The Negro And The Trades Union.

The Negro is making gains in the unions. At the 1910 annual meeting of the National Council of the American Federation of Labor a resolution was unanimously passed inviting Negroes and all other races unto the Labor Federation. The officers of the Federation were instructed to take measures to see that Negro workmen as well as workmen of other races were brought into the Union. In 1913 this action was reaffirmed.

Many years ago the American Federation of Labor declared for the thorough organization of all working people without regard to sex, religion, race, politics, or nationality; that many organizations affiliated with the A. F. of L. have within their membership Negro workmen with all other workers of their trades, and the A. F. of L. has made and is making every effort within its power for the organization of these workmen.

In 1913 nine out of sixty of the most important unions barred Negroes from membership. These unions were: "The International Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees," "Switchmen's Union," "Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen,” “Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen," "Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineer," "Order of Railway Conductors of America,' "Order of Railway Telegraphers," "American Wire Weavers' Protective Asosciation" and the "International Brotherhood Boiler Makers, Iron Shipbuilders and Helpers of America." Fifty-one national labor organizations, several or which are the strongest in the country, reported that there was nothing in theif Constitution prohibiting the admittance of Negroes.

The question of the Negroes and the Labor Unions was considered at the 1916, the 1917 and the 1918 annual conventions of the American Federation of Labor and steps were taken to organize Negroes not then affiliated with the Unions. At the 1919 Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor, it was formally decided to open the doors of organized labor unconditionally to Negroes.

At the 1921 convention of the American Federation of Labor efforts to wipe out the color line in organized labor failed. In the course of the discussion President Gompers said, "The American Federation of Labor has previously declared that it is the duty of all workers to organize regardless of sex, nationality, political belief or color." Continuing he said, "The Federation, however, cannot force this view upon individual or affiliated unions without their consent. One of the significant aspects of the problem of the Negro and organized labor is the recently developed tendency of Negro labor to organize itself independent of white labor unions. The chief reasons for

the development of these independent Negro labor unions are that it is felt that Negro labor is not receiving a square deal at the hands of white labor and that although the American Federation of Labor advises that Negroes be received into labor unions on the same footing as whites there is no effective means of enforcing this recommendation.

INVENTIONS.

Benjamin Banneker.-Noted Negro Astronomer. Born free, November 9, 1731, in Baltimore County, Maryland. Received some education in a pay school. Early showed an inclination for mechanics. About 1754, with imperfect tools, constructed a clock which told the time and struck the hour. This was the first clock constructed in America.

James Forten, of Philadelphia, who died in 1842, is credited with the invention of apparatus for managing sails. Robert Benjamin Lewis, born in Gardiner, Maine, 1802, invented a machine for picking oakum.

This machine, in all its essential particulars, is said to still be used by the ship-building interests of Maine.

The first Negro to receive a patent on an invention was Henry Blair, of Maryland, who, in 1834 and 1836, was granted patents on a corn harvester. He is supposed to have been a free Negro. A number of inventions were made by slaves. It has been claimed, but not verified that a slave either invented the cotton gin or gave to Eli Whitney who obtained a patent for it, valuable suggestions to aid in the completion of that invention.

In 1858 the Commissioner of patents ruled and the Attorney General of the United States concurred that a slave could neither take out a patent on an invention nor assign his invention to his master. The same question came up in connection with the invention of a boat propeller by Benjamin T. Montgomery, a slave of Jefferson Davis, President of the late Confederate States. Having unsuccessfully tried to have his slave's invention patented, President Davis had the Confedesate Congress pass a law permitting a slave to assign his invention to his master. The law was:

"And be it further enacted, that in case the original inventor or discoverer of art, machine or improvment for which a patent is solicited is a slave, the master of such slave may take an oath that the said slave was the original; and on complying with the requisites of the law shall receive a patent for said discovery or invention, and have all the rights to which a patentee is entitled by law."

Sometime after the Dred Scott Decision, 1857, The Patent Office refused a Negro of Boston a patent on an invention on the ground that according to this decision he was not a citizen of the United States and therefore a patent could not be issued to him. December 16, 1861, Senator Charles Summer, on behalf of this Negro inventor, offered the following resolution in the Senate:

"Resolved, That the Committee on Patents and the Patent office be directed to consider if any further legislation is necessary in order to secure to persons of African descent, in our country, the right to take out patents for useful inventions, under the Constitution of the United States."

The Committee made no report on the resolution. It was a case for interpretation rather than legislation. The matter was settled in 1862 by an opinion of the Attorney-General, relating to passports, that a free man of color born in the United States is a citizen. It is reported that ice cream was invented by Augustus Jackson, a Negro confectionery dealer of Philadelphia.

The Patent Office, which does not record the race of the patentees has, by investigation, verified over 800 patents which have been granted to Negroes. It estimated that many more than this number which are unverified, have been granted, and that Negroes hold patents on over 3,000 inventions.

The records of the Patent Office show that Negroes have applied their inventive talent to a wide range of subjects; in agricultural implements, in wood and metal-working machines, in land conveyances on road and track, in seagoing vessels, in chemical compounds, in electricity through all its wide range of uses, in aeronautics, in new designs of house furniture and bric-a-brac, in mechanical toys and amusement devices.*

William, B. Purvis, of Philadelphia, has inventions covering a variety of subjects, but directed mainly along a single line of experiment and improvement.

He began in 1912, the invention of machines for making paper bags, and his improvements in this line of machinery are covered by a dozen patents. Some half dozen other patents granted Mr. Purvis, include three patents on electric

*The Negro in the Field of Invention. Henry E. Baker, Journal of Negro History, January, 1917.

railways, one on a fountain pen, another on a magnetic car-balancing device, and still another for a cutter for roll holders.

Joseph Hunter Dickinson, of New Jersey, specializes in the line of musical instruments, particularly playing the piano. He began more than fifteen years ago to invent devices for automatically playing the piano.

His various inventions in piano-player mechanism are adopted in the construction of some of the finest piano-players on the market. He has more than a dozen patents to his credit already, and is still devoting his energies to that line of invention.

Frank J. Ferrell, of New York, has obtained about a dozen patents for his inventions, the larger number of them being for improvement in valves for steam engines.

Benjamin F. Jackson, of Massachusetts, is the inventor of a dozen different improvements in heating and lighting devices, including a controller for a trolly wheel.

Charles V. Richey, of Washington, D. C., has obtained about a dozen patents on his inventions, the last of which was a most ingenious device for registering the calls on a telephone and detecting the unauthorized use of that instrument.

George W. Murray, of South Carolina, former member of Congress, from that State, has received eight patents for his inventions on agricultural implements, including mostly such different attachments as readily adapt a single implement to a variety of uses.

Henry Creamer, of New York, has made seven different inventions in steamtraps, covered by as many patents, and Andrew J. Beard, of Alabama had about the same number to his credit for inventions in car-coupling devices-William Douglass, of Arkansas, was granted about half a dozen patents for various inventions for harvesting machines.

James Doyle of Pittsburgh, has obtained several patents for his inventions one of them being for an automatic serving system. This latter device is a scheme for dispensing with the use of waiters in dining rooms, restaurants and at railroad lunch counters. It was recently exhibited with the Pennsylvania Exposition Society's exhibit at Pittsburgh, where it attracted widespread attention from the press and public.

In the Civil Service, at Washington, D. C., there are several colored men who have made inventions of more or less importance which were suggested by the mechanical problems arising in their daily occupations.

Shelby J. Davidson, of Kentucky, a clerk in the office of the Auditor for the Post Office Dept., operated a machine for tabulating and totalizing the quarterly accounts which were regularly submitted by the postmasters of the country. Mr. Davidson's attention was first directed to the loss in time through the necessity for periodically stopping to manually dispose of the paper coming from the machine. He invented a rewind device which served as an attachment for automatically taking up the paper as it issued from the machines and adapted it for use again on the reverse side, thus effecting a very considerable economy of time and material. His main invention, however was a novel attachment for adding machines which was designed to automatically include the government fee, as well as the amount sent, when totalizing the money orders in the reports submitted by postmasters. This was a distinct improvement in the efficiency and value of the machine he was operating, and the government granted him patents on both inventions.

Robert Pelham, of Detroit, is employed in the Census Office Bureau where his duties include the compilation of groups of statistics on sheets from data sent into the office from the thousands of manufactures of the country.

He devised a machine used as an adjunct in tabulating the statistics from the manufacturer's schedules in a way that displaced a dozen men in a given quantity of work, doing the work economically, speedily and with faultless precision. Mr. Pelham has been granted a patent for his inventions, and the improved efficiency of his devices induced the United States Government to lease them from him, paying him a royalty for their use, in addition to his salary for operating them.

The late Granville T. Woods, of New York, and his brother, Lyates took out some fifty or more patents.

Wood's inventions principally relate to electrical subjects, such as telegraph and telephone instruments, electric railways and general systems of electrical control. Several are on devices for transmitting telegraphic messages between moving trains. According to Patent Office Records, several of Wood's patents have for valuable considerations been assigned to the foremost electrical corporations, such as the General Electric Company, of New York and the American Bell Telephone Company, of New York. Mr. Wood's inventive faculty also worked along other lines. He devised an incubator, a complicated amusement device, a steam boiler furnace and a mechanical brake.

The largest number of patents received on inventions, by a Negro was by Elijah McCoy, of Detroit, Michigan.

McCoy obtained his first patent in July, 1872, and his last one in 1920. During this period of forty-eight years he invented one thing after another and has fifty-seven patents to his credit. His inventions cover a wide range of subjects, but relate particularly to the lubricating of machinery. He was a pioneer in the art of steadily supplying oil to machinery in intermittent drops from a cup so as to avoid the necessity for stopping the machine to oil it. McCoy' lubricating cup was famous forty years ago as a necessary equipment for all upto-date machinery.

John Ernest Matzeliger, born Dutch Guiana, 1852, died, Lynn, Massachusetts, 1889. He is the inventor of the first machine that performed automatically all the operations involved in attaching soles to shoes.

Other machines had previously been made for performing a part of these operations, but Matzeliger's machine was the only one then known to the mechanical world that could simultaneously hold the last in place to receive the leather, move it forward step by step so that other co-acting parts might draw the leather over the heel, properly punch the grip and grip the upper and draw it down over the last, plait the leather properly at the heel and toe, feed the nails to the driving point, hold them in position while being driven, and then discharge the completely soled shoe from the machine, everything being done automatically, and requiring less than a minute to complete a single shoe. This wonderful ful achievement marked the beginning of a distinct revolution in the art of making shoes by machinery. Matzeliger realized this, and attempted to capitalize it by organizing a stock company to market his invention; but his plans were frustrated through failing health and lack of business experience and shortly thereafter died. The patent and much of the stock of the company organized by Matzeliger was bought up. The purchase laid the foundation for the organization of the United Shoe Machinery Company, the largest and richest corporation of the kind in the world. The United Shoe Machinery Company established at Lynn, Massachusetts, a school, the only one of its kind in the world, where boys are taught exclusively to operate the Matzeliger type of machine. Some years before his death Matzeliger became a member of a white church in Lynn, called the North Congregational Society and bequeathed to this church some of the stock of the Company he had organized. Years afterwards this church became heavily involved in debt, and remembering the stock that had been left by this colored member, found, upon inquiry, that it had become very valuable through the importance of the patent under the management of the large company then controlling it. The church sold the stock and realized from the sale more than enough to pay off the entire debt of the church, amounting to $10,860.

AGRICULTURE

The number of farmers in the United States in 1920 were 6,448,343. Of these 5,498,454 or 85.3 per cent were white and 925,708 or 14.3 percent were Negroes. There were also 24,181 farmers of other nationalities as follows: 16,680 Indians, 6,892 Japanese and 609 Chinese. The number of Negro farmers by tenure were: owners, 218,612, managers 2,026, and tenants, 705,070.

Slight Increase In

Proportion Farm

Tenants.

The per cent division of Negro farmers in 1900, were: owners, 25.1; managers, 0.2; tenants, 74.6. The per cent division in 1910, were: owners, 24.5; managers, 0.2; tenants, 75.3. The per cent division in 1920, were: owners, 23.5; managers, 0.2; tenants, 76.3.

PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION BY TENURE NEGRO FARM OPERATORS.

In the 20 years, 1900-1920, the value of farm property owned by Negro farmers of the South has rapidly increased This is true with reference to the value of the live stock, poultry, and implements and machinery owned. The value of land and buildings increased from $69, 636,420 in 1900 to $273,501,665 in 1910, or 293 per cent. The value of the land and buildings owned by the Negro farmers of the South in 1920 was $522,178,137 an increase for the 10 years of $248,676,472 or 91 per

cent.