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How Negroes Live in America

According to the census of 1920 more than 1,200,000 Negroes are occupied in agriculture. The enormous majority are employed in gathering sugar-cane, cotton, fruits and vegetables. Among these agricultural workers there are thousands of women, and children -- 6 or 7 years old.

The standard of life of the tenant-farmers and the agricultural labourers is nearly the same.

Mortality, caused in the villages by illnesses due to malnutrition, was 38% in 1911, and rose to 65% in 1915.

The Department of Agriculture indicated in April 1928 the wages paid to the agricultural workers in the various States. The monthly wage, including food and living quarters, in the Northern States near the Atlantic Coast where there are mostly white workers, is about 40--55 dollars and rises to about 53 dollars in the Western States. In the South, however, wages are never higher than 24 dollars per month. In South Carolina and in Georgia it is about 20 dollars; in the States of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana where there are mostly Negro workers the wage is about 21 to 22 dollars. In 8 Southern States it is a little more than 25 dollars. These figures taken as a whole, form a correct indication of the standard of life of the Negro peasants in the South. 

The dollar is worth much more in the South than in the North. The "Negro Year Book" for 1927 writes that the income for a family with three children

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[[caption]] Typical Negro homes in the Southern States of America[[/caption]]
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varies in the industrial centres of the North from 2160 dollars to 2620 dollars per year. With this budget food cost from 65 to 95 dollars a month. This -- the document states -- allows for "a hygienic and decent living". The monthly wages of an agricultural worker in the South reached in April 1928 an average of 35 dollars -- not including food and living quarters. 420 dollars a year. This is far from "hygienic" and "decent".

This is why a Negro family cannot have enough to eat unless the women and also the little children of 6--7 years old do not join in the army of the workers. 

An investigation was made into the conditions prevailing along the Gulf Stream Coast. Here 50% of the Negro workers earn -- not including food and living quarters -- from 1 to 7 dollars a week (of them only 20% earn 7 dollars). As regards children of 322 children who were examined in Maryland, 26 were younger than 8 years old, 65 of them were 8--10 years old, 77: 11 years old. The remainder were a little more than 12 years old. The women and children do piece work, mostly seasonal work.

It is necessary to visit a Negro village in the South in order to have an idea of the life led by the great mass of Negro toilers in America.

Generally the Negro quarters are at the far end of the village. There the streets are very narrow. The small wooden huts are so shaky, and worm laten that one can only wonder how they manage to keep up. There are no electric lights in the villages, and of course, no watersupply.

The Negro quarters in the villages -- states the official report on the investigation -- have a very miserable appearance. They are often to be found near the railways or in distant localities and near marshlands. Even if the Negro quarters are situation near the centre of a town the streets are very rarely mended or paved. However, notwithstanding the bad conditions of the roads, notwithstanding the general poverty of the small grey huts, -- the small well-kept gardens, attached to all this huts lends them a gay aspect.

Most of the houses are one-storied and have three rooms. Instead of a foundation they are build on large stones or wooden blacks. They are heated by small stoves. In some places only two houses out of a hundred had water supply or water drains. 

Today America is in the greatest economic crisis which the country has ever experienced. There are more than 12 millions Negro and white workers unemployed. The Negro workers, especially in the South, are the greatest sufferers, for added to their economic misery, is the worst forms of racial oppression. Negroes who dare to demand social relief are immediately attacked by the capitalists and landlords who either lynch them or drive them away from the village. Nevertheless, the Negroes are waking up and uniting with the starving white workers and poor peasants in fighting for the social rights, for relief for the unemployed and non-payment of rent and taxes.
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