SLAVS ON SOUTHERN FARMS. 



IMMIGRATION AND THE SOUTH's ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. 



Already the native skilled and unskilled labor supply of the South 

 is practically exhausted. In all sections mill, foundry, factory, and 

 mine owners are clamoring for labor. This widespread industrial 

 and commercial expansion which is taking place in the South has 

 tended to depopulate our agricultural regions, and agricultural labor 

 has become a serious problem in many communities. 



The erection of iron and steel plants, sugar refineries, tobacco fac- 

 tories, railroad, power, and lighting plants, chemical and woodwork- 

 ing establishments, and the development of coal and iron mining has 

 attracted the native white farmers and mountaineers from the small 

 farms and remote rural districts to the industrial centers. The result- 

 ing urban development has also lured the negroes from the country 

 to the cities, where they are annually growing less efficient as a 

 dependable labor supply. 



These sources are now no longer adequate to meet the rapidly 

 increasing demands for industrial labor. In addition to this, the 

 migration of the poor whites and negroes from the farms to the 

 industrial communities and cities has, to a large extent, prevented 

 an agricultural development commensurate with the industrial expan- 

 sion . 



While the poor whites have been more or less successful in the 

 cotton mills and other industrial establishments and every indica- 

 tion is that they will in time become skilled workers, the negroes 

 have proven a failure as industrial laborers, except in the coal and 

 iron mines and in the roughest kinds of construction work. Realizing 

 this, a few southern manufacturers have begun to encourage and assist 

 an immigration of skilled and unskilled alien laborers. 



The effect of the poor whites and negroes moving from the farms 

 has been partly counteracted by the influx of farmers from the 

 Northern and West<m States, and by small groups of immigrants 

 who are leaving the industrial centers of the North and Middle West 

 to go on the land. Ne ither of these movements, however, is sufficient 

 to meet the demand for industrial labor in the South, nor to people 

 our millions of vacant acres. The future economic development of 

 the South is therefore dependent on immigration. 



PRESENT-DAY IMMIGRATION. 



This being true it concerns us to know something of the present-day 

 immigration. 



Instead of the Dutch and Flemish, English, French, German, Irish, 

 Scandinavian, Scotch, and Welsh home seekers of yesterday, the tide 

 of immigration now casts upon our shores Slavs, Magyars, Greeks, 



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