The Negro's church,.

Is the Negro Overchurched?

207

the weekly wages were from $12 as coal-yard laborers to $18
as workers in a meat-packing plant.2
The Negro in Richmond, Virginia, the report of the Negro
Welfare Survey Committee, asserts that over 60 per cent. of
the Negro families of Richmond had in 1929 from all sources
only $20 a week or less on which to live.
Furthermore, Mr. Edwards, on the basis of 1,029 families
in Nashville, estimated the purchasing power of each Nashville Negro to be $347 in 1929, or for the family $1,266.55 -an average of 3.65 persons to the family. He accepted this
as a reasonable basis from which to approximate roughly the
total purchasing power of the Negro in the seventeen largest
cities of the South, which includes the seven southern cities
studied in this report.3 If Nashville should prove typical of
the seven southern cities of this study, the following quotation
is a revelation:
Of the 75 per cent. or more of Negro families in Nashville
whose heads were engaged in either common and semi-skilled
labor or its equivalent, approximately 40 per cent. were earning
less than $900 per annum in 1929; more than 80 per cent. were
receiving less than $1,500; and 95 per cent. were making less
than $2,100. Of the 13 per cent. whose heads were employed
at skilled labor, about 38 per cent. were earning less than $1,200
per annum; 50 per cent. were receiving less than $1,500; and
75 per cent. were making less than $2,100. Of the 5 per cent.
of families whose heads were engaged in business enterprises
according to the 1920 census, more than 60 per cent. were earning under $1,500 per year, and 77 per cent. less than $2,100.
Of the 3 per cent. professional families, about 65 per cent. were
earning less than $2,100. Disregarding occupation classes, and
considering all Negro families as one unit,... the great majority fall into the lower income groups.... Cumulated, these
2 Edwards, Paul K., The Southern Urban Negro as a Consumer (New
York: Prentice-Hall, 1932), p. 28.
'Ibid, pp. 32 ff.