3. INCREASE IN NEGRO LABOR SINCE 1915
The data obtained from questionnaires, interviews, and conferences with employers disclosed the fact that there has been a remarkable increase since 1915 in the number of Negro workers employed in manufacturing, in clerical occupations, and in laundries. As was to be expected, the number of Negroes in personal service (hotels, dining-cars, and parlor-cars) also increased, but the increase was negligible in comparison with the gain in the other fields mentioned.
Inability to obtain competent white workers was the reason given in practically every instance for the large increase in the number of Negroes employed since 1914. All of the large employers of Negro labor attending the conferences assigned shortage of labor as the principal reason for the increased number of Negroes reported. A few establishments (not represented in the conferences) reported that Negroes had first been employed to take the place of strikers, and increasing numbers had been employed thereafter. The establishments so reporting were hotels, a small clothing factory, and a warehouse company. Because of the labor shortage in the North, large numbers of Negroes left the southern states.
| Industries | Number of Establishments | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Box making | 3 | 3 | 3 | 116 | 116 | 145 | 143 |
| Clothing | 9 | 75 | 110 | 140 | 108 | 161 | 203 |
| Other needlework | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 325 | 325 |
| Cooperage | 2 | 29 | 34 | 95 | 110 | 15 | 106 |
| Food products[61] | 16 | 1,103 | 2,529 | 4,765 | 6,518 | 5,789 | 5,379 |
| Iron and steel[62] | 22 | 121 | 672 | 1,115 | 1,580 | 3,002 | 3,829 |
| Tanneries | 7 | 0 | 17 | 36 | 87 | 229 | 462 |
| Miscellaneous manufacturing | 10 | 15 | 15 | 24 | 48 | 75 | 140 |
| Totals | 62 | 1,346 | 3,380 | 6,291 | 8,592 | 9,881 | 10,587 |
| Industries | Number of Establishments | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hotels | 9 | 544 | 559 | 615 | 684 | 693 | 956 |
| Laundries | 20 | 118 | 180 | 220 | 350 | 520 | 764 |
| Mail order (clerical occupations) | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 664 | 1,650 | 1,400 |
| Railroads (dining- and parlor-car service) | 16 | 3,939 | 3,940 | 4,274 | 4,493 | 4,506 | 5,363 |
| Totals | 47 | 4,601 | 4,679 | 5,109 | 6,191 | 7,369 | 8,483 |
4. CHICAGO EMPLOYERS AND SOUTHERN NEGRO LABOR
During the course of its inquiry the statement was frequently made to members of the Commission or to its investigators that large employers of labor in Chicago, and particularly the packers, had imported many Negroes from the South. Although the Commission made a thorough investigation of such statements, no evidence of any value was discovered to support them.
The general superintendents of the Armour, Morris, Swift, and Wilson plants who attended conferences declared emphatically that their companies had not engaged in any encouragement of migration.
Mr. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, being asked through correspondence from the Commission if he could furnish any evidence tending to prove the importation of Negroes into the Chicago district by employers, replied, "There is a plentitude of such evidence," but when Mr. Gompers was urged to cite the evidence, his reply was: "It cannot be unknown to you that some 30,000 Negroes were imported into the Chicago district during the steel strike. They did not go there of their own volition, but through inducements which were held out to them by the agents of employers who visited southern and western cities."
As, however, the Chicago race riot occurred a year prior to the steel strike, importation of Negroes at the latter time could not have affected the situation out of which the riot came. But the fact remains that labor leaders insist that employers in the Chicago district imported Negroes from the South, notwithstanding their inability to cite facts in support of this belief.