ed or skilled labor.[124] This was especially true of the
Negro workers who were employed in the large steel plants in the State
of Pennsylvania. In the larger establishments of this sort almost
fully 100 per cent of them did common labor, while in some of the
smaller plants a few were sometimes found doing labor which required
some skill. When employers were asked why this was the case they
generally replied in a two-fold manner: first, the Negro migrants were
inefficient and unstable; and secondly, the opposition on the part of
white laborers to work with Negroes prohibited their employment of
them to do skilled work.[125]

What has just been said sums up very briefly the whole situation
regarding the efforts of Negroes to maintain themselves in the North.
We wish, however, to continue this in a more specific way by making a
little survey of the occupations and wages of Negro migrants in a few
of the cities of the North and West. Although accurate information in
this respect is meagre, yet that which will be given is undoubtedly
authoritative, being based on specific studies of the labor and wage
conditions of the newcomers in the cities named and which, therefore,
may also be regarded as typical of the same conditions in most of the
other cities not herein considered. The advanced reports of the
Federal census of 1920 contain as yet no information of this sort and
there were so many changes between 1918 and 1920 that it is still
difficult to describe these conditions accurately.

The occupations and wages of these migrants throw further light on the
situation. In Pittsburgh it was found that of 493 migrants who stated
their occupations, 95 per cent were engaged in unskilled labor in the
steel mills, the building trades, on the railroads, or were acting as
servants, porters, janitors, cooks, and cleaners. Of this same number
only 4 per cent were employed at what might be called semi-skilled or
skilled work such as puddlers, mold-setters, painters, and carpenters.
A further study revealed that out of 529 laborers only 59 had been
doing skilled work in the South, and that of the rest a very large
number had been rural workers.[126] While most of the workers were
engaged in unskilled labor, their wages nevertheless were much in
advance of those they had received in the South. These wages were as
follows: 62 per cent of the workers received from $2 to $3 per day; 28
per cent received from $3 to $3.60 per day; and 5 per c