The Need of Social and Unemployment Insurance for Negroes

Abstract

The most important and immediate problem facing all Americans who live by work is that of unemployment. I am here using the term in a broad sense to embrace all those who are precluded from work either by industrial disorganization or increasing rationalization, the unadjusted situation in agriculture, or who through discrimination, injury, disability, old age, or for some other reason, are unable to earn their livelihood. No group in America is more acutely involved in the present crisis than are the Negro people. The question of social and unemployment insurance must be examined very carefully by this group, and therefore I wish to present for your consideration two types of insurance, now before the Congress of the United States. The one is known as the Economic Security Act backed by the Administration. The other, the Workers' Unemployment Old Age and Social Insurance Bill (H.R. 2827) was introduced in the present Congress by Representative Ernest Lundeen of Minnesota. Before discussing with you the principles of these two measures, I wish to review briefly facts which show the present economic status of the Negro in America. THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO The Fifteenth Census, taken in 1930, showed 11,891,143 Negroes in the United States, in round figures 12 million, constituting 9.7 per cent of the total population. Of these, 5,503,535 were listed as employed. Thirty-six per cent of all Negro workers were engaged in agriculture, nearly 29 per cent in domestic and personal service, and nearly 19 per cent in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. The remaining occupational categories, transportation and communication, trade, personal service, extraction of minerals, and all others, gave employment to only slightly over 16 per cent. Thus we see that more than 3,500,000 Negro workers-a great majority of all those employed-are found within the categories of domestic and personal service and agriculture, representing approximately 65 per cent of all Negroes gainfully employed. These figures become even more pointed if we consider that, whereas Negroes constitute only 9.7 per cent of the total population, they form 11.3 per cent of the working masses of the country. Referring again to the two principal occupational pursuits of the Negro people, agriculture and personal and domestic service, 19 per cent of all those in farming pursuits and 31.8 per cent of all those in the services mentioned are Negroes. Observing the question of employment from still another angle, for every 1,000 gainfully employed