existed, is obviously unfounded.
The generalization cannot also be made that the colored people are
difficult to organize, for from our survey we have found only one
Union, the Waiter’s Local, that has made any attempt to organize the
colored people, and was unsuccessful. The official of this Union
explains it because the colored waiters “are more timid, listen to
their bosses, and also have a kind of distrust of the white Unions.”
The same official also admitted that while he himself would have no
objection to working with colored people, the rank and file of his
Union would not work on the same floor with a colored waiter. None of
the other Unions made any effort to organize the colored workers in
their respective trades, and they cannot therefore complain of the
difficulty of organizing the Negroes.
In the two trade organizations which admit Negroes to membership, the
colored man has proved to be as good a unionist as his white fellows. A
single local of the Hod Carriers Union, a strong labor organization,
has over four hundred Negroes among its six hundred members, and has
proved how easy it is to organize even the new migrants by enlisting
over one hundred and fifty southern hod carriers within the past year.
The other Union which admits Negroes--The Hoisting Engineers’ Union,
has a number of colored people in its ranks. Several of these are
charter-members, and a number have been connected with the organization
for a considerable time. Judging from the strength of these Unions--the
only ones in the city which have a considerable number of blacks
amongst them--the Negroes have proved as good Union men as the whites.
If the Pittsburgh trade organizations are typical of the present
national trade union movement it would appear that there is little hope
for the Negroes. If the present policy of the American labor movement
continues, the Negroes can depend but little upon this great liberating
force for their advancement. A few facts disclosed in our canvas of the
trade unions in Pittsburgh will bear out our statements.
[Illustration: A Row of Dilapidated Old Dwellings in the Downtown
Section Used as Rooming Houses for Migrants.]
An official of a very powerful Union which has a membership of nearly
five thousand said that it had about five colored members. He admitted
that there are several hundred Negroes working in the same trade in
this city, but his organization does not encourage them to organize
and will admit one of them only when he can prove his ability in his
work--a technical excuse for exclusion. This official was a man who
was born in the South; he believed in the inferiority of the Negro,
deplored the absence of a Jim Crow system, and was greatly prejudiced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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