of wages is the same for both races. One large employer held, that Colored American’s as bricklayers had a value exceeded by no one, and that in his own case the highest paid workmen were Colored Americans. In Baltimore, it was found that Colored Americans occupy a very important position in the working class element of the population. An overwhelming majority in the building trades are Colored Americans. 62In Birmingham, Alabama, there is a larger number of Colored American workmen than in any other district in the United States. The building and mining industries are the two in which the two races come into the most direct competition with one another, yet in neither of these industries does a situation exist which occasions any serious friction. 62 In Cleveland, Colored Americans were found in the steel and wire works, as plasterers, hod carriers, teamsters and janitors. In Memphis, in the transport trades and also in certain industries, such as the making of bricks and cottonseed oil, the labor is almost entirely Colored American. They are making their way into the skilled trades, and in some wood working establishments both whites and blacks work side by side at skilled occupations. In New Orleans, the industries are of a kind which employ mainly unskilled or semi-skilled labor, with the result that white men and Colored Americans are found doing the same kind of work and earning the same rate of wages. In the Pittsburg district, more than a hundred Colored Americans are employed in business as printers, grocers, hairdressers, keepers of restaurants, caterers, etc. Many are employed by the municipality as policemen, firemen, messengers, postmen, and clerks. A large number of work people in the building and iron and steel trades are Colored Americans, some being in highly skilled occupations. Here is the truth from a foreign source that must be considered fair and unprejudiced. But the home records show a more diversified distribution maintaining a proportionate employment everywhere. There does not appear anywhere to be a fear that the labor of Colored Americans will crowd out the white labor, but there is a lingering suspicion that it may do so, although practically it does not. In consequence of this timidity, what are known as “segregation” laws and ordinances have been
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