Proportions of Males and Females among the Negro Wage-earners.
Diagram No. 8.
The diagram shows in a similar manner the distribution of the female negro wage-earners. There were engaged in agriculture in the northern and western states but a trifling proportion of negro women, while in the southern states as a whole nearly one-half of the female negro wage-earners were engaged in that avocation. On the other hand, personal service occupied fully nine-tenths of the female wage-earners in the northern and western states, while in the southern states less than one-half were engaged in it. Indeed, 94 per cent. of the female wage-earners of the west were engaged in personal service, 91 per cent. in the northeastern states, and 87 per cent. in the north central states. In trade and transportation the proportion was trifling, and in manufactures it was small, although much larger in the north and west than in the south.
Here, also, we see that agriculture and personal service occupied nearly all wage-earners—91 per cent. in the northeastern states, 96 per cent. in the southeastern states, 89 per cent. in the north central states, 97 per cent. in the south central states, and 95 per cent. in the western states. Occupations were slightly more diversified in the north and west than in the southern states, as was the case with the males.
Occupations by States.
It will now be of interest to extend this study in detail by states, but, in doing so, the study will be confined to the southern, the former slave states, which are, in a sense, the home of the negro, and in which more than nine-tenths of them live. In most of the northern states the number of negroes is so small that any conclusions drawn from statistics regarding them are worthless and are likely to be misleading.
Diagram No. 8 shows the distribution by sex of the negro wage-earners of these southern states. The total length of the bar represents in each case all the wage-earners, the white portion representing the males and the shaded portion the females.
This diagram shows that the greatest proportion of female wage-earners is in the District of Columbia, where it is nearly one-half of all negro wage-earners, and the least in West Virginia, where it is less than one-fifth of all. In most of the cotton states it ranges from one-fourth to one-third of all negro wage-earners.
Diagrams Nos. 9 and 10 present the proportion of male and of female negro wage-earners who are engaged in agriculture, personal service, and other occupations in the southern states.
The first of these diagrams, representing male wage-earners, shows that agriculture and personal service accounted for from 63 to 94 per cent. of all male wage-earners. Indeed, excluding the District of Columbia from consideration, from 73 to 93 per cent. were accounted for by these two occupations.