When Trump talks about ‘Black jobs’ the corollary, of course, is that there are ‘white jobs.’ He is echoing a long reality in the United States of the racial divisions of work, fostered by the capitalists and to their utter detriment, historically supported by the labor movement. Skilled’ labor considered the domain of white workers and Black ‘unskilled’ labor often used as scab labor; with both seeing bosses as allies against the other. Chandler Owen, here co-chair of the National Association for the Promotion of Labor Unionism Among Negros, looks at its dynamics at play.

‘White Supremacy in Organized Labor’ by Chandler Owen from The Messenger. Vol. 5 No. 9. September, 1923.

Two decades ago it was Booker T. Washington who said: “In the South the Negro can make a dollar but can’t spend it, while in the North the Negro can spend a dollar but can’t make one.” Here Mr. Washington was referring to the comparative ease with which Negro bricklayers, plasterers, painters, moulders, carpenters, and Negro mechanics in general, could get work in the South at their respective trades, but were so proscribed in their privileges of entering such places of public accommodation and amusement as theatres, restaurants, pull- man cars, and the like as to amount almost to a denial of spending their money. At the same time he noticed that whereas the Negro might freely (?) spend his money in most of such places in the North, still there the labor unions had so completely shut out of the trades. all but “white-black men” who could “pass” to all intents and purposes the Negro could not make a dollar.

In all parts of the United States the Negroes are generally opposed to labor unions. They favor the open shop. It is not facetious to state that many Negroes understand the term “closed shop” to mean “closed to Negroes.” Though such is not its etymological history, in substance the closed shop has meant just about that. It still means that in a large area of labor circles. This is true of the railroad brotherhoods and the machinists, who with brutal frankness have embodied in their constitutions Negro exclusion clauses. Many other unions lacking the written boldness to “write out” their black brother, nevertheless “read him out” religiously in practice. The machinists put into their constitution: “Each member agrees to introduce into this union no one but a sober, industrious white man.” Part of this rule is not lived up to judging from the alcoholic breath which we have sometimes smelt at machinists’ meetings. Still it was white breath!

White Men’s Jobs

Among the various methods employed for keeping out Negro workers many unions have combined with their employers in proclaiming certain lines of labor as “a white man’s job.” For instance, conductor is a white man’s job. There is no question of efficiency involved here since all it requires to be a conductor is the physical power to clip and take up a ticket and a good memory. And every traveler will attest these are exceptional possessions of the pullman porter. He can and often does collect tickets from the passengers, while his memory is so excellent he can quickly take in and bear in mind over several days each passenger and the baggage which goes with him.

Motorman–street car, elevated and subway–is a white man’s job. (Detroit is probably the only city in America which employs Negroes.) Yet Negroes make splendid chauffeurs. We submit, too, ’tis much more difficult to run an automobile through a crowded city like New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, where guiding and steering are demanded, than it is to run a street car, subway or elevated train chiefly down a straight track.

Next, railroad engineer is considered a white man’s job. We cannot resist the temptation to tell an incident which happened about two years ago when the railroad brotherhoods were conferring at Chicago relative to calling a strike. Southerners, of course, were present. At one time when the strike call seemed imminent, Southern delegates from Georgia and Texas, mind you, rose and opposed it. Said these gentlemen: “We cannot afford to strike, because my fireman is a Negro who can run the train as well as I can. In fact he does run the train most of the time. So if we strike the bosses will put the Negroes in our places.” It needs no comment that if the Negro can run the train, and does run it most of the time, he ought to get both the pay and the name or credit for being engineer. At the present time Negroes get everything but the pay and the public credit.

Moreover, telephone operator is a “white woman’s job.” Telephone companies nowhere employ Negro operators in the exchanges. We discover no justifiable reason certainly no efficiency excuse. Colored girls in New York frequently operate switchboards for apartment houses which hold a population bigger than many American towns!

Again, even the telegraph companies attempt to make the messenger boy service a “no-Negro” service. notwithstanding the fact that colored boys can run across a city delivering messages as rapidly and as efficiently as white boys.

At the outset I stated white employers and white unions combined in propagating the psychology of certain jobs as “white men’s jobs.” An illustration of this came to us a few years ago in the building trades. A Negro electrician went to an employer for a job. The employer informed him: “We employ only union labor. If you get a union card we shall be glad to give you a job.” When the young colored electrician made application to the electricians’ union for membership, the union officials informed him: “We take in only persons who are working on the job. If you get on the job, we will grant you a union card.” Whereupon the Negro could get neither into the union nor on the job, because each party–employer and union–set up a condition which could only be met by the other.

Negroes Lost Confidence in White Unions

It is obvious the Negroes could not secure or retain confidence in white unions so long as everything–from pretext, ruse and evasion to brutal frankness–excluded them from the labor unions. Naturally and properly the man of color decided: “What care I how fair she be, if she be not fair to me?” It is better to have low wages than no wages! The Negro quite sanely prefers a lower standard of living, in the open shop, to starvation, or no standard of living, as a result of the closed shop!

Flirting With the Employers

Self-preservation is an instinct. All sentient organisms act upon this basic principle. The employers understanding the psychology, have appealed to the Negro worker on the ground that white unions were the Negro’s enemies. Proof was never lacking: on the contrary, the evidence was abundant. For the paucity of instances of trade union fairness to Negroes presented by union advocates the bosses could marshal a plethora of hostile instances. Most Negroes could fall back on their own experiences. Nor was it difficult to make a test case in any city any day. (It is not difficult even now!) Consequently Negro workers were and are ever ready to take the places of union strikers. They are coddled by the employers and repulsed by the unions. White employers are, and to a large extent have been, the Negro workers’ patrons, while the white workers have been chiefly their competitors. Patrons aid while competitors fight. One is your friend, the other your enemy. Everybody likes to get in a blow at his enemy, revenge being sweet. Add to this sweet revenge the sweetness of economic income and the blow is sweeter! labor unions of America have frequently felt this blow. Negroes have participated as strike breakers in most great American strikes. They have been a thorn in the strikers’ side in such big strikes as the steel, the miners’, packing, longshoremen’s, waiters’, railroad shopmen’s and other strikes.

Employers Put Negroes in Unions

In business there is first competition, then combination. From 1873 to 1898 was the period of large scale business in the United States. The period was noted for railroad rate cutting, clashes between the Standard Oil and other independent oil companies, steel, automobile, tobacco and banking “cut-throat competition. Then came pooling, monopolies, trusts, syndicates–“combinations in restraint of trade.” Competition was said to be the “life of business.” It was really the death of more. Each business tried to destroy its competitor until the process grew so wasteful and destructive that those businesses which did survive decided that co-operation–combination, peace–was better than competition, opposition, warfare. Businesses then combined-businesses which had done all they could to kill each other.

The world of labor is little different from the world of business. White labor has constantly fought to keep Negroes out of the industries–not especially because of a dislike for Negroes but because to limit the supply of labor would increase the demand for white workers, raise their wages, shorten their hours, and extend their tenure of employment. The unions even try to limit white apprentices, also white women. But one day along would come a strike. White men walk out. They want more wages, shorter hours–some demand the employers are unwilling to grant. The white bosses send out an S.O.S. for Negro workers. The Negroes reply as it were: “We are coming, Father Abraham, hundreds of thousands strong!” White employers take on the Negroes, not because they (the white employers) particularly like the Negroes, but because they like black labor cheap better than white labor dear!

Then is it that white workers learn the lesson of the bosses’ disregard for white supremacy. They (the white workers) see the Negroes in the industries. The white unionists cannot get them out. “How can the Negro workers be made to help us?” the white workers ask. “Lo and behold! the thing to do is to take them into our unions where we can at least get dues from them which will pay white officials’ salaries in good jobs and help the union generally.” And just as business in combining with its competitor does not do so because it likes the competitor any better (but because it could not kill its competitor), so the union white men in admitting Negroes do not do so because the white men like the Negro workers better, but because they could not keep the Negroes out of the industry—that is, they could not destroy their colored laboring competitors.

Herein we are called upon to state a truth which we have nowhere seen expressed in the radical and labor literature: “The white employers and capitalists have placed the Negro workers both into the industries, and consequently into the unions, while the white trade unions have kept the Negroes out of both the unions and the industries, so long as they could!” This question must be faced by labor leaders and organized white labor. The Negro worker may not be able to state the philosophy and the theories underlying the situation, but he is well aware of the facts. We have just returned from a long trip to the Pacific coast, during which time we passed through Topeka. Here the Santa Fe Railroad put in Negro shopmen, machinists, etc., during the shopmen’s strike. The employers are keeping the Negroes in the shops despite labor union opposition. The unions are in a terrible dilemma. They cannot call upon the Negroes to join the unions because the unions exclude Negroes as members. The employers would no doubt discharge the Negroes if they did join the union. What inducement can the unions offer as presently constituted? And if the Negro workers are not right, wherein are they wrong?

Machinery and Labor Movement

There are two forces which capital is adopting to- day. Sometimes it moves the machinery or capital to the labor and raw materials. This is what generally happens as the result of imperialism in undeveloped countries like the West Indies, Mexico, parts of South America, Central America, Haiti and Nicaragua. Capital sends machinery right where the labor supply is overwhelming and the raw materials abundant.

The other method is to attract labor to the machinery, the raw materials and industry. That is what is going on in the case of the present large Negro migration. Negro labor, attracted from the South to the North by higher wages, is coming to the steel districts of Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Ohio, and Duluth, Minnesota; to the automobile center of Detroit; the packing districts of St. Louis, Chicago, Kansas City and Omaha; as longshoremen to the ports like New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston, and to the great industrial centers of the East and central West.

What Will the Unions Do?

The Negro workers at last are here. They are in many industries now; they will be in more shortly; eventually they will be in all. What will the unions. Do–take the Negroes in or permit them sullenly and inevitably to build up a veritable “scab union” ever ready, willing and anxious to take the places of the white workers?

We are face to face with a serious problem–the two chief problems of America–the Negro and organized labor. Most men, white and black, are working men. They are struggling for food, clothing, fuel and shelter; which means they are struggling for the means of life-the things upon which life depends. They do not fight because they hate each other, but they hate each other because they are constantly fighting each other. In the struggle to live each man usually decides his life is more important to him than anybody else’s. And where there is not enough work to go around, there will be a fight to secure the limited goods. It is a widely accepted opinion that there is some special, instinctive race hatred, peculiarly high between Negroes and Irish and Negroes and Southern whites. The explanation is to be found in labor competition. The labor being skilled, Negroes did not clash with the Jews who were in the men’s and women’s clothing, cap making, fur and jewelry industry. They did not compete with the German in watch making, coat making, machinist and engineering. Negroes did, however, engage in subway digging, longshoring, street cleaning, hauling and elevator running–the unskilled lines of work largely done by the Irish, also, and by unskilled white Southerners–unskilled chiefly because of the low degree of education given in Dixie.

To-day we have Hampton Institute and Tuskegee, both of which are representative of about 200 institutions in the United States where Negroes are trained to be skilled mechanics in all lines, and also taught scientific agriculture. The white capitalists have well endowed the two above named institutions. Seldom does a rich person die in the United States without leaving a goodly sum to one or both. There was, there is, vision in these gifts. The white capitalists are training Negro mechanics to hold in check the whites in the skilled lines, just as the unskilled Negro has done tremendous work in breaking strikes, and often so threatening that white men dared not call strikes.

We have far-reaching contacts with white organized labor. We have spoken before their central bodies from New York to Seattle and Los Angeles. Many unions are open to Negroes–some freely. The needle trades seldom show race lines in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, the Fur Workers, Cap Makers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers. We find in some sections Negroes in the bricklayers’, plasterers’, carpenters’, and painters’ unions. We shall not be satisfied, however, till Negroes are in all.

There is an objection, a criticism and complaint which all the unions–radical, progressive and conservative must share alike—the absence of Negroes in administrative capacities. The labor unions of America collect millions of dollars in dues and pay millions of dollars in salaries. So far as we know, however (and we have investigated it thoroughly inquiring from Mr. Gompers and other labor leaders) there is no full time decently paid Negro organizer or official in the American labor movement! The labor unions very nearly approximate the South in taxation of Negroes without representation–for that is all that dues. paying without holding administrative positions means. This is not creditable or defensible by the American labor unions. Negro girls in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers (overwhelmingly Socialistic and radical), the Negro men in the United Mine Workers, the steel, packing, longshoremen’s, plasterers’ and bricklayers’, and the building trades unions in general, are too large in number, too variegated in ability and pay too much money in dues not to have representation among the officers, organizers, and business agents.

It yet remains for organized labor to show it is in practice fairer and more enlightened on the race question than organized capital!

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/messenger/v5n09-sep-1923-Messenger-riaz-fix.pdf