City and Inter-State Migration 137 



carriers, etc. This class of labor is scarcer in Georgia than 

 it probably ever has been before, and a number of employers 

 complain of green and inexperienced hands. The fertilizer 

 plants — one or more in every town of over 2,000 people — 

 employ from 30 to 300 men. They take on about 25 per 

 cent of their labor in the fall and reach their maximum in 

 January and February. The managers of these plants, 

 especially in the southern portion of the State, 

 report that many of their hands have moved north 

 since they were laid off in the spring. They are 

 apprehensive that they will not be able to renew their force 

 without considerable trouble. After the cotton picking sea- 

 son is over, any shortage in these plants must eventually 

 be made up from the surrounding rural districts, because 

 the farmer can not compete with the town employer in the 

 matter of wages. In 1916, when farm hands were getting 50 

 and 75 cents a day, the oil mills and fertilizer works paid 

 80 cents and $1 and $1.25 a day. During the latter part 

 of the 1916 season many of these industries were paying 

 $1.50 and $1.75 a day. 



Complaint of incompetent labor is especially prevalent 

 among railway shop foremen and bosses of section gangs. 

 Negroes who work for the railroads, however, are contin- 

 ually shifting their employment, even in normal times. The 

 Central of Georgia shops at Macon, the Atlanta, Birming- 

 ham & Atlantic shops at Fitzgerald, and the Atlantic Coast 

 Line shops at Waycross reported great disturbance last sum- 

 mer and a continued shifting of their labor up to date. 

 The Central of Georgia shops in Macon employ about 600 

 Negroes, mostly unskilled, and they report that during the 

 three months March-May, 1917, when a labor agent was 

 active in Macon, they lost approximately 200 Negroes per 

 month, or one-third of their normal force. In normal times 

 their turnover was about 100 per month. The section gangs 

 of the Georgia Southern & Florida ; Atlanta, Birmingham & 

 Atlantic; and parts of the Central of Georgia and Coast 

 Line are also reported short. In general, the movement 

 of common laborers has been stopped by a rise in the scale 

 of wages from 75 and 80 cents per day in 1916 to $1.25, 

 $1.50, and $2 a day in the summer of 1917." 



Tt...tlmQ appears * W, corresponding to the .f arm owners 

 a nd renters in the country the re is algn a stable "uppe rv. • 



