NOTES

At the close of this the fourth year of its existence the a.s.sociation for the Study of Negro Life and History convened in biennial session in Washington, D. C., on the 17th and 18th of June at the 12th Street Branch Y. M. C. A. The reports for the year were heard, new officers were elected, and the plans for the coming year were formulated. The proceedings in full will appear in the October number.

The chief interest of the meeting centered around the informing addresses on the _Negro in the World War_. Every phase of the war history which the Negro helped to make was treated.

The a.s.sociation worked out also the plans by which it will collect data to write a scientific _History of the Negro in the World War_ just as soon as the treaty of peace is signed and doc.u.ments now inaccessible because of the proximity to the conflict become available. The cooperation of all seekers after the truth is earnestly solicited.

During the past two years the a.s.sociation has been able to move steadily forward in spite of the difficulties incident to the war. The subscriptions to the JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY have gradually increased and a number of philanthropists have liberally contributed to the fund now being used to extend the work into all parts of the country. This work is being done by a Field Agent who organizes clubs for the study of Negro life and history and, through local agents, sells the publications of the a.s.sociation and solicits subscriptions to the JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY.

In addition to publishing for four years the JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY, a repository of truth now available in bound form, the a.s.sociation has brought out also _Slavery in Kentucky_, an interesting portraiture of the inst.i.tution in that State; _The Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa_, one of the best studies of the early slave trade; and _A Century of Negro Migration_, the only scientific treatment of this movement hitherto published.

The circulation of these publications has been extensive. They are read in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa; they reach more than three hundred college and public libraries; they are found in all Negro homes where learning is an objective; they are used by most social workers to get light on the solution of the problems of humanity; they are referred to by students and professors conducting cla.s.ses carrying on research; and they reach members of the cabinet and the President of the United States.

Carter G. Woodson is not a contributor to the _Official History of the Negro in the World War_ by Mr. Emmett J. Scott as has been reported throughout the country. He has given the author several suggestions, however, and such editorial a.s.sistance as the many tasks and obligations of the Director permitted.

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. IV--OCTOBER, 1919--NO. 4

LABOR CONDITIONS IN JAMAICA PRIOR TO 1917

To show the lack of progress in Jamaica since the abolition of slavery by the gradual process inaugurated in 1833 and its final extermination in 1838, nothing will better serve the purpose than the review of the system of apprenticeship established as a subst.i.tute for that inst.i.tution. According to the portraiture given by Sturge and Harvey in their work ent.i.tled _The West Indies in 1837_ and the conditions now obtaining in the island, very little progress in the condition of the laboring man has been made since that time.

For scarcely any remuneration the Negroes were required by a compulsory arrangement between their overseers and the Special Magistrates to give during the crop the time granted them under the law for their own use and they were on many estates obliged to work a greater number of hours than was required by law. The apprentices were compelled to work by spells of eight hours in the field on one day, and for sixteen hours in and about the boiling house on the next day, giving up their half Friday, for which amount of extra labor they received two shillings and one penny or 50 cents a week. On one estate the wages paid for extra labor during crop was two pence or 4 cents an hour. The working hours were generally from four to eleven and from one to five, and it is interesting to note that while it was expected that on each half Friday given to the apprentices, sufficient food should be provided by them to last for the succeeding week, yet when that half day was taken from them five or six herrings were the only compensation.

The following case is taken from an agreement made in 1836 by certain cane hole diggers. Every laborer agreed to dig 405 cane holes in four and one half days due his master, and to receive ten pounds of salt fish and a daily allowance of sugar and rum, the salt fish to be diminished in the ratio of one pound for every forty holes short of 405. In the one day and a half of his own time he was paid three shillings and four pence or 80 cents for every ninety cane holes.

Under this agreement the maximum work performed was that of an apprentice who in three weeks of thirteen and one half days dug in his own time 1,017 holes, for which he received 28 pounds of fish, and in cash one pound and fifteen shillings or $8.40. By this means it was possible for the master to have 58 acres of land worked at a total cost of 147 10s 0d or $708. The cost to him, if the work had been given out to jobbers, would have been 8 an acre or 464, $2,227.20.

His apprentices were therefore the means of saving for him the sum of 316 l0d or $1,519.20.

The following was the scale of wages for transient labor:

Prime headman 3 pence or 6 cents.

Inferior headman 2 pence or 4 cents.

First gang--able-bodied 1-1/2 pence or 3 cents.

First gang--weakly 1-1/4 pence or 2-1/2 cents.

Second gang--able-bodied 1-1/4 pence or 2-1/2 cents.

Second gang--weakly 1 penny or 2 cents.

Third gang--active 3/4 penny or 1-1/2 cents.

Third gang--lazy 1/2 penny or 1 cent.

The apprentices were permitted under the law to make application to be valued, and on the basis of the valuation were ent.i.tled to purchase their freedom. Here again was the system grossly abused. The slaves or apprentices, as they were at that time called, became at the hour of valuation very desirable a.s.sets; and, in many instances, so valuable did they suddenly become that it was quite out of their power to carry out their intention. The system became for this reason a premium on all the bad qualities of the Negroes and a tax upon all the good. In spite of this, however, so great was the desire for freedom that within a period of twenty-eight months, from 1st August, 1834, to 30th November, 1836, 1,580 apprentices purchased their freedom by valuation at a cost of 52,215 or $250,632, an average of 33 or $158.40 a head.

Although seventy-eight years have pa.s.sed since the total abolition of slavery, however, the condition of the laborers of Jamaica remains practically the same as it was then. There has been beyond doubt much improvement in the island, but the unfortunate fact is this, that the laborer living in a country much improved in many respects, is himself no better or very little better off than his forefathers in slavery.

In truth, he is still an economic slave. The conditions under which he lives and works are such as destroy whatever ambition he may possess, and reduce his life to a mere drudgery, to a mere animal existence.

Some progress has been made and there are signs of improvement, but the majority of laborers, the men and women and children who till the banana fields and work on the sugar plantations, are no better off than previously. These are still beasts of burden, still the victims of an economic system under which they labor not as human beings with bodies to be fed or clothed, with minds to be cultivated and aspiring souls to be ministered unto, but as living machines designed only to plant so many banana suckers in an hour, or to carry so many loads of canes in a day. After seventy-eight years in this fair island, side by side, with the progress and improvements above referred to, there are still hundreds and hundreds of men and women who live like savages in unfloored huts, huddled together like beasts of the field, without regard to health or comfort. And they live thus, not because they are worthless or because they are wholly without ambition or desire to live otherwise, but because they must thus continue as economic slaves receiving still the miserable pittance of a wage of eighteen pence or 36 cents a day that was paid to their forefathers at the dawn of emanc.i.p.ation. The system is now so well established that the employers apparently regard it as their sacred right and privilege to exploit the laborers, and the laborers themselves have been led by long submission and faulty teaching to believe that the system is a part of the natural order, a result of divine ordainment.

This att.i.tude of the poor down-trodden laborers is one of the most effective blocks in the way of his improvement. But the despair of every one who dares to tackle this problem of improving the economic and therefore the social and moral condition of the laborers of this island is based on the inertness which almost amounts to callous indifference of the local Government.

The following letters addressed to me by the Colonial Secretary of Jamaica deserves to be put on record as evidence of the mind of the government, in 1913,--of its inability or unwillingness to take the first step. Letter A was written at the direction of Sir Sydney Olivier, K.C.M.G., then Governor of Jamaica, who recently expressed the opinion that the laborers in this island should receive one dollar a day. That letter is valuable in that it is an official statement of the maximum wages paid by the government of Jamaica to its own laborers. Letter B was written at the direction of the then Colonial Secretary, Mr. P. Cork, and is even more valuable as an official p.r.o.nouncement on the important question of a living wage.

LETTER A.

"17th January, 1913.

No. 787/15568

With reference to the letter from this office No. 13099/15568 dated the 6th November last and to previous correspondence in connection with your suggestion that the Government should raise the wages of their laborers, I am directed by the Governor to inform you that it appears from enquiries made by His Excellency's direction that the average wage now earned by laborers under the Public Works Department is approximately one shilling and eight pence half penny (41 cents) for an average day of ten hours, so that in an average day of ten hours the laborers would at the same rate of pay earn two shillings and one penny half penny" (51 cents).

LETTER B.

"8th March, 1913.

No. 2926/3268

The Acting Governor directs me to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 26th ultimo on the subject of the amount of wages paid to native laborers in the employment of the Government, and in reply to say that no acknowledgement of the correctness of your contention that one shilling and sixpence per diem is not a fair living wage for any laborer to receive, and that the minimum he ought reasonably to expect to enable him to meet the ordinary demands of existence is two shillings per diem (48 cents), is to be inferred from the letter from this office, No. 737/15568 dated the 17th of January, 1913.

"2. I am to add that His Excellency is not in a position to comply with your request that steps should be taken to ensure to all laborers working under the Public Works Department a minimum wage of two shillings per diem (48 cents) as from 1st April next."

The problem becomes real and serious when the ruling authorities are unwilling to admit what is absolutely clear to every one who is not hopelessly prejudiced, namely, that eighteen pence or thirty-six cents a day, the amount which was paid to the emanc.i.p.ated slaves in 1838, is not a living wage for his descendants in the year 1913, and when they are either unable or unwilling to set the pace for other employers of labor by paying their own laborers a minimum wage of two shillings or forty-eight cents a day.

With the labor problem of Jamaica the question of East Indian Immigration is intimately connected. While, on the one hand, we have the able-bodied native laborers miserably and cruelly underpaid, and having in consequence to emigrate in large numbers to other countries, on the other hand, we have the importation into the island of indentured immigrants under the conditions which make the economic improvement of the native laborers an impossibility. On the one side, the available records inform us that from April 1, 1905, to March 31, 1908, laborers numbering 39,060 emigrated from this island and deposited with the local Government the sum of 22,217 or $106,641.60 as required by law. The exodus to Cuba is at present a very serious comment upon the existing labor conditions. During the month of December, 1916, 761 persons emigrated from the island, 580 to Cuba and 181 to other places.

The figures, on the other side, reveal the fact that since the introduction of East Indian Immigration in 1845 to the present time 35,933 East Indians have been brought into the island; and it is estimated that there are to-day resident in the island over 20,000 East Indians, 3,000 of whom are indentured and 17,000 have completed their term of indenture. These immigrants are distributed to the several estates by the government at a cost of 20.10.0, or $90.42, paid in installments: 2 or $9.60, paid on allottment, 2.2.0 or $10.08 at the end of the first year, and 4.2.0 or $19.68 at the end of each of the succeeding four years.

For the years 1891-1908 the cost of this system to the colony is officially reported as follows:

Cost of importation 129,692.2.2 $622,522.12 Administrative expenses 37,377.0.2 179,409.64 Return pa.s.sages 1901-8 27,254.5.11 130,820.62 Gross cost 194,323.83 $932,752.38 Receipts in hand 143,171.1.1 $687,221.06 Net cost to colony 51,152.7.2 $245,531.32

or an average of over 3,000 or $14,400 per annum.

The immigrants are indentured for five years, and are ent.i.tled after a continuous residence of ten years in the colony to one half of the value of their pa.s.sage money in the case of men and of one third in the case of women. For a working day of nine hours the men are paid one shilling or 24 cents and the women nine pence or 18 cents. A deduction of two shillings and sixpence or 60 cents a week is made for rations supplied. They receive free hospital treatment which cost the Government on the average of two pounds or $9.60 each per annum.