The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the UnbornSmith, William Benjamin
History
The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn
Smith, William Benjamin
African Americans
"How now has this exclusion been maintained? In some cases by the
actual inclusion of the word 'white' among qualifications for
entrance into certain trade unions. More often, however, by
leaving the matter of color entirely to local bodies, who make no
general rule, but invariably fail to admit a colored applicant
except under pressing circumstances. This is the most workable
system and is adopted by nearly all trade unions" (p. 128). "To
repeat, then, the real motives back of this exclusion are plain:
A large part is simple race prejudice, always strong in working
classes and intensified by the peculiar history of the Negro in
this country. Another part, and possibly a more potent part, is
the natural spirit of monopoly and the desire to keep up wages
... Moreover, in this there is one thoroughly justifiable
consideration that plays a great part: namely, the Negroes are
used to low wages--can live on them, and consequently would fight
less fiercely than most whites against reduction" (p. 129)....
"The Negroes of the city who have trades either give them up and
hire out as waiters and laborers, or they become job workmen and
floating hands, catching a bit of carpentering here or a little
brickwork or plastering there at reduced wages" (p. 130). It is
needless to accumulate such depositions.
Accordingly, we may confidently affirm that the experiment of Mr.
Washington and his Northern multi-millionaire admirers, to solve the
race problem by making of the Negro a skilled labourer, may indeed be
magnificent, but, in any large measure, it cannot succeed. If at any
time it seemed to promise any very wide success, it would rouse a race
animosity, North and South, the like of which we have not yet beheld.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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