BRASS TACKS

2. In War Industry.

While the Negro in the Army is the victim of racial prejudice and discrimination, he is, at least, a participant in the war effort; he is expending some energy against Fascism. But, paradoxically, on the labor front, the Negro is not even given the satisfaction of being in the fight, no matter what prejudices he may meet. He has been barred, generally, from war work.

When the United States Employment Service inquired, some time ago, of selected war industries how many jobs would be opened to qualified Negroes, answers showed that 51 per cent were absolutely closed to colored workers in both northern and southern states, for unskilled as well as skilled workers. Although the government has urged and even demanded that industry hire Negroes, management officials have been slow to respond. Standard Steel of Kansas City, Missouri, declared: "We have never had a Negro worker in twenty-five years and don't intend to start now."

Reasons for non-employment of Negroes have been of an infinite variety and very often mutually contradictory. Stock replies have usually been: Negroes have never applied; whites and blacks can't work together; no time or money to build separate toilets; Negroes aren't trained. Negro spokesmen, though, look to the White House for aid, and it is coming, if slowly.

Since the formation of the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice, significant gains have been made. Numerically, these gains have been slight, but occupational patterns are being established to form a basis for tapping the large reserve of Negro labor in a score of industrial areas. With the slow realization that the home front is as important as the fighting front, employers--with a little prodding by Government agencies--are opening fields hitherto closed to the Negro. Shipbuilding, the converted automobile industry, the iron and steel plants are leaving their doors ajar, and a few Negroes are slipping in. These developments represent encouraging beginnings, but they are only beginnings. Ordnance plants and the machine tool industries have not yet erased the color line. The Committee on Fair Employment Practice is beginning to aid in the placement and training of the Negro by issuing directives to war industries requesting specific action relative to racial employment patterns. This government agency is dealing with unions in which discriminatory practices have been reported. But the Committee itself is still in a development stage.

The ground has been broken, and the foundations are being laid by the War Manpower Commission for complete mobilization of manpower. This must naturally include the Negro. But whether this is a permanent advance or only a temporary perch "for the duration" will depend upon the efficiency that Negroes show in their jobs, the extent to which they find and master training at skilled trades, and the readiness of employers to evaluate American workers on a basis not of their color, but of their ability. It will depend, also, upon whether organized labor learns the lesson that the white worker will never be free while his Negro fellows remain chained.