The diagram shows in a similar manner the distribution of the female
negro wage-earners. There were engaged in agriculture in the northern
and western states but a trifling proportion of negro women, while in
the southern states as a whole nearly one-half of the female negro
wage-earners were engaged in that avocation. On the other hand, personal
service occupied fully nine-tenths of the female wage-earners in the
northern and western states, while in the southern states less than
one-half were engaged in it. Indeed, 94 per cent. of the female
wage-earners of the west were engaged in personal service, 91 per cent.
in the northeastern states, and 87 per cent. in the north central
states. In trade and transportation the proportion was trifling, and in
manufactures it was small, although much larger in the north and west
than in the south.
Here, also, we see that agriculture and personal service occupied nearly
all wage-earners—91 per cent. in the northeastern states, 96 per cent.
in the southeastern states, 89 per cent. in the north central states, 97
per cent. in the south central states, and 95 per cent. in the western
states. Occupations were slightly more diversified in the north and west
than in the southern states, as was the case with the males.
OCCUPATIONS BY STATES.
It will now be of interest to extend this study in detail by states,
but, in doing so, the study will be confined to the southern, the former
slave states, which are, in a sense, the home of the negro, and in which
more than nine-tenths of them live. In most of the northern states the
number of negroes is so small that any conclusions drawn from statistics
regarding them are worthless and are likely to be misleading.
Diagram No. 8 shows the distribution by sex of the negro wage-earners of
these southern states. The total length of the bar represents in each
case all the wage-earners, the white portion representing the males and
the shaded portion the females.
This diagram shows that the greatest proportion of female wage-earners
is in the District of Columbia, where it is nearly one-half of all negro
wage-earners, and the least in West Virginia, where it is less than
one-fifth of all. In most of the cotton states it ranges from one-fourth
to one-third of all negro wage-earners.
Diagrams Nos. 9 and 10 present the proportion of male and of female
negro wage-earners who are engaged in agriculture, personal service, and
other occupations in the southern states.
The first of these diagrams, representing male wage-earners, shows that
agriculture and personal service accounted for from 63 to 94 per cent.
of all male wage-earners. Indeed, excluding the District of Columbia
from consideration, from 73 to 93 per cent. were accounted for by these
two occupations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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