Economic Forces Serving the Ends of the Negro Protest

• Author: Alan B. Batchelder
• Published date: 01 January 1965
• Date: 01 January 1965
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/000271626535700109
• Subject Matter: Articles

Economic Forces Serving the Ends
of the Negro Protest
By ALAN B. BATCHELDER
ABSTRACT: Favorable economic forces are essential to the
realization of the objectives of the Negro protest. During the
1950’s, economic forces were unfavorable: Negro education was
grossly inferior to white; technological changes ejected Negroes
from agriculture and from manufacturing production jobs; un-
employment rates rose. During these years, the Negro man’s
economic position fell relative to the white man’s. In the
future, several economic forces will aid Negroes: Technological
change will create new occupations free of vested interests
opposing admission of Negroes. Losing unskilled labor while
gaining capital, Southern urban employment and wage rates
will rise, benefiting Negroes as well as whites. Government will
provide nondiscriminatory employment opportunities, and Ne-
groes will utilize military training and government employment
experience to find work in the private economy. Declining
birth rates will reduce pressure on unskilled wages and will im-
prove home environments of poor Negroes’ children. Negro
purchasing power, concentrating in cities, will press nondis-
criminatory employment policies upon employers. Negroes
admitted to corporate managements will acquire experience
permitting them to set up their own businesses. Most im-
portant, high-employment business stability will maintain an
economic environment favoring rational—nondiscriminatory—
use of the Negro potential, while every program reducing un-
employment rates will make that environment even more
favorable.
Alan B. Batchelder, Ph.D., Gambier, Ohio, is Assistant Professor of Economics at
Kenyon College. He previously taught at Ohio Wesleyan University and is the author
of Retraining the Unemployed (1962).
80

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81
HE
Negro protest is a protest
vances.
Between 1940 and 1944, the
T against every aspect of second-class
number of Negroes employed in skilled
citizenship. Many of these aspects are
work doubled as did the number of
noneconomic.
Yet, in America, the
semiskilled jobs; the greatest occupa-
noneconomic aspects of a citizen’s life
tional gains were made in mass produc-
are to a great extent determined-or at
tion manufacturing: aluminum, motor
least circumscribed-by his economic
vehicles, communications equipment,
circumstances. A
brief review of Ameri-
steel, and rubber.3
3
can Negro history will illustrate the role
In contrast, depressions generated la-
of economic forces in shaping the eco-
bor surpluses that thrust Negroes out
nomic and social conditions of Ameri-
under the familiar principle of &dquo;last
can Negroes.
hired, first fired.&dquo;
During recessions,
unemployment rates among Negroes
ECONOMICS AND THE CONDITIONS
typically increase more than twice as
OF NEGRO LIFE
much as among whites.4
Negro slavery developed during the
THREE UNFAVORABLE ECONOMIC
late 1600’s as one answer to the labor
FORCES
shortage then pressing the colonists to
seek new methods of obtaining and re-
When the most recent period of &dquo;war
taining additional labor. Slavery waned
economy&dquo; ended in 1953, American Ne-
in the North after proving uneconomical
groes could anticipate that economic
for family farms and small businesses.
forces would continue to shape their
In the South after 1700, slavery waxed
lives. Unfortunately, during mid-twen-
as gang labor proved profitably perfect
tieth century, three forces have affected
on the big rice and indigo plantations.’
Negro progress adversely, largely be-
Then the cotton gin, invented in 1793,
cause of the initial concentration of Ne-
made cotton king of an agricultural sys-
groes in the rural South.
tem that prospered using slave labor.
First, technological change continu-
After 1865, the former masters found
ously modifies production methods. Pro-
that share-cropping and the crop lien
ductivity in agriculture has, since 1945,
could bind Negroes firmly to the land
risen twice as fast as the average for all
and perpetuate the satisfactorily profit-
other industries.’
Consequently, agri-
able cotton system.2
2
cultural employment opportunities have
Until World War I, in cities North
ebbed, sending farmers and farmers’
and South, Negroes were excluded from
children to seek nonagricultural employ-
all but menial and laborious jobs by
ment. Outside agriculture, automation
white assumptions of Negro unsuitabil-
has reduced blue-collar employment in
ity for skilled or semiskilled work and
the mass-production manufacturing in-
by the generous availability of cheap
dustries in which Negroes scored their
white immigrant labor.
greatest wartime gains. Between 1947
Then, the world wars shut off immi-
and 1960, although total output rose,
gration and created new demands for
the number of production workers fell
labor. During these war years, Negroes
in the iron and steel, motor vehicle,
made unprecedented occupational ad-
3
Robert C. Weaver, Negro Labor (New
1
Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in
York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946), pp. 78-80.
American Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957),
4
Calculated from U.S. Bureau of Labor Sta-
pp. 18-21.
tistics, Employment and Earnings, Vol. 8 (No-
2
James H. Street, The New Revolution in
vember 1961), pp. 72-73.
the Cotton Economy (Chapel Hill: University
5
Council of Economic Advisers, Annual Re-
of North Carolina Press, 1957), pp. 19-20.
port (Washington, D.C., 1964), p. 245.

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82
foundry, textile, and tire industries.~
6
white schools, and, as late as 1940, Ne-
Between 1947 and 1963, blue-collar
gro teachers in Mississippi were paid
jobs comprised but 3 per cent of
only 9 per cent as much as teachers in
the total increase in American employ-
New York.’
°
ment.7
7
Unremittingly pressing Negroes
In 1960, 45 per cent of Negroes resi-
off Southern farms, automation also af-
dent in the non-South had been born in
fected Negro more than white urban
the South 11 where most of them had
jobs.
spent their &dquo;school years&dquo; in the na-
Second, depressions and recessions
tion’s most primitive classroom facilities.
have particularly victimized Negroes
Lacking education, these migrants have
who were hired during the late months
been ill-equipped to compete with whites
of upswings and fired during the early
educated in the non-South.
months of downswings. Further, ad-
NEGRO INCOME
justments
IN A WEAK
to agricultural change require
LABOR MARKET
full employment conditions because farm
outmigration varies directly with the
What, then, happened to Negroes
level of national prosperity.’ But after
after the Korean War? Throughout the
1953, unemployment remained well
1950’s, court decisions, legislation, and
above wartime levels while recessions
political and...