NEGROES IN BRITISH PORTS [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIRS I have read with interest the article on " Negroes in British Ports," by " Agatha Pemba," and would like to ask your correspondent whether she has considered the great difficulties of shipowners and employers in the docks to find white labour. Does the writer really think that owners arc only too glad to take on negroes in preference to white labour ? I think not.
One reads of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed in the British Isles, and I imagine a fair number of these are to be found in the vicinity of our ports, &c. Why are some of these not employed instead of negroes ? I think the answer is to be found in this fact : that whereas a negro will accept any class of rough work, I am sorry to say this is not so where white men are concerned. If it were not for the coldured men, who arc nearly always to be found waiting for odd jobs around the ports, half of the merchant ships would never be able to leave their ports at all.
I fail to see where the harm is done by the employment of these negroes as the writer suggests. Better that they be employed than hanging around the streets doing nothing. I wonder whether your correspondent has ever taken a look on board any of the American battleships, where it seems to me that half the crew are black men, and where everything from the baker's shop to the Admiral's bridge are spotlessly clean ?
I would suggest that your correspondent tries her hand at finding a crew in any of the big ports in England ; she would then see why many negroes are taken on by our merchant
Naples.
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