Over the course of collecting and visualizing my data, the charts above emerged from the numbers of steelworkers collected by the U.S Census Bureau between 1900 and 1940. The results showed that the laborers who worked in the steel plants underwent a shift in their composition within this period. In 1900, a pattern had already emerged of a light majority of steelwork being performed by non-native white immigrants, and this trend only continued into the 1920s. During the 1920s, black steelworkers began to make up a more significant portion of the total, not outstripping either native or non-native whites, but becoming quite a significant minority. This continued into the Great Depression, and remained as a part of the workforce into 1940. But this raises a question of how these three types of workers were treated, and what the roles they played in the industry were.
For this question, I created figures 6-9 , and these charts revealed the breakdown of exactly who was filling which job positions. Native white workers, despite participating in the steel working labor force in lower numbers, made up a disproportionate amount of skilled and semiskilled jobholders. Non-native whites, mostly immigrants from Europe, made up the bulk of the entire steel working labor force, but mostly held unskilled labor positions.1 In the data from 1920, black workers make up a significant, if minority percentage of mostly unskilled, but some skilled positions.2 The breakdown and a definition of what semi-skilled vs skilled means is not clear in the census, but the data is enough in my view to make an argument. I contend that white native steelworkers were able to access better jobs due to their perceived superior status, that immigrants from Europe were treated more poorly nd had less job opportunity but still were able to trade on their varied levels of being perceived as white to gain advancement and recognition while black steelworkers were discriminated against and forced to take lower skilled jobs, alienating them from white workers, and encouraging them to work for their own interests due to not being allowed into many unions.
The evidence of White native workers being advantaged is clear in their relatively low participation rate in steelwork by the 1900s. This tends to make sense as those who had been in the country and in the steel working trade for longer would be more likely to both have a higher skilled position, or be able to choose a less dangerous and strenuous line of work. These workers were among the first to unionize, but because they occupied relatively senior positions and had been in conflict with the mill owners on multiple occasions, they were opposed initially to allowing immigrant workers into unions, or into the country at all.3 The immigrant workers, for their part, were willing to take any job that was offered and the potential lack of much English skills they had would have further pushed them into lower skilled jobs. Steel magnates and tycoons would be happy to hire these workers, they could undercut the unions and save money on labor.
Over time however, as unions came to recognize the value of solidarity with immigrant workers, and as ideas of “whiteness” gradually expanded to include southern and eastern Europeans, many of these immigrant workers joined unions and began to be represented in their workplaces. Around the time of World War One, black workers began to enter the picture in statistically significant numbers, and due to anti-black attitudes and the lack of options faced by black folks leaving the south during the Great Migration, these workers began taking unskilled positions in steel plants. The unions viewed the black workers with the same suspicion and hostility as they had immigrants, and immigrant workers were able to join this time, playing on their “whiteness” to give them a social advantage over black workers. World War One proved an inflection point, due to the inability of most black men to fight in the Army, they were available to be hired when white steelworkers were drafted.4 Black workers realized the hostility that they were viewed with, and responded accordingly by working through strikes, encouraging the steel factory owners to hire them more as a more reliable workforce. This allowed some of them to rise to semiskilled or skilled positions.
Overall, the data I collected shows that White steelworkers occupied a privileged position, with native born workers above immigrants, and this explains why the immigrant labor made up mostly unskilled workers. When black workers entered the picture, they were seen as enemies by workers, but in response to this racism, black workers did not engage in union action, and were in a few cases, able to use this to gain higher positions, but were still discriminated against and stigmatized. Further data analysis is needed to see how these trends may have developed beyond the scope of the graphs above.
Works cited
Steven A. Reich. 2014. The Great Black Migration : A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=9038614c-f2b3-3b9e-a1c2-0053d543aa93.
TAKENAKA Koji. 2015. “From Dynamic Ghetto to Hyper-Ghetto: My Research on the ‘Chicago Black Ghetto’ and African-Americans Now.” Nanzan Review of American Studies 37 (March): 119–33. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=f0c3362c-56f2-3865-bc8f-4d1e94804e83.
Catron, Peter. 2016. “Made in America? Immigrant Occupational Mobility in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.” American Journal of Sociology 122 (2): 325–78. doi:10.1086/688043.
Burgoon, Brian, Janice Fine, Wade Jacoby, and Daniel Tichenor. “Immigration and the Transformation of American Unionism.” The International Migration Review 44, no. 4 (2010): 933–73. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40930956.
U.S Census Bureau, 1900 Census Special Reports: Occupations at the Twelfth Census, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1904/dec/occupations.html#:~:text=This%20special%20report%20on%20occupations,years%20of%20age%20and%20over., Accessed 09/25/2024
U.S Census Bureau, 1910 Census: Volume 4. Population, Occupation Statistics, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1914/dec/vol-4-occupations.html ,Accessed 09/25/2024
U.S Census Bureau, 1920 Census: Volume 4. Population, Occupations, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1923/dec/vol-04-occupations.html, Accessed 09/26/2024.
U.S Census Bureau, 1930 Census: Volume 4. Occupations, by States. Reports by States, Giving Statistics for Cities of 25,000 or More, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1933/dec/1930a-vol-04-occupations.html, Accessed 09/27/2024.
U.S Census Bureau, 1940 Census of Population: Volume 2. Characteristics of the Population. Sex, Age, Race, Nativity, Citizenship, Country of Birth of Foreign-born White, School Attendance, Years of School Completed, Employment Status, Class of Worker, Major Occupation Group, and Industry Group, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1943/dec/population-vol-2.html, Accessed 09/28/2024.
- Figures 6-9 [↩]
- Figures 8-9 [↩]
- Burgoon, Brian, Janice Fine, Wade Jacoby, and Daniel Tichenor. “Immigration and the Transformation of American Unionism.” The International Migration Review 44, no. 4 (2010): 933–73. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40930956. [↩]
- Steven A. Reich. 2014. The Great Black Migration : A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic. Pg. 334, Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=9038614c-f2b3-3b9e-a1c2-0053d543aa93. [↩]