During the fall of 1919 the general manager of the S—— F—— P—— Company was approached on the subject of employing colored girls. To our surprise, it was discovered that colored girls were already employed by him in all branches of the industry, and mixed freely with white employees. There was no discrimination in the character or kind of work or the use of plant facilities. Mr. N—— explained that he had never thought of segregating white and colored workmen, and the wisdom of his plan had been proved by the experience of his father, who employs both white and colored girls, but keeps the groups separated by a partition. According to Mr. N—— the partition had been a source of trouble for the reason that the placing of the partition itself indicated that the company intended to make a difference between white and colored workers. This put each group in a frame of mind which caused them to resent the presence of any worker on the side of the partition on which she was not employed. The elder Mr. N—— realized his mistake but did not dare to take the partition down, fearing that by so doing he would precipitate further trouble which would result in the most desirable girls in each group quitting the plant.
Foremen, because they personify the management in the mind of the workmen, play a large part in shaping the attitude white workers adopt toward Negroes. If the foremen are antagonistic or insulting in their treatment of the Negro, white workers find favor with the foremen by adopting the same attitude. A construction company employing sixty Negroes reported:
There were always difficulties with this gang when the Italian foreman was here, as he constantly endeavored to place Italians at work displacing some very good Negro workers. When I was sent here I dug under the difficulties and found the Italians were very clannish and were using the foreman to carry out the plan of giving every Italian who came along a job, at the expense of some Negro's job. I am a French Canadian and have worked with colored men before. After failure in trying to get Italians to see how bad the old system was, I was forced to let all the Italians go. I have an excellent gang of Negroes now.
The representative of a large foundry said:
I believe I have a harder time to get the Polish foremen to handle Negro help than any other. Our foremen are accustomed to handling the Polish workers pretty rough. While employers don't want that, it goes on that way. A Pole is "cussed" around and does not care what he is called. It's all the same to him, but a colored man is a pretty thin-skinned individual. You call a colored man something, and he will grab his hat and is gone. He thinks that when the foreman uses those words he means it. He will not stand for the same kind of language that the Polak will.
3. USE OF NEGRO LABOR TO UNDERMINE WAGES
If Negroes are introduced into a plant during a strike and retained afterward, a period of strained relations between white and Negro workers is almost certain to ensue. They are given a similarly unfavorable start when they are introduced to reduce labor costs. In the smaller establishments, where wages and conditions of work were not well standardized, white workers were suspicious that Negroes were working for lower wages, and the Negroes suspected that they were being paid lower wages than white workers. It is obvious that where mutual distrust and suspicion are present, friction readily develops which may lead to serious social consequences.
To what extent Negroes are being paid lower wages than white workers it is impossible to say. In this connection the Chicago Urban League made the following statement:
The charge of inequality in the wages of white and colored workers is frequently made, but the League is not always permitted to inquire into wage scales, and therefore verification of some of these rumors has been impossible.
The League has taken up this matter with such companies as ——, ——, ——, and numerous others, with the result that in each instance the statement has been made that white and colored workers receive the same pay for the same work. There is a deep-seated suspicion, however, that this is not true. In some cases this suspicion seemed to be justified. Complaints have come to our attention where colored people have been mistaken for white in the offices of the —— Company and employed at a higher rate of pay than that given colored girls for similar work. This, however, has never been verified. Pay inequalities have been explained away by larger experience, seniority, superior production, etc., in favor of whites.