The Negro at Work in New York City: A Study in Economic Progress — Edition Insights

Numbers as Argument

Haynes builds his case almost entirely through tables and percentages. The excerpts include wage rates for a dozen skilled trades, broken down by union membership and daily earnings: bricklayers at $0.70 per hour, stationary engineers averaging $21.00 weekly. He also analyzes 902 employer testimonials from two agencies, using answers to four questions—length of employment, capability, sobriety, honesty—as proxies for worker efficiency. The method is transparent: he excludes 1,800 replies for being incomplete or from outside New York, leaving a sample he calls “a fair indication of the whole.” The catalog subject “African Americans—Employment” is accurate, but the study’s focus is less on the experience of work than on its quantifiable outcomes.

The Union Question

Union membership appears as a key variable. Haynes lists approximate numbers for 1910: 350 Negro asphalt pavers and helpers, 240 rock-drillers, but only 40 carpenters, 21 bricklayers, and 8 printers. He notes that union men “are reported to receive the same wages as white workmen,” yet the low membership figures themselves become a finding. The catalog subject “African American businesspeople” is less visible in these excerpts; the text instead emphasizes wage labor and the barriers to skilled trades. Haynes’s own preface acknowledges the study is incomplete—Part III on the professions was abandoned due to insufficient data—underscoring how the available evidence shapes the argument.

Domestic Service and Employer Testimony

The most detailed data comes from domestic and personal service, where Haynes uses employment-agency records to assess worker efficiency. Of 100 males, 30 stayed with one employer less than five months; 25 remained over two years, including five who stayed five to eleven years. For females, the largest group (24.1%) stayed six to eleven months. The source material—employer testimonials on printed blanks—frames efficiency through the employer’s perspective, not the worker’s. The catalog subject “African Americans—History” is implied but not directly addressed; the excerpts offer no narrative of community life, only the statistical residue of job tenure and wages.

Readers should approach this study as a primary source for early-20th-century social science methodology rather than a comprehensive history. The data is raw, the scope limited to wage-earning and small business, and the perspective shaped by the available records—employment agencies, union rolls, employer surveys. Haynes’s caution about incomplete data and his reliance on employer testimony are worth noting. The text rewards attention to its tables and footnotes, where the numbers often speak louder than the prose.

Reading the wage tables and union rolls in The Negro at Work reminded me of my grandfather’s careful ledger, where every Sunday’s church collection was penciled in. That quiet tallying of progress felt familiar. Later, The Farmer and His Community — Reading Notes stirred the same ache—how dignity hides in ledgers, not headlines. Both books whisper the same truth: worth is measured in patient, daily arithmetic.