 50 per cent. of the sugar planta-
tation labor; today barely half. The
planters who have tried Italian labor
say the Sicilian peasant who has never
seen sugar cane before proves a better
laborer than the Louisiana negro, who
has been cultivating cane for half a
dozen generations.
In the other crop of this section-rice
the negro is absolutely unknown, and
does not produce / per cent, of it, There
is plenty of cheap negro labor offered,
but the farmers prefer white labor,
even if they have to pay higher. The
utter failure of the negro in the rice dis
trict is well shown in the rice parish
of Calcasieu This is the most prosper
Gus parish in Louisiana, the richest and
most progressive, in which the largest
fortunes have been made by farming.
yet the 1886 negroes reported by the CEN
sus own only $3,405, or little over half
a dollar apiece.
Such is the negro in the field of agri-
culture, where he 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,
for 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 circumscribed Slavery, as is we'll
known, is not conducive to manufactures,
and it was inimical to mechanical work
by the whites. Mechanic" became a
word of reproach to a white man IN the
South of old; in addition 10 which he
found himself placed at a 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 that the
raising of pickaninnies paid 20 per cent.
OH the investment in addition to getting
the work done cheaper. Most of the me-
chanical work, however, was done by
the free men and women of color. They
were the mechanics, the carpenters,
hlacksmiths, 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 all
most to the condition of the plantation
darkey. Those who believe that the negro
is advancing have 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
bullum days, live today. He will see at
once retrogression to the African type,
for these negroes, having ceased all in
tercourse with the whites. and marrying
among the purer blacks, are growing
darker. Some of them were wealthy in
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, cigar-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
bricklayer's. Those who are not brick
layers and outside of domestic service
are transfers and leaders, longshore-
men who unload and load vessels, or sec
ton hands on the railroads. The closing
or city contract work to negroes and the
division of the ship-loading business be-
tween the races has had the effect of
crowding number of negro men out of
New Orleans. AS consequence there
are more than three negro women to
each man, the former supporting them
selves by washing and domestic labor.
The census figures will probably show
fewer negro men at work in New Or
leans than 10 years ago, although the
colored population of the city has in
creased
The statistics read at negro meetings
of the property accumulated by negroes
in the South are utterly misleading. The
negroes own less property in Louisiana
than they did in slavery time; the slight
increase reported by the auditor is due
wholly to improvements in value from
greater general prosperity, and it docs
not keep pace with the general growth CT
the community or the percentage of in
crease among the negroes themselves.
The proportion of taxpayers among the
negroes is growing smaller and so is
the per capita wealth; and if the asses
sors' tables be examined. it will be