The general level of wages has been steadily rising, and among the negroes the tobacco workers are the aristocrats of the wage earners and are content with their situation.

Since the larger factories are almost invariably in the cities, the homes of the workers are scattered and not collected in communities as around the cotton mills.
Experiments have been made in employing negro operatives in the textile industry, so far with little success, though the capacity of the negro for such employment has not yet been disproved.

Though several cotton mills which made the experiment failed, in every case there were difficulties which might have caused a similar failure even with white operatives.

Negroes have been employed successfully in some hosiery mills and in a few small silk mills.

The increasing scarcity of labor, especially during the Great War, has led to the substitution of negroes for whites in a number of knitting mills.