The Gift of Black Folk & The Souls of Black Folk (New Edition). W. E. B. Du Bois
the great United Shoe Machinery Company, which now has a capital stock of more than twenty million dollars, and employs over 5,000 operatives in factories covering 20 acres of ground. This business enterprise is one of the largest in our country’s industrial development. Since the formation of this company in 1890, the product of American shoe factories has increased from $200,000,000 to [$442,631,000], and the exportation of American shoes from $1,000,000 to $11,000,000. This development is due to the superiority of the shoes produced by machines founded on the original Matzeliger type.32 The cost of shoes has been cut in half, the quality greatly improved, the wages of workers increased, the hours of labor diminished, and all these factors have made “the Americans the best shod people in the world.”
After Matzeliger’s death his Negro blood was naturally often denied, but in the shoe-making districts the Matzeliger type of machine is still referred to as the “Nigger machine”; or the “Niggerhead” machine; and “A certified copy of the death certificate of Matzeliger, which was furnished the writer by William J. Connery, Mayor of Lynn, on October 23rd, 1912, states that Matzeliger was a mulattto.”33
Elijah McCoy is the pioneer inventor of automatic lubricators for machinery. He completed and patented his first lubricating cup in 1872 and since then has made some fifty different inventions relating principally to the automatic lubrication of machinery. He is regarded as the pioneer in the art of steadily supplying oil to machinery in intermittent drops from a cup, so as to avoid the necessity for stopping the machine to oil it. His lubricating cup was in use for years on stationary and locomotive machinery in the West including the great railway locomotives, the boiler engines of the steamers on the Great Lakes, on transatlantic steamships, and in many of our leading factories. “McCoy’s lubricating cups were famous thirty years ago as a necessary equipment in all up-to-date machinery, and it would be rather interesting to know how many of the thousands of machinists who used them daily had any idea then that they were the invention of a colored man”[Henry E. Baker].34
Another great Negro inventor was Granville T. Woods who patented more than fifty devices relating to electricity. Many of his patents were assigned to the General Electric Company of New York, the Westinghouse Company of Pennsylvania, the American Bell Telephone Company of Boston and the American Engineering Company of New York. His work and that of his brother Liates Wood has been favorably mentioned in technical and scientific journals.
J. H. Dickinson and his son S. L. Dickinson of New Jersey have been granted more than 12 patents for devices connected with player pianos. W. B. Purvis of Philadelphia was an early inventor of machinery for making paper bags. Many of his patents were sold to the Union Paper Bag Company of New York.
Today the Negro is an economic factor in the United States to a degree realized by few. His occupations were thus grouped in 1920:35
The men were employed as follows:
in agriculture 1,566,627
in extraction of minerals 72,892
in manufacturing and mechanical industries 781,827
in transportation 308,896
in trade 129,309
in public service 49,586
in professional service 41,056
in domestic and personal service 273,959
in clerical occupations 28,710
The women were employed as follows:
in agriculture 612,261
in manufacturing and mechanical industries 104,983
in trade 11,158
in professional service 39,127
in domestic and personal service 790,631
in clerical occupations 8,30 1
A list of occupations in which at least 10,000 Negroes were engaged in 1920 is impressive:
MALES
Farmers 845,299
Farm laborers 664,567
Garden laborers 15,246
Lumber men 25,400
Coal miners 54,432
Masons 10,606
Carpenters 34,21 7
Firemen (not locomotive) 23,152
Laborers 127,860
Laborers in chemical industries 17,201
Laborers in cigar and tobacco factories 12,951
Laborers in clay, glass and stone industries 18,130
Laborers in food industries 24,638
Laborers in iron and steel industries 104,518
Laborers in lumber and furniture industries 103,154
Laborers in cotton mills 10,182
Laborers in other industries 80,583
Machinists 10,286
Semi-skilled operatives in food industries 11,160
Semi-skilled operatives in iron and steel industries 22,916
Semi-skilled operatives in other industries 14,745
Longshoremen 27,206
Chauffeurs 38,460
Draymen 56,556
Street laborers 35,673
Railway laborers 99,967
Delivery men 24,352
Laborers in coal yards, warehouses, etc. 27,197
Laborers, etc., in stores 39,446
Retail dealers 20,390
Laborers in public service 29,591
Soldiers, sailors 12,511
Clergymen 19,343
Barbers, etc. 18,692
Janitors 38,662
Porters (not in stores) 59,197
Servants 80,209
Waiters 31,681
Clerks (except in stores) 14,014
Messengers 12,587
FEMALES
Farmers 79,893
Farm laborers 527,937
Dressmakers and seamstresses 26,961
Semi-skilled operatives in cigar and tobacco factories 13,446
Teachers 29,244
Hairdressers and manicurists 12,660
Housekeepers and stewards 13,250
Laundresses (not in laundries) 283,557
Laundry operatives 21,084
Midwives and nurses (not trained) 13,888
Servants 401,381
Waiters 14,15 5
This has been the gift of labor, one of the greatest that the Negro has made to American nationality. It was in part involuntary, but whether given willingly or not, it was given and America profited by the gift. This labor was always of the highest economic and even spiritual importance. During the World War for instance, the most important single thing that America could do for the Allies was to furnish them with materials. The actual fighting of American troops, while important, was not nearly as important as American food and munitions; but this material must not only be supplied, it must be transported, handled and delivered in America and in France; and it was here that the Negro stevedore troops behind the battle line—men who received no medals and little mention and were in fact despised as all manual workers have always been despised—it was these men that made the victory of the Allies certain by their desperately difficult but splendid work. The first colored stevedores