White laborer

“ These laborers in particular came into competition with the white laborer and especially the new immigrants. This and other economic causes led to riots in Philadelphia, New York and Cincinnati and a growing conviction on the part of a newly enfranchised white workingmen that one great obstacle in America was slave labor, together with the necessarily low status of the freedmen. ”

“ He was one of the first few to see that chattel slavery could not compete in efficiency with white labor, and he reckoned that more money could be made from the white laborer, for whom no responsibility of shelter, clothing, food and attendance had to be assumed than from the negro slave, whose sickness, disability or death entailed direct financial loss. ”

“ Consequently the second object of the immigration philosopher is to make sure that, when the rights of the laborer come to be recognized in the South, that laborer will be white, and just so far as possible the black laborer will still be forced down below the white laborer until he becomes thoroughly demoralized or extinct. ”

“ The white laborer therefore brought to America the habit of regular, continuous toil which he regarded as a great moral duty. The black laborer brought the idea of toil as a necessary evil ministering to the pleasure gift of the white laborer made America rich, or at least made many Americans rich, it will take the psychology of the black man to make it New and better organization of industry and a clearer conception of the value of effort and a wider knowledge of the process of production must come in, so as to increase the wage of the worker and decrease rent, interest, and profit ”

“ The blame which belongs to his own class he shifts from them to the shoulders of labor. It becomes us to test the truth of that assertion by the light of reason, and by appeals to indisputable facts. Of course the land-owners of the South may be expected to view things differently from the landless. The slaveholders always did look at things a little differently from the slaves, and we therefore insist that, in order that the whole truth shall be brought out, the laborer as well as the capitalist shall be called as witnesses before the Senate Committee of Labor and Education. ”

“ In the last ten years a million of these have been willing and able to move physically from Southern serfdom to the freer air of the North.
The other three millions are as free as the better class of white laborers; and are pushing and carrying the white laborer with them in their grim determination to hold advantages gained and gain others. ”

“ The trouble is not that the colored people of the South are indolent, but that no matter how hard or how persistent may be their industry, they get barely enough for their labor to support life at the very low point at which we find them. We therefore throw off the burden of disgrace and reproach from the laborer where Mr. Calhoun and others of his class would place it, and put it on the land-owner where it belongs. It is the old case over again. The black man does the work and the white man gets the money. ”

“ The basis of the opposition to the Colored people is primarily the desire to eliminate him from the ordinary industrial lines of work that he will not be able to compete with the White man. Of course, if he is not permitted to work there is no danger of competition. This is the real cause of the opposition of Labor Unions to the Colored laborer, but this cause is hidden, and the outward cause is, because his skin is black. ”

“ They have a wooden look, when you meet them on the streets, that is startling to an American observer. Every observant European travelling in this country notices the difference in the intelligence of the average countenance of American working-people, both among men and women. But how long can we expect that to last if the dominion of the sweater is to spread in our midst? Reduce wages to the point where the laborer has to either remain at the shop or take his work home and work into the night, and drive it on through Sunday as well, and you simply brutalize the workman. ”

“ There is, therefore, no danger of another pro-slavery movement. The relations between the colored laborer and the white employer are bound to develop themselves upon a bona-fide free-labor basis. Of the social and political relations between the two races, something more will be said below. ”

“ Now suppose, as white union labor in the South grows stronger, it should influence such legislation as would eliminate colored labor where it came into competition with white labor, the colored laborer would be politically powerless to resist this legislation. ”

“ Experience proves that it takes more than one class of people to tell the whole truth about matters in which they are interested on opposite sides, and we protest against the allowance of only one side of the labor question to be heard by the country in this case. Meanwhile, a little reason and reflection will in some measure bring out truth! The colored people of the South are the laboring people of the South. The labor of a country is the source of its wealth; without the colored laborer to-day the South would be a howling wilderness, given up to bats, owls, wolves, and bears. ”

“ Under such a system all labor is bound to suffer. Even the white laborers are not yet intelligent, thrifty, and well trained enough to maintain themselves against the powerful inroads of organized capital. The results among them, even, are long hours of toil, low wages, child labor, and lack of protection against usury and cheating. But among the black laborers all this is aggravated, first, by a race prejudice which varies from a doubt and distrust among the best element of whites to a frenzied hatred among the worst ”

“ It is to be hoped that there may be a gradual broadening of the views of white laborers in this vital matter and a change of attitude by the trade unions that they dominate. Can we reasonably expect this? As matters now stand, it is the individual Negro artisan, often a master contractor, who can work at his trade and give employment to his fellows. ”

“ The old planters seemed utterly despondent about raising cotton by free negro labor. A few thought of 373watching the Yankees and imitating their policy; but the most of those who did not propose flying to Brazil, were dreaming of imported white labor. The following was one of their fine schemes:
“White Labor Agency.—Rates of Hire of White Laborers:
Payable at the end of the year.
They contract for one year, to do the same work as the negro; live in the same cabins, and on the same rations; clothe themselves and pay their own doctor’s bills. Time lost by sickness deducted from wages. ”

“ I have stated before that it is the labor question, more than any other, which causes the Colored people to suffer greater indignities than any other class of Americans in this country, and I believe it is not on account of their color, so much as it is the desire of white laborers to do the work and to receive pay which might go to him. It is an admitted fact that these same laborers or mechanics in search of a job, will go South, where the Colored men have charge of such work, or nearly so, and will not only work with them, but hire to them and be bossed by them. ”

“ This general attitude toward the main laboring class reflects itself less glaringly but as certainly in the treatment even of white laborers. So long as white labor must compete with black labor, it must approximate black labor conditions—long hours, small wages, child labor, labor of women, and even peonage. Moreover it [115] can raise itself above black labor only by a legalized caste system which will cut off competition and this is what the South is straining every nerve to create. ”

“ Much has been said about the dislike of the white man for work in association with negroes. The failure of the whites to have a larger share in the agriculture of the South has been attributed to this cause. This seems to me clearly an error. The dislike to the association of races in labor is, in the slaveholding States, less than in the North. There can be no question that if the Southern folk could have made white laborers profitable they would have preferred to employ them, for the reason that the plantations would have required less fixed capital for their operation. ”

“ For instance, there has been a large immigration of European emigrants into that section of the country between Little Rock and Fort Smith.
Q. Do they, upon these farm or small plantations being converted into farms, work in companionship with the negro laborer?
—A. No; they generally buy the land and work it themselves; they may hire a negro and work with him; they are laborers themselves.
Q. Is there any tendency among the white and colored laborers of any class to work in companionship, or to fraternize at all in labor? ”

“ Scarcely any believe that the negro can be depended on for labor except in a state of slavery; and the most, therefore, throughout the whole season following the surrender, looked upon the sugar and cotton culture as ruined, unless white laborers could be brought in. ”

“ I think it wise policy for the planter to give high wages, as he thus secures a better class of laborers, who work not only industriously but cheerfully.
“I am satisfied, in my own mind, that one able-bodied American negro of ordinary intelligence is worth at least two white emigrants. He understands the business, and he has the advantage of being acclimated. I am willing, therefore, to pay the negroes one-third higher wages than any white laborers accessible to us. ”

“ While few but the rich had such ample staffs as this, none but the poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio of servitors to the gross population was large. The repugnance of white laborers toward menial employment, furthermore, conspired with the traditional predilection of householders for negroes in a lasting tenure for their intimate services and gave the slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. ”

“ This is because there are such swarming millions of them willing to work for very small wages, and live as no self-respecting white man could live; that, were they allowed to enter this country freely, they would quickly drive white laborers from the field and leave them to starve. ”

“ As the laborer’s palms become callous through constant contact with rough surfaces, so the brain of a bank employee arrives at a stage of indifference through his daily mental contact with millions of dollars. ”

“ But the labor movement turned their backs on those black men when the white world dinned in their ears. Negroes are servants; servants are Negroes. They shut the door of escape to factory and trade in their fellows' faces and battened down the hatches, lest the 300,000 should be workers equal in pay and consideration with white men. ”

“ But this is just what the manumission of the black people of this country has accomplished. They are more absolutely under the control of the Southern whites; they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they are more poorly housed, clothed and fed, than under the slave régime; and they enjoy, practically, less of the protection of the laws of the State or of the Federal government. ”

“ To all this was added a series of labor laws making the exploitation of Negro labor more secure. All this legislation had to be accomplished in the face of the labor movement throughout the world, and particularly in the South, where it was beginning to enter among the white workers. This was accomplished easily, however, by an appeal to race prejudice. No method of inflaming the darkest passions of men was unused. ”

“ It is clear the white population cannot be employed in raising cotton or tobacco, because in doing so they can earn but twelve and a half cents per day, since the same quantity of labor performed by a slave is worth no more. I am told also that the wages of overseers, mechanics, &c. are higher than the white labor of the North; and it is well known that many mechanics go from the North to the South, to get employment during the winter. These facts suggest the inquiry whether this cheap slave labor does not paralyze the industry of the whites? ”

“ White labor began to see that it would be better to lift the Negro up to the same scale with itself, by admitting him into their organization, than to seek his debasement. If Negroes were in a condition to work for fifty cents per day and would do so, and capital would employ them, then white men must accept the same terms or get no work! ”

“ The slave is robbed, by his master, of all his earnings, above what is required for his bare physical necessities; and the white man is robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he is flung into competition with a class of laborers who work without wages. The competition, and its injurious consequences, will, one day, array the non-slaveholding white people of the slave states, against the slave system, and make them the most effective workers against the great evil. ”

“ If the negro is brought to the position of refusing to work for lower wages than the white man he has taken the most difficult step in organization; for the labor union requires, more than any other economic or business association in modern life, reliance upon the steadfastness of one’s fellows. Unfortunately, when the negro demands the same wages as white men, his industrial inferiority leads the employer to take white men in his place, and here again we see how fundamental is manual and technical intelligence as a basis for other progress. ”