Part one: The Northern aggression during the Jim Crow era and what it means today to Mexico's new agreement with the US

The Northern aggression during the Jim Crow era and what it means today to Mexico's new agreement with the US.

Part one: History of the Beacon Davis Act
Part two takes us to the present Mexico -US NAFTA proposed agreement
Part three is a diagram explaining Union - Democrat poverty cycle

In 1931 a bill was passed as law. This bill was racist as Jim Crow laws of the same period. The Davis Beacon Act was passed to keep minorities in the south from migrating north and taking white laborer jobs. Before 1931 more than eighty percent of all un-skilled construction workers found in 6 southern cities were black. Union labor excluded blacks in the North from training and licensing for the pure fact of racism, protectionism and purposely made it impossible to join.

A Veterans Bureau Hospital built prior to 1931 was awarded to an Alabama contractor who brought unskilled, low-wage laborers to New York to fully fill a contract to build. James Davis, a Senator from Pennsylvania, and Robert Beacon of Long Island NY created this bill to thwart blacks' progress in America and keep local jobs for their constituents that were paid for with pork barrel funds from the federal government coffers. 

The Davis Beacon Act sought prevailing wages to be paid to all labor, and the wages were to reflect the local market wage. So, I am trying to tell you that a black person from Alabama making 1.00 an hour would have to be paid the same as the white worker in another locality making 2.00 an hour. One might say that is a good thing, black people making the same money as white people, but wait, there is more to think about. As a contractor, if you have to pay someone the same wage for the same work, are you going to choose the person (sometimes a neighbor) who lives in the locality or pay someone you don't know from out of state? Remember, these workers from the south also had to be fed and housed by the employer, and all the local workers had to do was go home. You decide who you would hire.

After the passage of this bill, the impact on the black community was not what one would have expected. Un-skilled black workers banned from joining unions to receive the training needed for the requirement of skilled labor and increased wages was devastating. The use of a prevailing wage kept government projects in the hands of unions and white skilled labor in the North.

The cost of the Beacon Davis Act today is an extra one-billion-plus dollars according to what I could find on the subject and, if repealed, could add tens of thousands of jobs in the construction industry. Free trade and labor markets help un-skilled people get the "on-the-job training" they need to build a life for themselves and their families without the need for government assistance.

John Frantz https://fee.org/articles/davis-bacon-jim-crows-last-stand/

Walter Williams Race and Economics: How much can be blamed on discrimination.

www.autonews.com/article/.../ford-finds-mixed-blessing-in-end-of-tiered-wages

www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/what-the-unions-won/412501/