THE AMERICAN NEGRO IN BUSINESS. T HE future of the negro
population of the United States is a problem charged with such serious possibilities that any light which can be shed upon it by an examination of present conditions and tendencies deserves a most cordial welcome. This work is being done with much intelligence, discrimination, and assiduity at the instance and under the inspiration of the Atlanta University, an institution for the higher education of negro youth, and with co-operation from the graduates of other similar establishments. In past years these investi- gations have covered such subjects as negro mortality in cities, and the efforts made by the black-skinned race in the States for their own social betterment. There has now been issued a pamphlet giving the results of an inquiry made in 1899 as to the extent to which negroes are entering business life. This subject is clearly one of great importance and interest. Quite conceivably the difficulties, social and political, arising in the Republic after the development of a middle class among the black population, capable of giving it effective leader- ship, would be not less but greater than those resulting from the continuance, and even the relative increase, in certain States, of a mass of black labour. But, in any case, they would be somewhat different difficulties, and it is well worth while to be in possession of such facts as bear upon the chances of a considerable commercial evolu- tion among the American negroes. As is pointed out by the able editor of the report before us, Dr. Burghardt Du Bois, who is the corresponding secretary of the Atlanta University Conferences, "business, of all vocations, was furthest removed from slavery. Even the ante-bellum plantation-owner was hardly a good business man, and his slaves were, at best, careless sharers in a monarchical communism, and, at worst, dumb driven cattle." For plantation negroes, or their offspring, therefore, to go into business with any measure of success means the effective development of qualities and aptitudes which, if they existed in the stock, had been definitely dis- couraged and stunted by the lifelong experiences of many generations. And so, as only one generation has been born and lived in freedom, it would be plainly unreason- able to expect any great mercantile achievements as yet from the emancipated race.
When allowance is made for these considerations, the results of the Atlanta inquiries seem to point, on the whole,' to the possession by the negroes of the States of, at any rate, a share of commercial instincts and gifts quite adequate to secure the development among them of a fairly numerous class of substantial tradesmen under the conditions of trade which prevailed until quite lately everywhere, and which still appear to prevail to a con- siderable extent in the smaller towns and villages of the States. When we remember what a comparatively small proportion of the freed slaves are likely to have possessed, or to have bequeathed to their children, any considerable savings acquired during bondage, there is something not a little remarkable in the figures collected by the Atlanta inquirers as to the amount of capital invested in the businesses owned by black tradesmen in various cities and towns of the Union. Thus we find that in Washington there are negroes engaged in such trades as grocery, fish-dealing, wood and coal dealing, confectionery, tin and hardware, snd undertaking, who have invested such sums as 25,000 ; 15,000 ; 10,0001; 5,000 ; and 1,000 dollars ; and these prosperous persons have been in their respective businesses for ten, twelve, fifteen, and even twenty years. In Richmond, the Virginian capital, negro under- takers and fish-dealers do specially well, having capital estimated at figures ranging from 10,000 down to 2,000 dollars in their businesses. Even in a small and unknown town like Griffin, in Georgia, a black livery-stable keeper is entered as having 7,000 dollars of capital ; while at the important town of Mobile, Alabama, a negro hardware and crockery man has 25,000 dollars in his business ; and at Charleston a fish and game dealer and a livery-stable keeper stand at 30,000 and 20,000 dollars respectively. Two of the three last concerns mentioned have been going for thirty years, which seems to mean a steady building up of commercial success almost from the morrow of emancipation. Again, there are many much smaller tradesmen, in towns of all sizes, whose capital is reckoned in hundreds, or at only a thousand or two, of dollars, who seem to have held on for a good many years. But here, no doubt, it is necessary to take account, as Dr. Burghardt Du Bois does, of the development in the States, perhaps even more decisively than with us in England, of consoli- dating influences in retail trade. "The large industry, the department store, and the Trust are making it daily more difficult for the small capitalist with slender resources and limited knowledge to live." " This," he goes on to point out, " will have an unfortunate effect on the negro, for not only will he, with his white brother, lose ground in much of the retail business, but he, unlike the other, will not be so readily admitted to positions of direction and co-operation in the large business." There, no doubt, the deep estrangement of colour is sure to tell. It would, of course, be impossible for a man of colour, whatever technical and other qualifications he might have for employment in a position of trust by a large concern which had displaced his business, to be placed in authority over white Americans. And so it may be only too likely to happen that thrifty and energetic negroes, who seemed to have made good their footing in the world of small trade, may slip painfully back into an already overcrowded labour market. Overcrowded, because as the old associations of degrading servitude with manual toil recede into a remoter past, white workmen of almost all grades compete more and more with negroes in the Southern States. Speaking at the Atlanta Conference on this sub- ject, a negro professor observed : " To say nothing of high- grade artisans, like brick-masons and carpenters, who are crowding negroes, you now see white porters, ditchers, newsboys, elevator-boys, and the like getting positions once the exclusive property of our people." In itself this readjustment of the white view of the dignity of labour is most wholesome, but its operation cannot fail to entail much hardship among the negro population, and to make it more desirable that fresh avenues to a livelihood should be opened to them.
In connection with the point of view just mentioned, it is very interesting to find included among the papers in the pamphlet before us one by the manager of a negro co-operative foundry. This document is written in a most hopeful vein, and at the same time seems to indicate among those engaged in the undertaking a degree of self-control which would hardly have been looked for among men of colour, as it certainly might often be looked for in vain among men of European blood. By unanimous vote at various meetings of the directors of the company, its manager tells us, "it has been decided to draw no dividends until we shall have a fully perfected plant, and one upon a paying basis." The majority of the stock- holders are active members of the company, and men who have in the past been the mainstays of other foundries. We are bound to say that the editor, Dr. Burghardt Du Bois, seems more confident about the success of the dismal trade of undertaker as carried on by negroes, than of the prospects of the co-operative foundry. That institution, he says, " is small but successful, and looks as though it might survive." That is not putting it very high, and as Dr. Du Bois is pretty sure to be well informed, it may be that he sees dangers ahead of which the co-operative foundrymen are happily oblivious. To us, however, the tone of their manager's report seems not only hopeful, but promising, in its indication not only of a purpose to obtain a fair share of the advancing industrial develop- meat of the Southern States for the negroes, but also of the existence of a sound notion of the methods by which that aspiration may be realised. The two essential things to such success must be readiness to submit to authority, and the presence of a sufficient number of minds of force and enterprise among the blacks. The first of these requisites, as it seems to us, may very well be found among them,—a beneficent deposit from the days of servitude. As to the other, there is more uncertainty. But it is worth noticing that besides the fairly numerous examples of successful tradesmen to whom reference has been made, the report before us also bears witness to the existence of negroes in a quite considerable way of busi- ness in insurance, in banking, and in real estate broking. This must mean a capacity for taking long views and for making judicious ventures. On the whole, therefore, we cannot but regard the researches of the Atlanta Confer- ence as going to show that the possibilities of economic development for the negro race in America are more varied and considerable than many observers would have been inclined to expect.
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