THE WEATHER AND THE WEEVIL 99 



years of infestation rendered landlords and Negro ten- 

 ants almost equally helpless. "In Alabama," writes an 

 investigator, "thousands of landlords were forced to 

 dismiss their tenants and to close the commissaries from 

 which came the daily rations. Some planters in Alabama 

 and Mississippi advised their tenants to leave and even 

 assisted them. The banks and merchants refused to ex- 

 tend credit when cotton was no longer to be had as 

 security. A host of idle persons thrown suddenly on the 

 labor market could have no other effect than to create 

 an excess in the cities to which they flocked, make labor- 

 ers easily replaceable, and consequently reduce wages. 

 A southern paper in commenting on this situation de- 

 clared, 'there is nothing for this excess population to 

 do ... if there is a tap that will draw off the idle 

 population that will be a good thing for the cities at 

 least.' " 40 



The effect of the weevil on Georgia was also to weaken 

 the plantation and to encourage migration. Z. R. Pettit, 

 state crops estimator for Georgia, said in his annual re- 

 port for 1916: "The Negro exodus has been greatest 

 in the territory that has been infected [with the weevil] 

 long enough to make it difficult to grow a paying crop 

 of cotton. The reported acute labor shortage line co- 

 incides closely with the line of third year infestation 

 except along the southern state line." Woofter also 

 suggests that "the labor agents from the North, who 

 were probably aware of the disorganization caused by 

 this pest, operated more extensively in the rural district 

 of southwest Georgia than anywhere else." 42 



40 Emmett J. Scott, Negro Migration During the War, p. 15. 



41 Cited by Woofter, Negro Migration, p. 119. 42 Loc. cit. 



