h. These
were for the most part single men and in habits were shiftless and
undependable; and in numbers this class far exceeded the former type.
It will, therefore, be of interest to know what was the behavior of
the Negroes in the various industries in which they were employed.

The performance of the Negroes in this regard is well seen in the
railroad and steel industries which employed many thousands of them.
In these we find that the deportment of the Negro workers was such as
to cause a great deal of labor turn-over. This was due largely to the
fact that these concerns hired mostly single men who were shiftless
and given to wandering from place to place. For example, the
Pennsylvania Railroad, in 1917, after a year of importation of
thousands of Negroes from the South had less than 2,000 in its employ.
The Baltimore and Ohio and New York Central roads, after having done
likewise, had less than 1,000 Negroes occupied. Each of these roads
experienced a demand for labor and was trying to fill the depleted
ranks by further importations from the South. Again, in 1917, the Erie
Railroad reported that among 9,000 Negroes brought from the South
during a period of six or seven months a full labor turn-over occurred
every eleven days. Of this number only the first two thousand remained
long enough to work out the transportation that had been furnished
them. In most of these cases the Negroes, after reaching the North,
remained in the railroad camps only long enough to draw a first pay or
until they learned of the opportunity for higher wages in other
fields. Sometimes they would not wait even long enough to try the work
and quarters after their transportation had been paid, but would start
at once for other places.[139]

The steel mills in Pennsylvania, like the railroads, also found it
difficult to keep a stable Negro labor force. At the Coatesville
Midvale plant it was necessary to bring in 150 new workers each week
in order to keep the labor force up to the normal standard. This same
plant was compelled to hire from 2,500 to 2,800 men a month to keep a
steady force of 5,500 employed, and the turn-over was twice as great
among the Negro as among the white workers. The Carnegie steel plant
at Youngstown reported that 9,000 or 10,000 Negroes had been hired and
that in the meantime it was necessary to keep hiring five men to have
every two jobs filled. Even other plants paying the highest wages,
moreover, were compelled to