The Wisconsin weekly blade. [volume] (Madison, Wis.) 1916-1925, 1919-05-03

OA AiiG SOuth NOHdIN NtEIO LABOR, says.
James III. Kirby, lumber millionaire
OF Houston, Tex, and president of the
National Lumber Manufacturers Assn.
who for years has been notorious in the
south for his hostility to organized la
Dor in any form has begun to organize
the business men OF the south to eXpel
agents of the department of labor who
are trying to help the Negro laborer
The disturbance of the conditions
of Negro labor can not be tolerated
without the fiercest opposition" Kirby
declared, in a recent speech in New
Orleans. The prohiAl is not. first,
an industrial one, but racial one
When ii becomes question of going
into conference at Washington with the
black official handling colored econom-
les, declined. In the south we tell
Negroes what to do; We do not take
! counsel with them"
All of which is a sham. Kirby has
discovered that since the arfnistice was
signed the Negroes in the south are
getting into the labor movement, and
that the director of Negro economies
in the department of labor, Dr. George
T.. Haynes, formerly of Fisk univer-
sity. has not been opposing this trend
toward organization. Under pretense
of fighting for racial supremacy in the
south, Kirby is fighting to prevent the
southern Negro from joining a labor
union.
According to the report issued
through Haynes Office last month
through the department. about 200 900
adult Negroes moved from the south
into the north in 1916 and 1917
Causes for this migration are vari-
Gus. High wages in the north, due
to the stoppage of immigration from
Europe during the war, was the first
Reasons for dissatisfaction of the
Negroes with their conditions in the
south are based on low wages. poor
housing, poor school facilities, cheat
ing by the landlords in settlement for
crop shares, rough treatment, cruelty
OF law officers, unfairness in the courts,
; lynChing. and such minor motives as
the wish to travel, advice from rela-
tiyes in the north, and the arguments
of labor agents. The chief reasons
were the need for living wages and
personal freedom from violence.
The department investigators found
that the northern Negro press was
telling the grisly facts as to lynch
ings. and that even when the East st.
Louis horror was added to the many
lesser ones in the south. the Negroes
merely declared that this was prob
ably framed up by southern white
business interests to frighten them into
staying below the Ohio.
X. Ii. Leavell. a graduate of the
University of Mississippi, who investi-
gated conditions in Mississippi for
Haynes report, found that the Negroes
who had gone from that state to Chi
cago were urging their friends to fol-
low them, and that they argued that
the short working day, the living wage
and the security against mobs were
all strong enough attractions to de-
populate the plantations of Mississippi.
Ieavell showed that in Mississippi the
farm laborers got from rs cents to $1.25
q day. and pointed to the pellagfa rec
ords to prove that this constitutes a
starvation wage which gives the work
er the choice between death and emf
grafton.
Equal justice in the courts and the
abolition OF lynching is a matter upon
which the northern Negro press lays
emphasis" says Leayell. "One period
ical makes skilful use of recent
lynching in which the head of the
dead man was severed from his body.
so it is alleged, and thrown into a crowd
of Negroes on the principal street in
the Negro quarter. photograph of
what purports to be the head as it lies
on the deserted street is published un-
der the telling caption Not Belgium
America Such terribly effective pub
LEFTY as this spreads the terrorizing
and breeding influence of crimes
of violence committed by whites upon
negroes far beyond the localities in
which they took place"
After the Negro migration had de-
veloped to proportions which alarmed
not merely the southern industrial
autocrats, such as Kirby. but the north
ern industrial communities, the de-
partment of labor undertook as a war
measure to try to establish new indus
tria; relations in the south in order to
prevent that section from being strip
ned OF man power. The draft made
nf~ iTf1Yl ia nj
state governments were asked to CO.
operate in the campaign for harmony.
Virginia appointed the first state
supervisor of Negro economics. Ohio
had the first conference, called by GOV.
Cox last August. Gov. Stanley, Ken
lucky. fell in line. and nine other states
finally established state, county and
city advisory councils Tor negro work
ers Two hundred Negro papers sup
ported the scheme.
Here for the first time in the United
States. the Negro was admitted into
an Industrial conference. to discuss his
own wages and conditions OF labor.
In many of the southern states the
bitterest local race fanatics were un-
able to overcome the pressure for
temporary solution of the problem of
getting the Negroes to stay at work.
in some localities the councils were.
however, rejected. and the old race
ndtfSOR were luNEedSSu Out lthALS
the south as "A whole. ii met the sit
uation almost calmly, and was glad
.s that 1t was not being compelled 10
deal with the Negroes as members Of
trade unions. but merely as discon-
tented individuals who must be per-
suaded that their masters were anx-
ious to take care OF them.
Yet the recos jtior of the right to
discuss conditions. in these semi gov
ornamental conferences. has set the
Negro in the south TO looking at the
unions as ladder OF escape from his
jail He has met the agents Of the
department of labor. Who have helped
to organize these councils. He has
discovered that the agents can explain
tNe trade union movement to him. al
though they give no advice az to his
joining or forming a union.
The Negro is Interested The hig
employers. with kirby as their mouth