CHAPTER 5 |
One of the most significant things that I saw in the South—and I saw it everywhere—was the way in which white people were torn between their feelings of race prejudice and their downright economic needs.
—Following the Color Line, Ray Stannard Baker
THE UNITED STATES IS SEEN as a capitalist country. It has a history of both slavery and racial discrimination. Therefore, capitalism is frequently regarded as a system for the exploitation and mistreatment of black Americans. The degree to which our economic system is fully capitalistic need not distract us here. The question this chapter addresses is whether racism, in the sense of antipathy toward or personal preferences against blacks, by itself constitutes an insurmountable barrier to upward economic mobility. Considerable evidence suggests that racism by itself does not.
Using Licensing to Exclude Blacks
As discussed at length in Chapter 4, occupational licensing can reduce employment opportunities by creating artificial or unrealistic standards. It can occur without apparent racial motivation, as has been shown in the case of cosmetologists. Occupational licensing has also been used as a tool to achieve racist goals, such as the elimination of blacks from a craft. Historically, the tactic, when coupled with white-dominated craft unions, has been a particularly effective means of reducing black employment. Plumbers’ and electricians’ craft unions explicitly advocated licensure laws as a means to eliminate black competition. As Lorenzo Greene and Carter G. Woodson said, “A favorite method of barring [Negroes] from plumbing and electrical work was to install a system of unfair examinations which were conducted by whites.”[1]
The following letter provides an example of one union’s desire to eliminate black plumbers through licensure:
|
Editor Journal: |
Norfolk, Va., |
|
Dear Sir and Brother: |
February 12, 1905 |
Enclosed you will find a clipping from a Norfolk paper, which I would suggest that you give space in the next issue of the Journal, believing that it will be of interest to the members of U.A., especially of the southern district, as the Negro is a factor in this section, and I believe the enclosed Virginia state plumbing law which will eliminate him and the imposter from following our craft. . . .
(Signed) C. H. Perry, Sec. L.U.110[2]
Enclosed with the letter was a legislative bill containing the following commonly stated justification for the licensing of plumbers: “To promote the public health and to regulate the sanitary construction, house draining, and plumbing, and to secure the registration of plumbers in all cities. . . .[3]
A Northern trade publication carried the following report:
. . . All the other work, jobbing, etc, is done by Negroes. . . . Bro. Becker and a few of the boys are going to run over to Greenville and make a thorough investigation and try to have these bosses hire white men. It is a wonder to me that there are not more Negroes working at our business from the way our members in a great many places use them as helpers. . . .[4]
The same issue of that publication contained this entry:
There are about ten Negro skate plumbers working around here [Danville, Virginia], doing quite a lot of jobbing and repairing, but owing to the fact of not having an examination board [licensing agency] it is impossible to stop them, hence the anxiety of the men here to organize.[5]
Proposals for licensing as a means of eliminating black tradesmen were not restricted to the South. In Kansas City, blacks were denied entry into a number of trades, including plumbing and electricity.[6] In New Jersey, it was reported to be impossible for a black to become a licensed plumber or steamfitter.[7] A study by Sterling D. Spero and Abraham L. Harris found that “in a city like Philadelphia, the licensing board will not grant a Negro a license—in Chicago the Negro plumbers have failed to gain advances after years of effort.”[8]
Another method used to exclude, especially effective against blacks, involved apprenticeship examinations. Here are a few exam questions that, as late as 1968, a number of building trades unions used to screen candidates for their apprenticeship programs:
1. Czolgosz is to Booth as McKinley is to
(a) Lincoln, (b) Washington, (c) Roosevelt, (d) Garfield.
2. Aztec is to Mexico as Maya is to
(a) Peru, (b) Guatemala, (c) Haiti, (d) Uruguay.
3. is to phlegmatic as vivacious is to .
(1) husky, (2) rheumatic, (3) pneumatic, (4) sluggish.
(a) elusive, (b) pouting, (c) entertainer, (d) president.
4. is to composer as Longfellow is to .
(1) Dali, (2) Van Gogh, (3) Riley, (4) Hayden.
(a) musician, (b) poet, (c) entertainer, (d) president.
5. Revolution is related to evolution as flying is to .
(1) birds, (2) whirling, (3) walking, (4) wings, (5) standing.[9]
Typically, whites have attended higher-quality high schools than blacks and Hispanics. Such a test, whether intended to or not, will therefore disproportionately exclude the latter groups. It should go without saying that a capacity to answer questions such as those above have little to do with one’s ability to be a plumber or carpenter.
Union Growth and Exclusion of Blacks from the Crafts
Blacks have not always been conspicuously absent or scarce in the skilled crafts and trades. Isaac Weld, in his eighteenth-century travels around the United States, observed that “Amongst their slaves are found tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, smiths, turners, wheelwrights, weavers, tanners, etc.”[10]
Novelist James Weldon Johnson wrote, “The Negroes drove the horse and mule teams, they laid the bricks, they painted the buildings and fences, they loaded and unloaded ships. When I was a child, I did not know that there existed such a thing as a white carpenter or bricklayer or plasterer or tinner.”[11]
According to Charles B. Rousseve: “Throughout the South where the majority of white men were too lazy to work, by far the largest proportion of labor, skilled and unskilled, was performed by Negroes, both freemen and the slave.”[12] John Stephen Durham wrote about union exclusion of blacks from skilled crafts in the late 1800s:
In the city of Washington, for example, at one period, some of the finest buildings were constructed by colored workmen. Their employment in large numbers continued some time after the war. The British Legation, the Centre Market, the Freeman’s Bank, and at least four well-built schoolhouses are monuments to the acceptability of their work under foremen of their own color.
Today, apart from hod-carriers, not a colored workman is to be seen on new buildings, and a handful of jobbers and patchers, with possibly two carpenters who can undertake a large job, are all who remain of the body of colored carpenters and builders and stone-cutters who were generally employed a quarter of a century ago.[13]
Commenting about stevedores, Durham said, “The effective organization of white laborers was closely followed by the driving of Negroes from the levees at the muzzles of loaded rifles. The iron industry is passing through the same experience. . . .”[14] Durham concluded, “[T]he real struggle of the unions is in opposition to the general desire of the employing class of the South to give the Negro whatever work he is capable of doing.”[15]
Summarizing Durham’s findings, Herbert Hill wrote: “Extending his inquiry into the North, Durham found the effects of the Negro exclusion policy to be even ‘more manifest.’ ” In Philadelphia in 1838, the Society of Friends had compiled a directory of occupations in which Negroes were employed. Significantly included were such skilled jobs as cabinetmaker, plumber, printer, sailmaker, ship’s carpenter, and stonecutter. By the end of the 1890s, Negroes had been forced out of most of these and other craft occupations.[16]
Hill continued his documentation of the impact of unions on Negro craft employment opportunities:
In the older seaboard cities of the South, Negroes had once been employed in a great variety of occupations, skilled and unskilled. However, in the last decades of the nineteenth century the process of Negro displacement had begun, and trade unions were a most important part of this development. . . . In both South and North the trade union opposes black labor wherever it can and admits it to fellowship only as a last resort.[17]
It does not take much to conclude that the decline in black employment in the crafts, including electricians and plumbers, stemmed from a tradition of racial exclusion policies by labor unions. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the United Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters unions long excluded blacks from membership by tacit agreement among their members.[18] As of 1920, the Electrical Workers Union’s 142,000 members included no blacks, even though there were 1,343 black electricians. Similarly, the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union included none of the 3,600 black plumbers among its membership of 35,000. Of the 6,000 black plasterers, the Plasterers Union had only 100 among its 30,000 members. The Sheet Metal Workers Union had no blacks among its 25,000 membership.[19]
In stark contrast to today, black leaders of the past were deeply suspicious about union motivation and recognized their harm and hostility to blacks. W. E. B. Dubois said, “[I]nstead of taking the part of the Negro and helping him toward physical and economic freedom, the America labor movement from the beginning has tried to achieve freedom at the expense of the Negro.” Later he added, “The white employers, North and South, literally gave the Negroes work when white men refused to work with him; when he’s scabbed for bread and butter the employers defended him against mob violence of white laborers; they gave him educational institutions when white labor would have left him in ignorance.”[20]
Said Marcus Garvey, in urging blacks to undercut union wages as a means to employment and combating union racism, “the only convenient friend the Negro worker or laborer has in America at the present time is the white capitalist.”[21] Similarly, in 1924, Howard University’s Professor Kelly Miller urged blacks to “stand shoulder to shoulder with the captains of industry” in opposition to labor unions.[22] J. E. Bruce wrote that unions were a “greedy, grasping, ruthless, intolerant, overbearing, dictatorial combination of half-educated white men. . . . I am against them because they are against the Negro.”[23] Both Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington were lifelong foes of unions.[24]
Some scholars have made the baseless argument that blacks earned the hostility of labor unions by their willingness to work for lower wages.[25] Unions could have easily fought this tendency by admitting blacks as members. Charles S. Johnson says that, “When the trade unions have been open to them, Negroes have entered as freely as white workers.”[26] Others have asserted that blacks encountered union hostility because they allowed themselves to be used as strikebreakers.[27] This explanation overlooks the fact that strikebreaking was a necessary expedient because unions denied blacks membership. Johnson says:
[M]any of the greatest advances which Negroes have made in industry, many of their first opportunities, are due to strikes and their part in breaking them. They were used to break the stockyard strike, and they have been employed there ever since; they were largely responsible for the failure of the steel strike, and they have been employed there ever since; and they now make up 17 percent of steel mill workers; they were used in the great railroad strike of 1922, and about 700 Negroes, mostly skilled, are still employed by one system alone. . . . The list could go on indefinitely.[28]
John G. Van Duesen was convinced that “criticism of the Negro strikebreaker comes with poor grace from unionists who subscribe to the policy of excluding Negroes from their Unions.”[29]
Black and White Labor Violence
Labor violence in Chicago was a classic instance of racial competition in the labor market, and in 1919, it culminated in one of the nation’s deadliest race riots.[30] When the riot was over, twenty-three blacks lay dead along with fifteen whites; well over 500 people of both races were injured. The history of Chicago’s racial antagonism goes back to the Pullman strike of 1894, when packing and slaughterhouse workers struck in sympathy with Eugene V. Debs’s American Railway Union. This strike marked the first time in the history of the packing industry that blacks were used as strikebreakers, and the action ended in defeat for the white workers.
In 1904, the packers once again went out on strike. This time the strike was over the skilled butchers’ demand for a minimum wage of 20 cents an hour for their unskilled brethren, complaining that large packinghouses “began a system to crowd out the expert butchers and replace them by cheaper men in every way.” They were displaced by “cheap Polackers and Hungarians. . . .”[31] As our earlier analysis of the economic effects of minimum wages would predict, “The skilled worker realized that this specialization enabled unskilled workers with ‘muscle’ to replace him; it appeared inevitable that unless a minimum wage were obtained for the unskilled, cut-throat job competition would drive all the wages down.”[32]
Once again, the packers’ strike was broken by blacks, who were hired as replacements by the thousands. And once again, they were subjected to extensive violence. Out of desperation as well as miscalculation, union leaders wired Booker T. Washington asking him to come to Chicago to lecture blacks on the subject: “Should Negroes Become Strikebreakers?” Washington turned the invitation down. South Carolina’s Senator “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, a rabid segregationist, came instead to tell the union workers, “It was the niggers that whipped you in line. . . . They were the club with which your brains were beaten out.”[33]
In 1905, during a Chicago teamsters’ strike, trainloads of black workers were brought in to deliver milk, coal, and other merchandise. They were set upon by angry strikers, and riots ensued. Chicago’s city council enacted an order requesting that the city’s corporation counsel file an opinion as to “whether the importation of hundreds of Negro workers is not a menace to the community and should be restricted.” The employers’ association responded by indicating a willingness not to import any more blacks, but refused to fire those already employed. The teamsters’ president replied, “You have the Negroes in here to fight us and we answer that we have the right to attack them wherever found.”
Indicative of white solidarity over strikebreaking was the sympathy strike conducted by hundreds of grade school students. They stoned black drivers delivering coal to their schools. Teachers and principals encouraged the students, in one case saying, “I invite the students to strike, if the dirty niggers deliver coal at this school.”
Despite union and political pressure, employers continued to hire blacks—as more than temporary. According to an employer for Pullman Company, blacks were hired “not as strikebreakers, but with the understanding that their positions would be permanent,” and they were “proving themselves much more efficient in every way than the cleaners who left. . . .” Labor competition benefited them. In 1910, Chicago’s black population was 50,000; ten years later, it had doubled. During that period, the number of black workers in Chicago rose from 27,000 to 70,000. In the cattle shipping yards, their numbers rose from a mere 6 percent of the labor force to 32 percent. Black employment in every packinghouse increased by three to five times.[34]
Black newspapers and the Urban League understood the economics of the conflict, and took a conciliatory posture towards Chicago’s racist unions saying, “We have arrayed ourselves on the side of capital to a great extent; yet capital has not played square with us; it has used us as strikebreakers, then when the calm came turned us adrift.” Adding that if it were to the race’s “economic, social and political interest to join with organized labor now, it should not make the least bit of difference what was their attitude toward us in the past, even if that past was as recent as yesterday. If they extend the olive branch in good faith accept it today.”[35] Months later, after a convention of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), when its constituent unions did nothing to remove exclusion and segregation clauses, the Chicago Defender bitterly complained, “Unwillingly, we assume the role of strikebreakers. The unions drive us to it.”[36] Black workers put their antipathy toward unions more forcefully: “Fuck the union, fuck you in the [union] button.”
New Deal and Black Workers
While white unions could deny blacks membership, they were not as effective in denying them employment. Like any other seller of goods or services, black would-be workers found that they could appeal to employers’ desire for higher profits through offering to work at lower prices. During the period of the “old” Supreme Court, frequently referred to as the Lochner era, laws that restricted freedom of contract and fostered monopolies were often struck down as unconstitutional violations of the “privileges and immunities” clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. That meant blacks (or any other less-preferred group, such as immigrants, women, and children) had a powerful weapon in coping with racial discrimination—the right to work for lower wages.
During the New Deal, the power of workers to offer that “compensating difference” began to erode. The National Recovery Act (NRA), which became law in 1933, established codes that required the payment of set wages for certain industries.[37] Those codes were established generally by exclusionary union-business panels. The NRA also provided for minimum wages based on what certain classes of workers received in the past. Since the act created set wages, it reduced employer incentives to hire blacks;[38] because such hiring provided no economic advantage, there was no reason for employers to put up with the white worker hostility and conflict that might result. Some employers dismissed black workers and hired whites in their place.[39] Others eliminated menial jobs held by blacks because they could not pay the mandated wage.
Section 7a of the NRA certified unions as exclusive bargaining agents. The NAACP’s Roy Wilkins said that the AFL’s strategy was to use section 7a “to organize a union for all workers, and to either agree with employers to push Negroes out of the industry or, having effected an agreement with the employer, proceed to make the union lily-white.”[40] Black spokesmen and the black press were fully aware of the effects of the act. They referred to it variously as the “Negro Run Around,” “Negroes Rarely Allowed,” “Negroes Ruined Again,” “Negroes Robbed Again,” “No Roosevelt Again,” and the “Negro Removal Act.”[41] Professor Herbert Hill said that “the legislation intended to be the cornerstone of President Roosevelt’s program to protect and uplift the working class had . . . become a millstone around the Black worker’s neck.”[42] In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the NRA unconstitutional.[43] New Dealers mourned,[44] but the black community celebrated.[45]
The celebration was short-lived. In 1935, Section 7a of the NRA became Section 9 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), popularly known as the Wagner Act, which established unions as the sole collective bargaining unit once the union became certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Wagner Act banned company unions and allowed unions to establish closed shops that had the power to bar non-members from employment. Originally, the Wagner Act contained a clause barring unions from discriminating against blacks. At the time, Howard University’s Professor Miller predicted “the doom of the Negro in America industry if the Wagner Act did not contain a clause protecting blacks.”[46] Under AFL political pressure, Senator Wagner dropped the anti-discrimination clause in order to retain union support and insure the act’s passage.[47] Most New Dealers thought that discrimination against blacks was an acceptable and inevitable cost of economic recovery.[48]
The Wagner Act was widely thought to be unconstitutional;[49] however, the “new” Supreme Court, having abandoned judicial review of economic legislation, upheld its constitutionality.[50] This translated the unequal treatment of blacks by unions into a loss of previously available employment opportunities. In 1945, the NLRB made a face-saving ruling that a statutory bargaining agent must represent all employees fairly without regard to race.[51] However, the board also ruled that segregation and exclusion of blacks from union membership did not constitute an unfair labor practice. And it held that segregating blacks and whites into separate local unions was not a form of discrimination per se.[52]
New Deal legislation was clearly devastating for the black worker. In 1930, the national total unemployment rate was 6.13 percent. However, in that year, unemployment for blacks stood at 5.17 percent, almost a full percentage point below that for whites. 1930 was to be the last year a larger percentage of whites than of blacks would be unemployed.[53]
The Wagner Act not only conferred monopoly power on labor unions, it also made it illegal for employers to use blacks as strikebreakers. The higher, union-mandated wages led to mechanization and the elimination of some low-skilled jobs performed by blacks. The Agricultural Adjustment Act accelerated the mechanization of farms and displaced many black workers. In addition, the Fair Labor Standards Act, enacting minimum wages, began the elimination of many jobs and contributed to racial discrimination. As the renowned economist Gunnar Myrdal argued:
When the jobs are made better, the employer becomes less eager to hire Negroes. There is, in addition, the possibility that the policy of setting minimum standards might cause some jobs to disappear altogether or to become greatly decreased. . . . If labor gets more expensive, it is likely to be economized and substituted for by machines. Also inefficient industries, which have hitherto existed solely by the exploitation of labor, may be put out of business when the government sets minimum standards.[54]
There is no question about racist union exclusionary policy and practices of the past. But what can be said about today? There is little evidence of continued flagrant racial exclusion. However, in some craft unions, blacks are virtually absent. That can be explained in several interrelated ways. One is that black workers may not be seeking to join the union because, seeing the relatively few black members, they view their chances of admission as slim. Second, entry requirements may have been raised to discourage black membership. That, related to a third possible reason, is the entire package of entry conditions, which includes long apprenticeship periods and restrictions on the number of apprentices, seniority rules, artificially high wages, and licensure. Regardless of whether unions discriminate racially today, all these union-supported practices tend to discriminate against lower-skilled tradesmen.
Black Opportunity Nowadays in Electrical and Plumbing Work
Racial discrimination by occupational licensing boards is not just a historical curiosity made irrelevant by racial enlightenment of today. In 1973, Benjamin Shimberg reported:
The only licensed Negro plumber in Montgomery County, Alabama, at the time of this study reported that he had spent four years learning the plumbing trade at Talladega College, but that when he attempted to obtain a license, he faced seemingly insurmountable barriers. He took the local examination and was told each time that he failed. He was not told what his score was nor was he allowed to see his examination paper. Finally he took and passed the state master plumber’s examination and then managed to use his state license as a means of obtaining a local license in Montgomery County.[55]
Professor Shimberg added that black electricians faced similar difficulty in Alabama. Union-sponsored electrical apprenticeship programs appear closed to them. The union requirement is that all applicants must be high school graduates. High school-equivalency test certificates are not accepted. Final selection to the apprenticeship training programs is determined on the basis of a personal interview, which affords considerable latitude for racial discrimination.[56]
Shimberg insightfully points out that the vested economic interests that are protected from competition by state licensing boards cannot be persuaded to change their practices voluntarily: “. . . nor is there much room for optimism that many state legislatures or city councils would be willing to incur the wrath of powerful labor unions or affluent trade associations whose members derive economic benefits from the perpetuation of the status quo.”[57]
According to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data, blacks in 1969 constituted 1.9 percent of the membership of the United Association of Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and 0.6 percent of the International Plumbers and Pipefitters.[58] By 1972, their membership had risen to 6.5 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively.[59] In a study of the “mechanical” trades (boilermakers, electrical workers, elevator constructors, ironworkers, plumbers and pipefitters, and sheet metal workers), Herbert Hammerman found that in 1972, 58 percent of the local unions had no black or Spanish-origin members.[60]
While the number of black union members is not a perfect measure of racial discrimination, it does suggest that licensing and unionization had an ongoing, adverse impact on minority opportunities to become plumbers and electricians. The issue of occupational entry barriers, imposed by state licensing authorities or by labor organizations, is not whether open racial discrimination is practiced. The issue, as far as policy is concerned, is the barriers’ racial effect.
There is evidence that occupational licensing is used in other ways that handicap minorities. This happens when incumbent practitioners attempt to protect their income in the face of a slack market for their services. Professor Alex Maurizi investigated the relationships, in licensed occupations, between a slack market for labor and the examination pass rate.[61] He found that a substantial, statistically significant portion of the pass rate was explained by the excess demand. When there was high unemployment in the licensed trade, the examination increased in difficulty in order to reduce the number of new entrants and, by extension, protect the incomes of incumbent practitioners. Obviously, that will have the greatest discriminatory impact on the groups that have a poorer-quality education; minorities disproportionately comprise such groups.
Blacks and the Railroad Industry
Despite the fact that the railroad industry has historically been the source of some of the most virulent forms of racial discrimination, at the turn of the century, thousands of blacks found employment on America’s railroads.[62] A number of railroad unions had constitutional provisions banning them from membership. Among those were the Switchmen’s Union of North America and numerous “Brotherhoods”: Railway Carmen, Railway Conductors, Railway Clerks, Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, and Maintenance-of-Way Employees. Blacks were also banned from other unions with railroad workers among their members—the International Association of Machinists, the Boilermakers, the Iron Shipbuilders and Helpers Union.[63]
Although unions were able to bar blacks from membership, they could not bar them from the craft itself. In fact, in the South, where hostility toward black workmen was the greatest, some railroad companies had firemen crews that were 85 to 90 percent black. For Southern states as a whole, blacks constituted 27 percent of the brakemen and 12 percent of the switchmen. Those numbers changed radically in later years. By 1940, only 18 percent of the firemen in the South were blacks, falling to 7 percent by 1960.[64] W. E. B. Dubois, writing of this era, concluded, “The great railway systems too discriminate against the Negro, and here his opportunity is limited, no matter how high a degree of efficiency he may attain, to the menial and poorly paid tasks.”[65]
Table 5.1 illustrates the number of black and white firemen by years and region. It shows a drop in the total number of firemen both by year and region since 1920. But most remarkable is the decline in the number of black firemen—compared to whites—after that date. The falloff in that specialty was the greatest in the South, where at one time they were the most numerous.
Table 5.1. Locomotive Firemen in the United States by Region, 1910–60 (Males Only)
|
Region |
1910 |
1910 |
1920 |
1920 |
1930 |
1930 |
1940 |
1940 |
1950 |
1950 |
1960 |
1960 |
|
|
South |
Number |
14,755 |
5,012 |
17,722 |
5,878 |
14,309 |
4,254 |
9,545 |
2,114 |
12,690 |
1,823 |
9,563 |
750 |
|
Percent |
(74.6) |
(25.4) |
(75.1) |
(24.9) |
(77.1) |
(22.9) |
(81.9) |
(18.1) |
(87.4) |
(12.6) |
(92.7) |
(7.3) |
|
|
Number |
— |
— |
2,967 |
866 |
–3,413 |
–1,624 |
–4,764 |
–2,140 |
3,145 |
–291 |
–3,127 |
–1,073 |
|
|
Percent |
— |
— |
20.1 |
17.3 |
–19.3 |
–27.6 |
–33.3 |
–50.3 |
32.9 |
–13.8 |
–24.6 |
–58.9 |
|
|
North- |
Number |
28,353 |
105 |
32,762 |
359 |
23,814 |
234 |
15,430 |
88 |
20,063 |
250 |
13,925 |
62 |
|
|
Percent |
(99.6) |
(.4) |
(98.9) |
(1.1) |
(99.0) |
(1.0) |
(99.4) |
(.6) |
(98.8) |
(1.2) |
(99.6) |
(.4) |
|
Number |
— |
— |
4,409 |
254 |
–8,948 |
–125 |
–8,384 |
–146 |
4,633 |
162 |
–6,138 |
–188 |
|
|
Percent |
— |
— |
15.5 |
241.9 |
–27.3 |
–34.8 |
–35.2 |
–62.4 |
30.0 |
184.1 |
–30.6 |
–75.2 |
|
|
North- |
Number |
19,202 |
53 |
24,765 |
217 |
17,128 |
138 |
11,341 |
54 |
12,080 |
123 |
7,545 |
33 |
|
|
Percent |
(99.7) |
(.3) |
(99.1) |
(.9) |
(99.2) |
(.8) |
(99.5) |
(.5) |
(99.0) |
(1.0) |
(99.6) |
(.4) |
|
Number |
— |
— |
5,563 |
164 |
–7,637 |
–79 |
–5,787 |
–84 |
739 |
69 |
–4,535 |
–90 |
|
|
Percent |
— |
— |
29.0 |
309.4 |
–30.8 |
–36.4 |
–33.8 |
–60.9 |
6.5 |
127.8 |
–37.5 |
–73.2 |
|
|
West |
Number |
8,883 |
18 |
9,611 |
31 |
6,122 |
14 |
5,258 |
7 |
6,872 |
26 |
5,071 |
5 |
|
Percent |
(99.8) |
(.2) |
(99.7) |
(.3) |
(99.8) |
(.2) |
(99.9) |
(.1) |
(99.6) |
(.4) |
(99.9) |
(.1) |
|
|
Number |
— |
— |
728 |
13 |
–3,489 |
–17 |
–864 |
–7 |
1,614 |
19 |
–1,081 |
–21 |
|
|
Percent |
— |
— |
8.2 |
72.2 |
–36.3 |
–54.8 |
–14.1 |
–50.0 |
30.7 |
271.4 |
–26.2 |
–80.8 |
|
Sources: Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of the Population: 1910, vol. 2, Occupations, table 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910); Census: 1920, vol. 4, Occupations, table 15, 66; Census: 1930, vol. 4, Occupations by State, table 11; Census: 1940, vol. 3, The Labor Force, table 63, 91; Census: 1950, vol. 2, pt. 1, Detailed Characteristics, table 139, 1–397; Census: 1960, vol. 1, pt. 1D, Detailed Characteristics, table 257, 717; Census, Negro Population: 1790–1915, Occupation Table, table 17, 517–20; Census: 1920, vol. 4, Occupations, Ch. 7, table 1, 874–1,048. | |||||||||||||
The high rate of employment for blacks in the railroad industry resulted not from white benevolence but because blacks would work for wages that were often just two-thirds of those paid to white firemen for doing the same job. The wage differential had the clear effect of reducing the power of white firemen to demand higher wages. As one white fireman put it, “Every time the firemen ask for an increase in wages or for overtime due them, they are told by the superintendent, ‘Why, I can get a Negro in your place for one dollar, while I’m paying you $1.50 per day.’ ”[66]
Railroad companies were very much interested in keeping blacks in their employ because hiring blacks meant lower operating costs. White firemen naturally protested, alleging black incompetence, but also resorted to large-scale, crippling strikes, intimidation, and even murder.
Union Demands for Equal Pay
In 1909, a bitter strike took place against the Georgia Railroad. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen demanded that blacks be completely eliminated from the railroad. Instead of recommending that, the arbitration board decided that black firemen, hostlers, and hostlers’ helpers must be paid wages that equaled the wages of whites doing the same job.[67] Although that move did not meet its demand, the union expressed delight, saying, “If this course is followed by the company and the incentive for employing Negroes thus removed, the strike will not have been in vain.”[68]
Why would the Locomotive Firemen be happy with the decision for equal pay for equal work? Because if railroads were required to pay blacks the same as they paid whites, the cost to the railroad of discriminating against blacks in employment would in effect be zero. The pay rule would effectively prevent blacks from competing with whites by offering to work for lower wages. White firemen knew that well. They also knew that they could trust economic incentives to further their racist objectives better than custom, gentlemen’s agreements, or feelings of white solidarity.
White understanding of the power of wage regulation to further the cause of racial discrimination in employment is evident in an agreement between the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen and the Southern Railroad Association signed in Washington, D.C., in January 1910. The agreement read in part:
No larger percentage of Negro firemen or yardmen will be employed in any division or in any yard than was employed on January 1, 1910. If on any roads this percentage is now larger than on January 1, 1910, this agreement does not contemplate the discharge of any Negroes to be replaced by whites; but as vacancies are filled or new men employed, whites are to be taken until the percentage of January first is again reached. Negroes are not to be employed as baggage men, flagmen or yard foremen, but in any case in which they are so now employed, they are not to be discharged to make places for whites, but when the positions they occupy become vacant, whites shall be employed in their places.
Where no difference in the rates of pay between white and colored exists, the restrictions as to percentage of Negroes to be employed does not apply.[69]
In other words, white firemen insisted on hard and fast quotas for the hiring of blacks when there was no wage regulation. They recognized that openly discriminatory measures were not needed if wages between the races were equal. They perhaps also realized that if they insisted on racial quotas where wages were equal, blacks might have employment opportunities that otherwise would not be available.
Firemen’s brotherhoods, fresh from their victory over Southern railroads, followed up by negotiating a similar discriminatory agreement with the railroads in the Mississippi Valley. These agreements, with the full backing of government and monopolistic labor laws, led to the virtual elimination of blacks from all but the industry’s most menial jobs. Railroad companies were coerced and blackmailed into not hiring blacks as a condition for labor peace.
Efforts to eliminate black railroad employment often resulted in the use of violence. In a 1911 strike against the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railroad protesting the employment of blacks, ten black firemen were murdered.[70] The strike resulted in an agreement by which the railroad would not hire blacks north of certain geographical boundaries.[71] In some cases, black workers were beaten, kidnapped, and murdered for refusing to leave the job.[72] Herbert Hill describes other violent incidents in Texas and Georgia following union petitions to replace black workers with whites.[73]
The fact that blacks found employment opportunities on America’s rails had little or nothing to do with white employer benevolence. One doubts whether there were systemic racial preference differences between whites who were employers and whites who were workers. The reason is much simpler. Blacks simply underbid whites for the jobs; i.e., they were willing to sell their labor services at lower prices. Railroad owners were more interested in higher profits than in white solidarity.
The Use of the State Against Blacks
Early U.S. Supreme Court decisions thwarted union attempts to exclude black workers. In re Debs upheld a federal injunction against Eugene V. Debs’s whites-only American Railway Union, which sought to monopolize the labor market.[74] Courts often issued injunctions enforcing “yellow-dog” contracts, wherein workers, as a condition of employment, agreed not to join a union. Pressured by labor unions, Congress enacted a statute banning interstate railroads from enforcing those contracts.[75] In 1908, in Adair v. United States, the Supreme Court overturned the statute as a violation of the freedom of contract.[76] In Coppage v. Kansas (1915), the Court struck down state bans on yellow-dog contracts involving intrastate railroads.[77] That decision hampered the unions’ ability to use state legislatures in their efforts to remove black workers.
Blacks recognized the importance of yellow-dog contracts implied in the freedom to contract for their services. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, during the Shipstead anti-injunction hearings in 1928, Harry E. Davis, a black politician from Ohio, said, “It logically follows that a colored worker who is denied the protection and benefits of organized labor because they will not take him in, has only one place of redress in case his right of employment is assailed and that is in our courts. . . .” Davis went on to say, “The group I represent has not got very much physical or tangible property, and their biggest asset is their right to a job, recognized as a contract, but an intangible right, and I maintain that if this bill becomes a law, it would affect very materially their right to the biggest thing which they have, a right to earn a living.”[78]
The New Deal and Black Railroad Workers
What racially discriminatory railroad labor unions could not accomplish through intimidation, collective bargaining, and earlier court decisions, they were able to accomplish through New Deal legislation. Primary among this legislation was the Railway Labor Act (RLA) of 1926, as amended in 1934.[79] The RLA provided that “The majority of any craft or class of employees shall have the right to determine who shall be the representative of the class or craft. . . .”[80] The act forced employers to negotiate with certified union representatives supporting worker rights to contract freely. Despite previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions, it also outlawed yellow-dog contracts and company unions. In addition, the RLA also created the National Mediation Board (NMB) and the National Railroad Adjustment Board (NRAB), giving the former jurisdiction over union certification and the latter jurisdiction over disputes arising from collective bargaining agreements.
Nearly all railroad unions banned black membership by constitutional provisions.[81] Blacks who were not accepted for membership in most locals, or were relegated to a low status in the railroad unions, naturally attempted to form their own unions. Those attempts were nullified by the action of the NRAB, which simply ruled that these alternative unions, created by workers discriminated against, could not represent black employees who were being unfairly represented by the bargaining unit given exclusive rights by the board. In effect, the board bestowed monopoly representation powers on white labor unions that refused equal membership terms to blacks.
The adverse effects of this policy stand out in stark relief in the 1943 case of Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks v. United Transport Service Employees of America (UTSEA).[82] The court in this case was asked to settle the conflicting claims of two unions competing for the rights to represent forty-five black porters at a train station in St. Paul, Minnesota. The porters were ineligible for membership in the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks Union because they were black; they unanimously voted for UTSEA as their bargaining agent. The NMB dismissed the application of UTSEA on the grounds that the porters were not a separate class of employees and that there was no dispute over representation. A court held that the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, which banned black membership, represented all porters, both black and white.
A federal district court declared the NMB dismissal order void. On appeal, an appellate court pointed out that the dismissal of UTSEA’s right to represent black employees forced them to accept representation by an organization in which they had no right to membership or right to speak or be heard on their own behalf. Yet the black workers’ victory was not to be had: the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the appellate decision on the ground that the mediation board’s certifications are not subject to judicial review.[83] During this era and later, numerous certification proceedings granted racially discriminatory labor unions exclusive bargaining representation.[84]
The discriminatory practices of railway labor unions, reinforced by national labor laws, gave rise to several other important court cases. Chief among them was Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad.[85] It involved a black fireman, B. W. Steele, who had been laid off as a result of the Southeastern Carrier’s Agreement, a pact among several railroad companies and railway labor organizations. Steele and three other blacks had been working as firemen in the high-paying passenger division of the Louisville & Nashville line. The union had declared the jobs of the four blacks vacant, and they were later filled by white firemen having less seniority.
When Steele first started working as a fireman in 1910, 98 percent of the firemen in his Louisville & Nashville district were black. By 1943, the proportion had dropped to 20 percent. Steele’s case was originally brought before the Alabama supreme court, which found that, as a certified representative of the firemen, the railway brotherhood had the right to destroy or create rights of members of the bargaining unit.[86] However, in 1944, when the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case, it reversed the state court decision and found that the union had violated the Railway Labor Act. In reaching its decision, the Court recognized that the RLA would be on very weak constitutional grounds if it denied individuals both the right to bargain for themselves and the right to be fairly represented by the exclusive bargaining unit. The Court ruled that “the Railway Labor Act imposes on the bargaining representative of a craft or class of employees the duty to exercise fairly the power conferred upon it in behalf of all those for whom it acts, without hostile discrimination against them.”[87]
Yet, despite that finding, effective discrimination against black railroad workers did not end. The mechanism for its continuance had not been weakened—namely, the monopoly powers conferred upon unions by the federal government. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen ignored the Court’s decision and maintained the illegal Southeastern Carrier’s Agreement. Not until the 1950s, following separate lawsuits awarding damages, did the effect of the Steele decision become even modestly felt.[88]
In the 1940s, unions began to employ subtler discriminatory techniques that had the effect of reducing or eliminating black firemen. For example, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen began a campaign that, at least superficially, appeared to be aimed at rejecting its racially discriminatory practices of the past by negotiating an agreement that struck out the anti-black-quota clause. The brotherhood proposed to the members of the Southeastern Carrier’s Conference a test to determine whether a fireman was promotable. Failing the test after three tries would mean that the man was not promotable and would be dismissed. Obviously, the test was directed at eliminating black firemen. Most of them had been hired many years ago, when education requirements did not exist. The test based on the hiring requirement for engineers would have caused the blacks to be dismissed as unpromotable. Fortunately for the firemen around the country, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the test was illegal.[89]
Charles Houston, who was the lawyer for many black railway men, points out how the federal government failed to protect blacks and actually colluded with their oppressors. For example, government officials permitted white unions to assist in writing the 1934 Railway Labor Act. Furthermore, each union brotherhood had its representative sitting on the section of the National Railroad Adjustment Board that held jurisdiction over all grievances affecting train and engine service employment.[90]
Racist Union Policy Toward Others: A Digression
Samuel Gompers, the first president of the AFL, is mistakenly revered by many as the benevolent father of the labor movement. He is seen as not having a single racist bone in his body. But he warned, “Caucasians are not going to let their standard of living be destroyed by Negroes, Chinamen, Japs or any other.”[91]
Gompers held particular animosity against Orientals. In 1906, the AFL called for immigration restrictions; although he himself had immigrated from Poland, Gompers declared that “the maintenance of the nation depended upon the maintenance of racial purity and strength.”[92] The most comprehensive statement of his feelings about Orientals is found in a pamphlet that he coauthored with Herman Gutstat, another AFL official: “Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion: Meat vs. Rice, American Manhood Against Coolieism—Which Shall Survive.”[93] According to the authors, the Chinese were congenitally immoral: “The Yellow man found it natural to lie, cheat and murder and ninety-nine out of one hundred Chinese are gamblers.” Gompers said Chinese were good workers in American households, but “he [the Chinese individual] goes joyfully back to his slum and his burrow to the grateful luxury of his normal surroundings—vice, filth, and an atmosphere of horror.”[94]
In 1883, answering questions put to him by the chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Gompers stated union policy toward the Chinese:
A. I have no objection to the people of any country coming to America, Chinese excepted (I’m not so sentimental as all that), provided they come here of their own free will, and not influenced by deception.
Q. On that point, do you think there is any feeling among American laborers or workmen adverse to free and open competition with foreign laborers from European countries when they come here?
A. No, sir; I believe they have no objection. They do wish, however, to put a stop to the introduction of the Chinese into this country, at least for a period, so as to give the American workman a breathing spell. Our people had hardly recovered from the Panic and they were not to be trodden down by the Chinese undermining them.
Q. But a European laborer will work more cheaply than the American laborer, will he not?
A. He becomes easily acclimatized and soon harmonizes with the American people.
Q. And he soon wants as much wages as anybody?
A. Yes, sir; and, as a certain senator said, “It is a question whether the working men of America shall eat rats, rice, or beefsteak.” I choose beefsteak. I will vote for that every time. I do not want it understood that my vote can be purchased for a beefsteak, but I will vote always for measures that will improve the condition of the working men.”
Q. You speak of this opposition to the Chinese being designed to give the working men a breathing spell after the Panic. Do I understand you to mean that the opposition to Chinese immigration is temporary?
A. No, sir.
Q. Then, there is a permanent opposition, you think to that immigration?
A. Decidedly.[95]
In other speeches, letters and writings, Gompers and other high union officials made it clear that similar feelings, and subsequent union practices, extended to Japanese, Koreans, and Mexican-Americans.[96]
Racial Discrimination in the Trucking Industry
The discriminatory practices of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the dominant union in trucking, have been an important impediment to black opportunities in the industry. Unions played a major role in excluding blacks from trucking, particularly in the South. In the post-Civil War days, it was regarded as a “Negro job.” As wages in the industry began to rise, however, the job became attractive to whites. And as the trucking industry became more unionized, union work rules penalized blacks trying to advance to the more lucrative position of over-the-road driver.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters negotiated seniority rules that were part of its National Master Freight Agreement. Although there were blacks in the section of the Teamsters Union that dealt in over-the-road labor, those drivers were on a separate seniority list. The significance of that: if a dockman or a local driver sought to move to the over-the-road list, he had to give up all the seniority rights he held and go to the bottom of the over-the-road seniority list. Such a rule, because of the risks of unemployment and layoffs, acted as a powerful inducement not to transfer. As pointed out by attorney William B. Gould,[97] this form of seniority rules was unlawful to the extent that they adversely affect minorities.[98] According to Gould, “[N]o matter how many courts declared the provisions unlawful, the parties not directly ordered to make changes continued to adhere to the same practices and procedures.”[99] He argued that discriminatory seniority rules continued because (1) the Teamsters were a highly decentralized organization and (2) the government had been unwilling to carry its confrontation with the trucking industry to a showdown. Union officials threatened a nationwide strike if any company hired a black because of government pressure.
The economic impact of seniority rules struck through collective bargaining agreements was critical: they reduced minority opportunities to gain over-the-road trucking skills. They also perpetuated the effects of past discrimination, because many trucking companies did not hire black road drivers until more recent times.[100] Teamster locals often demanded that trucking companies practice racial employment discrimination against blacks as a condition for labor peace.[101]
Another significant factor in the problem that blacks faced in getting over-the-road truck driving positions was the refusal of white truck drivers to ride with them. In 1966, The Wall Street Journal reported that one Teamster official asked, “Would you like to climb in a bunk bed that a nigger just got out of?” Another said, “To my knowledge no law has been written yet that says a white man has to bed down with Negroes.”[102] Teamster officials protected union men who were discharged by a company for refusing to ride with a black driver.[103]
Seniority rules, the refusal of white drivers to ride with black drivers, and the Teamsters’ highly discriminatory job-referral practices contributed to reducing black opportunities for jobs in the trucking industry.[104]
Deregulation and Black Opportunities
Traditionally, blacks have had few opportunities in the trucking industry, working either as for-hire drivers or owner-operators. There is little evidence that discrimination in the trucking industry came to an end after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with its Title VII making employment discrimination illegal. It nonetheless persisted against blacks, reinforced by the fact that for new hires, trucking firms relied primarily on either union or driver referrals. The use of newspaper ads or employment agencies, which might have attracted black applicants, was largely nonexistent.[105]
The story changed after deregulation. Taking 1979 as the beginning of trucking deregulation, a commentator noted at the time that “the portion of blacks working in the traditionally lucrative for-hire sector increases to 27 percent from a regulated period of 21 percent. . . . Blacks appear to be more likely to be hired in the for-hire sector following deregulation than before.”[106] Also after deregulation, a larger percentage of blacks became union members.[107]
Deregulating the industry opened up opportunities for black owner-operators. “Of the minority certifications in force in mid–1981, 48 percent had been granted between the commission’s creation earlier in the century and deregulation in 1978. The other 52 percent had been granted in the two and one-half years following deregulation.”[108] During the regulated period, only 9.4 percent of the Current Population Survey (CPS) sample were owner-operators; after deregulation, blacks accounted for 26.4 percent of that category. By comparison, blacks were three times more likely after deregulation to be owner-operators than they were before it.[109] A study by John S. Heywood and James H. Peoples supports the economic prediction that deregulation and its resulting competition reduced the scope for discrimination.[110]
Table 5.2 shows, as of 1992, the number of minority-owned common carriers with certificates of authority from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The listing does not determine what percentage of those is black-owned versus other minorities. However, it does suggest a significant surge in minority ownership of freight- and passenger-transportation companies since deregulation. In 1981, there were approximately 314 minority carriers among the 22,000 carriers subject to ICC regulations.[111] By 1992, as shown in Table 5.2, that number had grown to 936.
Table 5.2. Minority-Owned Common Carriers
|
State |
1983 |
1992 |
|
Alabama |
4 |
10 |
|
Alaska |
4 |
1 |
|
Arizona |
5 |
12 |
|
Arkansas |
1 |
6 |
|
California |
92 |
142 |
|
Canada |
2 |
4 |
|
Colorado |
4 |
14 |
|
Connecticut |
2 |
11 |
|
Delaware |
1 |
7 |
|
District Of Columbia |
7 |
4 |
|
Florida |
17 |
48 |
|
Georgia |
5 |
29 |
|
Hawaii |
1 |
Not Available |
|
Idaho |
5 |
8 |
|
Illinois |
20 |
39 |
|
Indiana |
7 |
11 |
|
Iowa |
Not Available |
4 |
|
Kansas |
4 |
7 |
|
Kentucky |
1 |
6 |
|
Louisiana |
4 |
16 |
|
Maine |
3 |
1 |
|
Maryland |
24 |
32 |
|
Massachusetts |
9 |
10 |
|
Michigan |
16 |
30 |
|
Minnesota |
5 |
10 |
|
Missouri |
5 |
6 |
|
Mississippi |
2 |
19 |
|
Montana |
1 |
5 |
|
Nebraska |
3 |
4 |
|
Nevada |
4 |
2 |
|
New Hampshire |
1 |
1 |
|
New Jersey |
29 |
68 |
|
New Mexico |
5 |
18 |
|
New York |
16 |
44 |
|
North Carolina |
13 |
46 |
|
North Dakota |
1 |
3 |
|
Ohio |
12 |
23 |
|
Oklahoma |
6 |
15 |
|
Oregon |
7 |
17 |
|
Pennsylvania |
6 |
19 |
|
Rhode Island |
Not Available |
3 |
|
South Carolina |
2 |
15 |
|
South Dakota |
6 |
1 |
|
Tennessee |
5 |
16 |
|
Texas |
17 |
98 |
|
Utah |
1 |
Not Available |
|
Vermont |
0 |
Not Available |
|
Virginia |
14 |
28 |
|
Washington |
7 |
15 |
|
West Virginia |
1 |
2 |
|
Wisconsin |
2 |
6 |
|
Wyoming |
1 |
|
|
Total |
410 |
936 |
Source: Motor Carrier Listings, Minority and Female, Office of Public Assistance (Washington, D.C.: Office of Transportation Analysis, Interstate Commerce Commission, September 1983 and April 1993). | ||
Another result of the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, which deregulated the interstate trucking industry, was a near-doubling of the number of authorized ICC carriers: they rose from 18,000 in 1980 to 33,548 in 1984. During the first year of deregulation alone, the commission granted authorization for 27,960 additional routes to new and existing carriers. Freight rates fell between 5 percent and 20 percent during 1980 and 1981. By 1986, revenue per truckload fell by 22 percent.[112] The reason: greater competition brought more schedule reliability and more specialization of services. Failure rates were greater after deregulation, but truck efficiency and accident rates improved
The squeeze on profits forced less efficient firms out of the market. Prior to deregulation, restrictive entry and price-fixing enabled inefficient producers to survive.[113]
Conclusion
Our short discussion of the trucking industry before and after deregulation offers additional confirmation of our working hypothesis that government regulations close avenues of entry and reinforce economic handicaps. Deregulation has not only served to help minorities enter an industry in greater numbers; it has also benefited consumers through lower prices and greater convenience in securing services.
Deregulation has been valuable in another important way. It has increased black participation in the trucking industry without depending upon controversial measures that have caused so much divisiveness in our society, namely quotas and racial preferences. Many people see those remedies as a violation of democratic principles. However, implicit in the criticism of them is the assumption that the economic game is being played fairly, that it is open to all with the will and means to enter.
In many instances, as demonstrated by the history of the trucking industry, the game was not fair. Through ICC regulation, it was rigged in a way particularly devastating to blacks. A moral dilemma therefore arose and persists: if we retain various laws and regulations that systematically mitigate against black opportunities, what should be done? If we retain these restrictive laws and regulations, maybe a case can be made for racial preferences as a “second-best” solution. The “first-best” solution, in terms of equity, efficiency, and morality, is to eliminate restrictive laws and regulations. When this course is pursued, it ameliorates the injustice and brings the side benefit of doing so without the rancor and divisiveness of racial remedies.
Whether one is dealing with licensure laws, wage legislation, or economic regulation, racial discrimination alone does not sufficiently explain entry restrictions. They are more an issue between the ins and the outs. Timothy Person, a black CEO of the St. Louis, Missouri-based Allstates Transworld Van Lines, struggled for thirty years with the ICC in an effort to achieve nationwide authority to ship household goods. The struggle cost him more than $1 million in expenses and lost profits. But in 1980, his efforts paid off, making his the first black firm—and one of only nineteen eventually—to achieve nationwide certification. That meant a huge boost to his revenues. Given Person’s struggles with the ICC and its regulations, one might be tempted to think that he would like to see less regulation in the household-goods shipping industry. But that is not the case. He sees government regulation as necessary to protect the consumer.
He said, “It would have been foolhardy of me to have spent the time and money and energy to get the national license if I had believed that regulation was going to turn [other] truckers loose on the public.”[114] Person’s interests had become the same as that of other shipping companies with nationwide certification—namely, restrictions on entry as a means to greater wealth.