The Negro at Work in New York City: A Study in Economic Progress

by George Edmund Haynes

[7] Kelsey, The Negro Farmer, (Chicago, 1903), pp. 5-103; vide pp. 24-28. Du Bois, The Negro Farmer in Bulletin 8, (Twelfth Census), pp. 79-81.

[8] DuBois, op. cit., p. 77.

[9] Kelsey, Some Causes of Negro Emigration: Charities, New York, vol. xv, no. 1, pp. 15-17; cf. DuBois, op. cit., pp. 73-74.

[10] Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1909, table 143, p. 261.

[11] Kellor. Out of Work, pp. 73, 83.

[12] Cf. Tucker, Negro Craftsmen in New York, in Southern Workman, September, 1907, p. 550.

[13] For statute provisions of state governments, see Twenty-second Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Labor Laws of the United States, pp. 129, sec. 4165; 133-135, secs. 6345-6856; 146-147, secs. 3695-3696, 3905, 4057; 153, secs. 5357-58, 5383; 155-56; acts of 1901, no. 101, secs. 1-3; acts of 1905, no. 49, secs. 1-3; 157-59, act no. 219, sec. 1; act no. 225, secs. 7-18; 278, secs. 2530, 2641-42; 281, sec. 3233-34; 291, sec. 4732; 495-501, secs. 1350, 2722-2739A; 706, sec. 2139; 1228-29, secs. 2717-2720; 1231-32, secs. 338, 358; 1251-52, secs. 3794, 4339-42; 1339-40, sec. 3657D. Vide also, Digest and Summaries of Certain Classes of Laws Affecting Labor,—Mechanics' Liens, pp. 37-38, 43, 44, 49, 50, 55, 61-62, 70-72, 74.

[14] The laws referred to are framed in terms of the regulation of contracts of employment, violation of contract, and contracts of employment with intent to defraud. Breach of contract in either set of cases is usually a misdemeanor (criminal act instead of a civil tort) with a penalty of fines (or imprisonment in Florida). Often in practical operation, they place the tenant and farm laborer at the discretion or mercy of the landlord. The writer has made repeated visits to many rural communities in Ala., Ga., Fla., Miss., and La., and has observed how these legislative measures serve as barriers to thrift among the landless Negro farmers. A number of the youths have expressed their conviction that since their fathers and mothers have accumulated nothing after years of labor on the land, they do not intend to stay on the plantation to repeat the process. For provisions of statutes: See Commissioner of Labor, op. cit., pp. 133-34, secs. 6845-46; 147, sec. 5030; 284, chaps. 703-704, secs. 1146-1148.

[15] Economic Analysis of American Prejudice, by Dr. Wm. L. Bulkley, in The Colored American Magazine, July, 1909, pp. 17, 19. 20-21.

[16] Cf. Darkest America, by Kelly Miller in New England Magazine, April, 1904.